Lincoln - The Nebraska football team finished its final full-scale practice for the week with a 90-minute hour workout on the wet Memorial Stadium field. Nebraska began the workout with stretching inside the Hawks Championship Center before moving outside, then dodged rain showers near the end of practice.

“Started slow, finished fast,” Head Coach Bo Pelini said of Thursday’s practice. “We’re making progress. We’ve got to get ready to go. We’ve got a big challenge ahead of us.”

The Husker coaching staff continues to look for someone to step up and fill a reserve spot at defensive end behind Pierre Allen, who moves into a starting role after the injury to Barry Turner.

“We’ll find out on Saturday,” Pelini said of who would fill that role. “We’ll look at the practice tape today. There are a number of candidates.”

While the Huskers lost Turner for the season, they welcomed the addition of two offensive linemen back to practice this week in Lydon Murtha and Andy Christensen.

“Lydon’s done really well,” Pelini said. “Andy’s getting better, getting accustomed to the movement, getting the rust off. He’s making progress. I think he feels better every day.”

Pelini said Nebraska will host five official visitors this weekend. Safety Ricky Thenarse will be available for Saturday’s game, but Pelini said he hopes they won’t have to use him.

Nebraska wraps up game-week preparations with a Friday afternoon walk-through. Saturday’s game will be available via FSN pay-per-view. Check Huskers.com for the latest pay-per-view update.