Nebraska men’s basketball advanced to the quarterfinals of the inaugural College Basketball Crown with an 86-78 comeback win over Arizona State Monday night in the 16-team NCAA Division-I postseason tournament.
The win was Nebraska’s first in 46 days, since the Huskers came back from another double-digit deficit to defeat Northwestern 68-64 on Feb. 16.
The first half looked like more of the same from Nebraska, with sloppy turnovers, giving up 3-point looks and scrambling or late on rotations defensively.
Nebraska came into the game ranked 235th (KenPom) in the nation in non-steal turnovers and had eight total turnovers in the first half with four of those coming from travels. At the half, Arizona State had zero steals and Nebraska had shot just 4-of-13 from 3-point range in the first 20 minutes.
“I just didn’t think we were playing with the fire that we needed to to win a basketball game against a very talented team,” Coach Fred Hoiberg said.
With 18:43 left in the game, the Sun Devils grew their 38-30 halftime lead to 11 at 43-32. A back-and-forth next eight minutes saw Arizona State holding onto the lead.
Nebraska needed a third scorer to go with Brice Williams and Juwan Gary. With 10:29 left in the game Connor Essegian made his first basket of the game, a 3-pointer, and the game flipped. Essegian didn’t miss in the second half and scored all 17 of his points in the final three stanzas of the game.
Arizona State had a depleted roster with only seven scholarship players available due to injury and players entering the transfer portal after the regular season. Nebraska’s depth showed by outscoring the Sun Devils’ bench 20-6 in the win.
Essegian led the way with his scoring, but it was Cale Jacobsen who had the biggest impact for Nebraska off the bench. Jacobsen came into the game playing just 75 minutes the entire season. Monday night, he played a career-high 22 minutes, or 22.6% of his season total.
“Cale knows every spot on the floor, one through five offensively and defensively,” Hoiberg said. “I thought he was the player of the game. He’s the next guy up a lot and he’s had an unbelievable couple of weeks of practice. I had to get him out there and it paid off for us.”
Jacobsen had two points (hitting his only shot), five assists, three steals and two rebounds and was plus-10.
It wasn’t just his stat line, it was his defensive effort, at times defending the post and finishing the game as the lead guard initiating the offense.
Brice Williams once again led the team in scoring with 30 points, his fourth 30-point game of the season and the 18th 20-point game of the season. He is the second Husker in the Big Ten era with four 30-point games in a season, joining James Palmer Jr. (2018-19) for the most 30-point games in the Big Ten era.
Williams 30-point performance came at a pretty efficient rate, he made eight of his 16 field goals and 10 of his 13 free-throw attempts. Gary was the team’s second-leading scorer with 18 on 8-of-16 shooting.
Nebraska lives to play at least one more game on Wednesday night at 8:30 CT versus Georgetown in the quarterfinals of the College Basketball Crown. The Hoyas beat Washington State 85-82 on Monday night.
“We have 17 dudes in that locker room that don’t want to be done playing,” Jacobsen said.
