Nebraska men’s basketball begins its multi-team event on Sunday in Hawaii at the Hawaiian Airlines Diamond Head Classic.
The Huskers (7-2, 1-1 Big Ten) open the three-game, four-day tournament Sunday night, with tipoff scheduled for 8 p.m. CT against Murray State (6-4, 1-1 Missouri Valley).
The game will be televised on ESPN, and Roxy Bernstein and Sean Farnham will be on the call. It will also be carried on the Huskers Radio Network with Kent Pavelka and Jake Muhleisen on the call.
After playing three games in the first 21 days of December, the Huskers will play three games in four days. Depending on Sunday’s results, Nebraska will face either host Hawaii or Charlotte on Monday. Meanwhile, the College of Charleston, Loyola Chicago, Oakland and Oregon State are on the other side of the eight-team bracket.
“We’re starting off with a very good team that poses a lot of problems in Murray State with their ability to shoot the ball,” Coach Fred Hoiberg said.
Scouting the Racers
Murray State comes into the game losers of two straight after winning six of their first eight games.
The Racers rank 78th nationally in team 3-point percentage at 36.3%. They have four starters scoring in double figures, led by senior JaCobi Wood, who was a first-team All-MVC preseason pick and is averaging 15.0 points, 5.4 assists and 4.2 rebounds. Senior Nick Ellington was a second-team preseason All-MVC pick and is shooting a team-high 58.5% from the field while scoring 9.7 points per game.
“Their ability to shoot is the thing that really stands out,” Hoiberg said. “They shoot over 40% as a team. Their guards are really quick and do a great job getting into the paint. They do a really good job of spacing the floor, they run a lot of really good actions, especially for their shooters when they get it going and their bigs, the guys that do play, they are very active going to the glass. I’ve been impressed with this team and their overall quickness and ability to shoot the ball.”
Getting Better
The Huskers bounced back from their worst loss of the season with a convincing win over Indiana in their Big Ten home opener.
“We just want to keep growing,” Hoiberg said. “We’re a much better team after the last one than we were the week before. And our team, we learned a lot about ourselves in our prep heading into the Indiana game after getting our butts whipped by Michigan State. Hopefully we can continue on the upward path and continue to grow as a group.
Nebraska is 1-2 this season away from home. The trip to Hawaii can cause built-in distractions for a program that was just 3-8 in true road games and 2-2 in neutral site games last season.
The Huskers will look to build off of the momentum from the Indiana win and continue their climb in the analytical metrics.
Entering the game, Nebraska is ranked 55th in Ken Pom and 63rd in the NCAA NET Rankings.
“I think the biggest thing is to continue to grow, continue to be more consistent in everything we do, continue to have good discipline and, hopefully, play with better physicality, more similar to what we did against Indiana than the week before,” Hoiberg said. “I like the direction of where we’re headed, and hopefully we can keep taking the right steps.”
Key Factors
For Nebraska to win the game, the Huskers need to control the pace and be solid in halfcourt offense.
Murray State doesn’t have a ton of size, no starter over 6-foot-7, but they will want to maybe speed up the Huskers by switching defenses from man to zone and applying some fullcourt pressure.
The Racers rank 17th in the country in 3-point defense (32.1%) and are the top team in the country in assists-to-field goals defense (31.4%).
Nebraska will need to find a way to shoot the ball from 3, closer to what they did against Indiana (57.1%) than their season average (31.8%).
The Huskers do have an advantage as far as depth. The Racers only use their bench 23.4% of the time, 346th in the country, while Nebraska ranks 26th in the nation at 39.4%.
