After pulling off the biggest win of the Fred Hoiberg era on Tuesday, the Nebraska men’s basketball team suffered its second-worst loss of the season Friday as the Iowa Hawkeyes routed the Huskers 94-76 in Iowa City.
“Just soft out of the gate,” Coach Fred Hoiberg said. “Can’t have it. It’s what you always worry about after a big, emotional win is a hangover like that. That’s tough to do against Iowa with the way they move, the way they score it, and give them credit. They did a lot of really good things.”
Here are three takeaways from the game.
Doomed from the Start
Fred Hoiberg gave a lot of credit to his team’s fast start in the upset win against No. 1 Purdue on Tuesday. The start on Friday was the polar opposite (no pun intended considering the temperatures throughout the Midwest).
Nebraska answered an Owen Freeman put-back on the first possession of the game with a driving layup from Rienk Mast. It took more than five minutes for Nebraska to score again as the Hawkeyes ripped off a 15-0 run.
The Huskers took bad 3s on their next four possessions, missing all four. Jamarques Lawrence attempted two of those and got yanked just three minutes in. Mast missed a contested shot in the post, then Brice Williams missed a contested pull-up 2 with the shot clock winding down, then C.J. Wilcher fired up another early-clock 3 off the dribble that wasn’t close.
Nebraska missed seven straight shots, none of which I’d consider particularly good looks, and fell behind 17-2 less than six minutes into the game. That’s a steep hole to climb out of.
“I thought we rushed early,” Hoiberg said. “We talked about not playing their game; you can’t beat them on their home court when you play their game and we took, I thought, four rushed shots early and that led to them getting run-outs, it led to them starting the game 17-2. Once we settled down and got the ball in the paint, good things happened. We moved it and we cut well, and you’ve got to do that from the beginning of the game. You can’t come out and jack shots and try to match shot-for-shot in this building. They’re too good at it. I thought we played their game a little bit too much and that was a big reason that we dug ourselves that big hole.”
Nebraska rallied to take the lead early in the second half, but it takes a lot of energy to pull off that kind of a comeback and it eliminates any kind of margin for error you might have had. The hot start to the second half cooled off, their attention to detail slipped and Iowa pulled away again for the victory.
“When you dig yourself a 17-to-2 hole, it takes a lot to climb out,” Hoiberg said. “To our guys’ credit, they did that and you come back all the way and take a lead, and then you let them get comfortable again.”
Turning Point
The turning point in the game came three and a half minutes into the second half after Nebraska had scored on its first six possessions. With the scored tied at 50-all, Iowa switched to a 2-3 zone.
The Huskers then played like they had never seen a zone before. The Huskers didn’t even attempt to penetrate the zone on their first four possessions against it with three missed 3s and a turnover. The zone broke down on the next trip as Josiah Allick found himself open on the baseline for a dunk. However, the Huskers went right back to firing up 3s on the next trip — three of them (with Allick grabbing two offensive rebounds). They missed all 3.
By the time Nebraska finally started to attack the seams of the zone, Iowa had already pulled away, and the Huskers began struggling to finish even when they did get inside.
“We weren’t getting into our actions,” Hoiberg said. “Once we got it into the middle we were fine and we were getting some high-lows. We got some good looks that we missed. When we first came down, we just were not getting into the right spots. Once we settled down a little bit, but it was too late after that. Once they built that big lead it was hard to climb back in it and our shots obviously didn’t fall tonight like they had been the last couple of games.”
The switch to the zone triggered a 17-4 Iowa run, and the Huskers weren’t able to find a way to claw back into it a second time.
Math Problem
Nebraska did some things well. The Huskers scored 46 points in the paint, shooting 70-3% inside the arc overall with four dunks and 16 layups. They outscored the Hawkeyes by three at the foul line. They only committed eight turnovers.
The bench provided a serious spark with Allick tying Mast for team-high honors with a season-high 14 points including four dunks. Pressed into duty by two early fouls to Juwan Gary, freshman Eli Rice scored 11 points with three strong drives to the rim, a 3-pointer and two free throws. He logged 19 minutes after totaling six points in 18 minutes in his first three Big Ten games combined, and he didn’t play against Minnesota or Purdue.
None of that mattered, though, because of one simple fact: Iowa outscored Nebraska by 33 points from the 3-point line.
The Hawkeyes wet 15-for-35 (42.9%), a season high in makes and attempts. Nebraska shot 4-of-26 (15.4%), the second-lowest total of makes this season.
I’ve already touched on the poor shot selection in the two sections above, but this wasn’t simply a make-shot, miss-shot game. There was a massive gap in quality of looks for the two teams as Nebraska’s defense was scrambling all night and struggled to take anything away.
All five starters plus a bench player scored in double figures. Two separate Hawkeyes made more 3-pointers than Nebraska did as a team. Iowa dished out 30 assists on 35 field goals.
Josh Dix, a Council Bluffs native, scored a career-high 16 points, shooting 5-of-7 from deep. Freshman Owen Freeman secured his third double-double with a career-high 20 points on 11-of-13 shooting and 10 rebounds. He dunked the ball seven times. Tony Perkins dished out a career-high 15 assists while scoring 11 points. He assisted seven 3-pointers and five dunks plus three other buckets.
“It was the perimeter, it was the inside, it was the middle, it was everything,” Hoiberg said. “We were very soft tonight. Iowa puts you in a tough position with their movement and you’ve got to be able to talk when you’re playing against a motion offense. We weren’t talking out there, we weren’t communicating, we weren’t getting matched up, they exposed us in transition, they were tougher than us. It was obviously bad night all the way around.”
Nebraska has now lost all three of its Big Ten road games, each of them by double figures. The lone victory on the road this season was at Kansas State in a game that saw Nebraska win despite shooting under 35% from the field.
