HOUSTON, Texas — The Nebraska men’s basketball rivalry with Iowa has taken a dramatic turn, not for the worse but for the better for both programs.
Thursday in Houston, the Huskers and Hawkeyes will play a rubber match in the Sweet 16, with tipoff set for 6:30 p.m. CT.
TBS and TruTV will televise the game with Kevin Harlan, Robbie Hummel, Stan Van Gundy and Lauren Shehadi on the call. The Huskers Radio Network will carry the audio broadcast over the air with Kent Pavelka and Jeff Smith.
The Huskers and Hawkeyes split the regular season series, and not just bragging rights between fan bases but a trip to the Elite Eight is on the line.
“We’re playing a really tough opponent in Iowa,” Fred Hoiberg said on Wednesday in Houston. “I was so impressed by their win over Florida and all the things that they did in that game to get the victory there at the end. We know them, they know us, and had two really, highly competitive games against them this year, essentially one-possession games in both of ’em, and excited about the opportunity to compete tomorrow.”
The Huskers are 28-6 this season, with all six of those losses coming against teams that reached the second round of the NCAA Tournament, including five to teams who are in the Sweet 16. The Huskers went 3-5 against the other Sweet 16 qualifiers.
Thursday’s matchup is just the second Big Ten matchup in the Sweet 16 and the first since 1980 (Purdue 76, Indiana 69).
Keys To The Game
Whichever team can control the pace should win the game. Nebraska will look to push opportunistically but isn’t afraid to take its time on the offensive end and run its half court sets, looking for cutting opportunities. Its average length of possession, 17 seconds, is 106th in the country.
Iowa is much more deliberate on the offensive end, ranking 363rd at 19.9 seconds per possession.
The easy answer is to look at the points-per-game and see that Iowa averaged 69.8 in Big Ten play. Nebraska, in losses on the season, averaged 63.3 points per game.
In the Hawkeyes’ 57-52 win in Iowa City, they held the Huskers to their lowest point total of the season at 52, as did UCLA.
In conference play, Nebraska averaged 75.1 points per game, fourth best in Big Ten play, and held opponents to a league best 66.2 per game.
“Obviously, we’ve got our game plan, Iowa has theirs, and now it’s all about going out and executing and figuring out a way to make adjustments if things aren’t going according to plan,” Hoiberg said. “When you look at the two games that we played earlier this year, Iowa with the way that they controlled pace and controlled tempo, I thought they did a great job with that in those first two games. They get up 10 early on Clemson and did the same thing, got a double-digit lead against Florida, and they were able to control pace and tempo for the entire game.”
Finishing possessions is the second key.
Nebraska will need to not give up more than 10 offensive rebounds in the game. The Hawkeyes dominated that category in Iowa City 12-2. If Iowa gets extra possessions, it can bleed the clock even more.
The Huskers will need to be closer to what they were in the win in Lincoln over Iowa, only losing the offensive rebounding battle by two, 7-5.
Taking the ball out of the basket is obviously what teams want you to do; that means they are making shots. If Nebraska can limit the offensive rebounds, it can play with smart pace, pushing the ball up the floor to quickly get into offensive sets, that will be critical.
The third key is turnovers.
Iowa, with its swiping-at-the-ball-at-all-times defensive philosophy, is one of the best in the country at forcing turnovers (15th with a 20.5% rate). Even better, its non-steal turnover rate (traveling, offensive fouls, bad passes, or stepping out of bounds) is 9.6%, fifth in the country. That defensive activity leads to self-inflicted mistakes for many of Iowa’s opponents.
Nebraska got the batter of that battle in Lincoln, forcing 19 turnovers including 12 steals in the 84-75 overtime win to finish the regular season.
