Nebraska men’s basketball improved to 18-0 on the season and 7-0 in Big Ten play with a 77-58 win over Northwestern at Welsh-Ryan Arena in Evanston, Ill. Saturday afternoon.
The win marks the best start to a season by a Big Ten team since Ohio State’s 24-0 start in 2010-11. The 7-0 start to Big Ten play is the best conference start for the Huskers since going 10-0 in 1965-66.
Nebraska is 4-0 to start conference play on the road. It’s the first time since 1975-76 the Huskers won four straight conference road games. The stretch of four straight road victories matches the longest conference win streak since the 1920-21 season.
It was the Huskers’ defense that led to offense, particularly in the second half of the Nebraska win.
“It starts with defense. I feel that we’ve bought into the defensive system and concepts that we’ve tried to throw out there and guys have gone out and executed beautifully,” Fred Hoiberg said after the game on Big Ten Network. “They follow game plans, they’re very coachable. We get on them in a film session and there is no head hanging. They do a great job holding each other accountable.
“They just gotta continue to play with an edge. When we do that, generally, things translate to the offensive side.”
Defensive Identity
Nebraska did something most teams this season were unable to do against the Wildcats: force them into turnovers.
Forcing turnovers, particularly by Sam Hoiberg, has been a big piece of the Huskers’ defensive identity this season. Saturday, Hoiberg had just one steal, but his backcourt running mate, Jamarques Lawrence, had a game-high three steals.
The Huskers forced 11 Wildcat turnovers, including seven steals. Before Saturday, Northwestern led the league (Big Ten play) with just 8.2 turnovers per game and the nation with just 4.8 steals allowed per game.
“This is a disciplined, well-coached team and we were going to have to be at our best,” Fred Hoiberg said on the Husker Radio Network. “I thought, for a big portion of the game, we were.”
The 58 Northwestern points were 18.5 points below their average (76.5) in Big Ten play and matched the Wildcats’ season low.
The Huskers held Wildcats star Nick Martinelli just under his season average of 23.8 points per game. 15 of his 22 points came in the first half and he was held to just two points for nearly eight minutes (14:26-6:30) of game action. It took him 22 shooting possessions (20 field goal attempts and four free-throw attempts) to score his 22 points.
“He’s the leading scorer in the country,” Hoiberg said. “He gets to the free-throw line. He’s really shooting the ball well; he’s making threes over 50% this year. I thought we did a really good job on Martinelli.”
Second Half Adjustments
It clearly wasn’t the best first half Nebraska played this season, but it also wasn’t the worst.
The Huskers did have a 34-29 advantage at the break, but there were things to clean up. There was a lack of physicality from Nebraska, particularly rebounding in the first half.
“We got in the locker room at half and we knew we were going to need to come out and be super physical, hit every time, and the more physical, hard-playing team is gonna come out, and I thought we did that,” Pryce Sandfort said on Big Ten Network.
Northwestern had a 21-13 edge on the boards and 7-2 offensive rebounding advantage at halftime.
“Our big message at halftime was I thought they were more physical than we were,” Hoiberg said. “You look at Martinelli, had five offensive rebounds himself and they had seven as a team, and they were up eight on the glass.”
The Huskers had five first-half turnovers to just one in the second half, and that is obviously a positive.
Offensively, the Huskers had a blistering second half, particularly the middle two segments of the half. An 11-0 run was a part of a 17-3 extended run from the 13:22 to 6:06 mark of the second half.
“We got stops and we rebounded the ball,” Hoiberg said in his postgame press conference. “That was my message to them at halftime. If we can come out and take care of the glass, they were up eight at halftime on the glass and if we could flip that in the second half I thought we’d have a really good chance to win the game, and that’s what we did.”
Hot Wings
For the fifth time this season, Nebraska had multiple 20-point scorers.
Despite getting his first field goal attempt at the 10:39 mark of the first half, Sandfort had a team-high 22 points. Sandfort was 7-of-13 from the field, including 5-of-10 from 3-point range in his 36 minutes.
“When he gets loose in transition, our guys have done a great job of finding him,” Hoiberg said. “We really stress that to our team, when you are at the break, do everything you can to locate where Pryce is, where Braden [Frager] is, where Rienk [Mast] is sometimes trailing the play when he has it going. Our guys have really bought into that.”
Frager continued to provide a scoring punch off the bench with 20 points on 8-of-14 shooting.
Next up for the Huskers is an off day on Sunday, then two days to prepare for Washington on Wednesday, with an 8 p.m. tipoff in Lincoln.
