The historic Nebraska men’s basketball regular season will come to an end Sunday when the Huskers face rival Iowa at 4 p.m. CT inside Pinnacle Bank Arena.
FOX will televise the game with Connor Onion and Nick Bahe on the call, while the Huskers Radio Network will carry the radio broadcast with Kent Pavelka and Jeff Smith.
The Huskers and Hawkeyes will be the final game of the Big Ten regular season. The home team has won 14 of the last 17 games in the series. In Lincoln, Nebraska, leads 12-7.
Senior day festivities will begin for Sam Hoiberg, Rienk Mast, Jared Garcia and Kendall Blue before the game with 20:30 on the pregame clock.
“It’s always an emotional day,” Coach Fred Hoiberg said. “You spend so much time with these guys, you go through a lot of ups and downs, highs and lows over the course sometimes, and in Sam’s case, five years, and other guys in today’s climate are a year. However long you have them, the lasting relationships that you create; all these kids, I think, have very bright futures ahead of them.”
Senior day can be an emotional time for players, families and even some fans. Add in the rivalry with Iowa and what happened in Iowa City on Feb. 17, a 57-52 Husker loss, and the game has even more emotion.
“There’s going to be a lot of emotion in the building and there’s going to be a lot of passion and energy in the building, and we need to use that the right way,” Hoiberg said. “It’s something that you can use for fuel and feed off it. You can’t get too hyped. You gotta go out there and perform and try to do the things that we’ve done all year that’ve made us a successful basketball team.”
Responding
Fred Hoiberg has mentioned over and over that this team has responded to adversity. Tuesday night’s loss at UCLA was the one time all season that they maybe didn’t respond when things went wrong in a game.
The Huskers’ maturity and response since arriving back on campus Wednesday havw reflected how they’ve been all season, displaying a one day, one game at a time mentality.
“I’d be shocked if they came in and had any type of different approach or mindset than they’ve had all year long,” Hoiberg said. “That’s, again, the thing that I think has made them so special is how even they’ve kept their emotions throughout this whole thing. Certainly, we’ve had some ups and downs along the way, but for the most part, this team has been rock solid.”
Channeling emotions on senior day, specifically the off-court drama with Iowa, is something that can be challenging.
“I think if you make too much of all that stuff, you just get them a little bit off kilter,” Hoiberg said. “So, listen, they remember what happened. They remember, they know what’s at stake, all those things, the variables.”
The variables Hoiberg was referring to are the Iowa student section chants of “F—— Pryce Sandfort,” the court storm and the boos raining down at Carver Hawkeye Arena.
“Our guys know what’s at stake. You don’t have to make too big a deal out of it,” Hoiberg said. “You want them to stay the same as what we’ve done all year.”
Scouting Iowa
Point guard Bennett Stirtz leads the Hawkeyes. The senior who followed Coach Ben McCollum from Northwest Missouri State to Drake to Iowa is now seventh in the country in percentage of minutes played (92.8). He’s the team leader in points (20.5 per game) and assists (4.5 per game).
“He’s a hell of a player. You have to do everything you can,” Hoiberg said of the defensive adjustments that are likely on Stirtz since the game in Iowa City. “We’ve got a lot of different coverages and we’ll adjust if we need to, which I’m sure we will at some point during the game.”
Tavion Banks is second on the team in points per game, 10.4 points on 53% shooting.
The Hawkeyes are one of the better teams in the county at forcing their opponents into longer possessions defensively. The average possession length for an Iowa opponent is 18.1 seconds, the 303rd longest in the country.
Iowa’s defense ranks 12th in the country in turnover percentage (21.2%) and second nationally in non-steal turnover rate (10.1%).
The Hawkeyes’ 2-point percentage is 15th nationally at 59%, and its effective field goal percentage is 56.3%, 21st nationally.
Keys To the Game
The first key is taking care of the basketball, something Nebraska struggled to do in the first game against the Hawkeyes.
The Huskers and Hawkeyes each had 12 turnovers in the first matchup. Eight of those Husker turnovers were non-steals.
“We turned it over too much the first time around, gave them too many second chance opportunities,” Hoiberg said.
Rebounding will once again be a key for the Huskers. The Hawkeyes out-rebounded the Huskers 37-24 and 12-2 on the offensive glass in Iowa City. That number will need to get closer to even in Lincoln on Sunday.
Physicality, which goes with rebounding, is the third key. Iowa used it’s off-ball physicality on the defensive end to slow down the Huskers’ offense. Freedom of movement on the offensive end and fighting through the Hawkeyes’ defense is the third key.
