Lincoln -- The Nebraska football team went through two hours of practice in shorts and helmets Tuesday in its final day of preparation for Thursday's contest against Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg, Miss. Head coach Frank Solich was pleased with the way Nebraska has prepared for its first Thursday night ESPN contest since 1995, and is pleased that the Huskers can get back into action.

"It will be good to get down there and get playing again," Solich said. "It seems like a long time since we've played a game, when we had an off week like we've had. I think we've made the most of it, the guys have prepared well, and they're anxious to play great football."

A key to playing well is having healthy players on the field and Solich mentioned that no one has been ruled out yet for Thursday's game, including defensive end Adam Carriker.

"I'll visit with the trainers today because actually, yesterday, (Carriker) moved pretty well and if he made the same kind of progress today, he may have an outside chance (to play)," Solich said, "but other than that no one's ruled out."

Solich also announced that senior Fred Thorne has been selected as the special teams captain for this week's game. Thorne is a bullet on the punt coverage team and has done an outstanding job up to this point, according to Solich.

"He's done a great job covering punts for us for three weeks now," Solich said. "When you talk about the halo rule and talk about how it's changed this year, it's really enabled the punt return guys to have an opportunity to catch the ball and to run. It's designed to be that way. Our guy (the bullet) is always running, and opposing teams are trying to do the same thing, so you better have two great bullets going down and not giving them the opportunity. We've asked an awful lot of him and he's done a great job on special teams."