Nebraska men’s basketball is set to face Hawai’i in the semifinals of the Hawaiian Airlines Diamond Head Classic on Monday night.
The Huskers (8-2, 1-1 Big Ten) will tip off with the home Rainbow Warriors (7-3) for a scheduled 9:30 p.m. CT tip.
The game will be televised on ESPN2 with Roxy Bernstein and Sean Farnham on the call and will also be carried on the Huskers Radio Network with Kent Pavelka and Jake Muhleisen.
After playing three games in the first 21 days of December, the Huskers will play with no day off between games for the first time this season. The last time Nebraska played on back-to-back days was the 2024 Big Ten Tournament.
Nebraska improved to 2-2 on the season in games away from home with a strong defensive effort in the 66-49 quarterfinal win over Murray State on Sunday. It was likely their best defensive game of the season.
“I thought we got off to a really good start,” Coach Fred Hoiberg said in his postgame radio appearance. “Overall, I thought our effort was really good considering the last eight or nine days we had off.”
The Huskers held the Racers to just 14% shooting in the first half and led 34-14 at halftime. Nebraska held Murray State to a season-low 49 points, nearly 30 points below its season average.
Scouting Hawai’i
The Rainbow Warriors enter the game winners of two straight. They defeated Texas A&M-Corpus Christi 71-62 on Dec. 14 and won their Diamond Head Classic quarterfinal game against Charlotte 78-61.
Gytis Nemeiksa led the Rainbow Warriors with 24 points and seven rebounds, while Marcus Greene chipped in 22 points as Hawai’i shot 54% from the field in the win over Charlotte on their home court.
Monday’s meeting between Nebraska and Hawai’i is the first since the 2014 Diamond Head Classic. Hawai’i leads the series with Nebraska 7-2 with all nine previous meetings taking place in Honolulu.
The Rainbow Warriors rank 73rd nationally in bench minutes at 36.6%. Nemeiksa, a 6-foot-8 senior, is 37th nationally in 2-point field goal percentage at 72.1% against Division I competition and leads the team in scoring at 15 points per game. He’s also second on the team in rebounding, averaging 6.6 per game. Nemeiksa is also leads the team in 3-pointers, shooting 40.5% on 37 attempts.
Tanner Christensen, a 6-foot-10 senior, leads the team in rebounding with 7.6 per game and ranks 13th in the nation in free-throw rate at 79.6 percent.
Key Factors
For Nebraska to win the game, the Huskers need to keep Hawai’i off the free-throw line and defend without fouling, which might be hard to do playing a true road game in a multi-team event.
The Rainbow Warriors come into the game ranked 13th nationally in free-throw rate (45.3%) and 22.8% of their points this season have come from the charity stripe.
Valuing possessions will be big in this game. Nebraska didn’t do a good job of that in the Murray State win with 10 first-half turnovers and 15 in the game.
Hawai’i has averaged 12 turnovers a game in their 10 games this season and 8.5 of them have been non-steal turnovers. Defensively, the Huskers rank 54th in the nation with a 20.8% turnover percentage rate.
Nebraska could be short-handed with Ahron Ulis spraining an ankle on Saturday’s practice when the team arrived in Hawai’i and Berke Büyüktuncel going down with an ankle injury late in the Sunday win over Murray State. If both are out, Nebraska’s depth will be tested; look for a return to the rotation from Gavin Griffiths after Hoiberg didn’t call his number against Indiana or Murray State.
Hawai’i is averaging 75 points per game. If Nebraska’s defense, which has been great in the last two games, can keep the Rainbow Warriors below the 70-point mark, the odds of a win increase significantly. Over the last two-plus seasons, Nebraska is 37-4 (.909) when holding opponents to 70 points, including 33 straight wins.
