Nebraska men’s basketball improved its record to 5-1 with a 96-79 home win over South Dakota Wednesday night.
“I liked our aggressiveness, I like our assertiveness,” Coach Fred Hoiberg said after the game. “We felt against their press we would have opportunity on the back end.”
The Huskers started fast in both halves and made a season-high 13 three-pointers, led by a career-high 29 points from Connor Essegian.
Here are three takeaways from the game.
Lid Off
Nebraska had struggled to shoot from 3 all season. In their first five games, including the closed scrimmage against Utah and the exhibition win over Grand Valley State, the Huskers were shooting 32-of-124 (25.8%).
“It was good to see the lid come off the basket,” Hoiberg said. “I knew at some point it would, we are certainly capable. We’ve got a lot of guys that can knock down shots, so it was good to see the confidence and our guys get it going.”
In the first half, Nebraska shot 10-of-20 from distance, with Essegian making four of his first six attempts in the first 8:46 of the game.
“You see what happens when the first couple go down,” Hoiberg said. “It’s just a confidence builder. I just thought our guys were on point in the press offense. We wanted to play with numbers and keep our spacing on the back end of it.”
Essegian’s six 3-pointers led Nebraska and were the most by a Husker since Rienk Mast made six last season versus Ohio State on Jan. 23. Along with Essegian, Brice Williams was hot from behind the arc, making four of his six 3-point attempts.
The offense clicked and Nebraska scored a season-high 96 points, assisting on 24 of the team’s 33 made field goals.
Sloppy Turnovers
Nebraska had 10 turnovers in the first half and most of those were sloppy and unforced, according to Hoiberg in the postgame press conference. The good news is they only turned it over twice in the second half.
“A lot of those, I thought, were unforced,” Hoiberg said. “I didn’t think the press — they sped us up a little bit, but we just got a little careless on the unforced turnovers.”
In one stanza, they had five turnovers from over four minutes. Those unforced turnovers — for example, throwing the ball out of bounds or losing a dribble without a defender attempting a steal — are something they still need to clean up. It was better in the win last Friday night against Creighton but showed up again tonight versus South Dakota.
“We have to be better, we have to have better hands, we have to have better attention to detail, our closeouts have to be more on point,” he said. “We gotta get that back and we have to sustain that for the rest of the season.”
Luckily, Williams stepped up in a huge way, scoring 10 straight points on four consecutive possessions to get the team back on track offensively after South Dakota made a run. Williams was an extremely efficient 7-for-11 from the field for 21 points and was a team-high plus-25.
Meah Dunking Everything
Braxton Meah had his best offensive game as a Husker, starting the game with a lob dunk from Berke Büyüktuncel and starting the second half with a two-handed dunk coming off of a slip screen to the basket.
“It was good to see our guys finally throw some lobs to him; we missed him on a lot of occasions,” Hoiberg said of Meah. “It was good to see that pay off and Braxton get it going and hopefully be a confidence builder for him.”
All six of Meah’s field goals were dunks, and part of the game plan was to get him going offensively by using him in the pick-and-roll and slips to the basket because of the Coyotes’ over pursuit in those situations.
Nebraska’s next game is Sunday at 3 p.m. CT versus North Florida (4-2) at Pinnacle Bank Arena.
