Nebraska men’s basketball opened its 2024-25 campaign with an 87-67 win over the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, but it wasn’t easy and this isn’t the same UTRGV that won just six games a season ago.
The Vaqueros came out firing from deep and it was something Fred Hoiberg shared leading up to the game Nebraska needed to be ready for. In their exhibition game, they hit 25 3-pointers.
“This was not an experimental game because of what they can do,” Hoiberg said after the win. “And we saw just how hard they played and what they — 25 3s. I’ve talked about that a lot this week. Somebody said, ‘Well, who’d they play?’ I don’t give a damn who you play. If you make 25 3s, that’s very impressive against a high school team. So you know that this team can get hot, get rolling. I thought our effort was good; it was where it needed to be and this is a really good win.”
Nebraska led 69-65 with five minutes to go before closing the game on an 18-2 run.
Here are three takeaways from the win.
Brice Williams the Alpha
With the loss of Keisei Tominaga and Rienk Mast from last year’s team, Nebraska men’s basketball needs a go-to weapon on the offensive end of the floor, and that is exactly what Brice Williams did to start the game. The senior guard scored the first eight Husker points and took five of Nebraska’s first six shots. Williams finished with a game-high 27 on 8-of-18 from the field and 10-of-11 from the foul line.
“That that’s going to be a big part of Brice’s role this year with Keisei gone, with Rienk out of the lineup, with Josiah [Allick] out,” Hoiberg said. “And those guys were great leaders for us as well, not only what they did on the court for us, but they were vocal. They set the tone every day in practice. But yeah, Brice, 100%, his role is going to be to put the ball in the basket.”
Williams finished five points shy of his career high (32) and likely would have matched that if he didn’t go down with what Hoiberg called a cramping issue at the 12:19 mark of the second half.
Paint Domination
The Vaqueros’ propensity for taking and making the 3-point shot caused some problems for the Huskers. One thing Nebraska did to slow down the quick pace was to get paint touches.
Nebraska dominated the interior, scoring 40 in the paint to Rio Grande Valley’s 18.
Halftime adjustments and a little bit of a smaller lineup with Berke Büyüktuncel at the five seemed to work.
RGV’s long shots made for long rebounds, and the Vaqueros outscored Nebraska 15-4 in second chance points while grabbing six offensive rebounds in the first half. In the second, the Huskers held RGV to zero second-chance points and had six of their own.
Nebraska won the rebounding advantage 42-32 and got to the free-throw line 35 times in the game, making 25.
“They got into the bonus and then the double bonus,” Williams said. “They started the game off with a foul and that’s always a good time for the opposing team. So we just kept pounding it inside. That was our goal. Once we started getting them in the bonus and they were calling a lot of handsy fouls, we made it our goal to get there every time and just keep keep getting easy points.”
Figuring Things Out
Nebraska men’s basketball is still figuring things out and you could see at certain times they weren’t in sync on both ends of the floor.
In particular, defensively they didn’t have high-hand closeouts on more than one occasion and were late to the corner 3-point shooters, particularly in their weak-side switching defense.
Offensively, they got lost at times or stagnant, watching the play and not moving without the ball. Getting paint touches was a part of the game plan, but backing down defenders with multiple dribble won’t work against a better defensive team and one that will crash harder or even double the post, something UTRGV didn’t do the whole night.
Some of that can be attributed to the new faces playing their first real game together.
“We have a lot of guys, a lot of new guys, and we’re still learning every day,” Williams said. “I feel like as the season goes along we are going to peak at the right moment. If I’m being honest, in some plays that we still mess up on or simple concepts that we mess up on, but that’s OK right now because we’re all new and we’re learning every day.”
It wasn’t pretty, but the box score will say it was a 20-point win and Nebraska worked through mistakes to secure the 1-0 start.
The Huskers’ next game will be Saturday at 7 p.m. CT against the Reggie Theus-led Wildcats of Bethune-Cookman.
