Nebraska men’s basketball fall at Penn State in an embarrassing fashion, taking an 89-72 loss that wasn’t even that close.
It wasn’t the fast start Fred Hoiberg has talked about ad nauseam this season. To the contrary, it was one of the slowest starts of the season against a team that had lost seven straight and at the bottom of the Big Ten.
“Obviously, this is two games in a row where we’ve gotten off to a start like this, and it’s very disappointing with what’s at stake for our basketball team right now, with what’s in front of us with the opportunities that we have,” Coach Fred Hoiberg said in his postgame radio comments.
Nebraska had six turnovers in the first 4:35 of the game and eight turnovers in the first 11:13.
Penn State came into the game averaging eight steals per game and the Nittany Lions had seven in the first half.
Andrew Morgan was credited with a basket early, but that was on a goal tend. The first time Nebraska saw a field goal go through the net was a Brice Williams 3 with 13 minutes left in the first half. By then, it was too late.
Penn State had a 50-27 lead at the half and 30 of those points were in the paint. The Nittany Lions were 10-for-12 on layups in the first half and had a 10-0 advantage in points off turnovers. Ace Baldwin Jr., one of the best defenders in the league, finished the game with 10 points, eight assists and six steals for the Nittany Lions.
It wasn’t an exact duplicate of the 20-point comeback win Sunday at Northwestern, but it was awfully close in the first half. The second half, however, didn’t look anything like the Huskers’ effort against the Wildcats as the Penn State lead swelled to 26 after halftime.
“We played 15 minutes of good basketball on this trip and it’s not good enough,” Hoiberg said. “We’ve got to find a way to get off to a start to give ourselves a chance. You can’t just continue to try to dig yourself out of 20-point holes and have any chance to win in this league. We’re lucky to have gotten a split on this trip. We’ve got to go home and get right.”
Nebraska had defensive breakdown after defensive breakdown, sloppy live ball turnover after sloppy live ball turnover, and it looked like a team ready to end its few-day road trip.
“When things don’t go our way, right now the unfortunate thing is we just lose our principles,” Hoiberg said. “We turn the ball over … To give yourself a chance, you have to protect the ball. They turn us over, they turn those into pick-sixes — and the offensive rebounds again. We’ve got to figure it out. We know what we’re capable of but we have to string together a full 40 minutes.”
For the first time in Big Ten play, Penn State had five players in double figures and the Nittany Lions just flat-out punked Nebraska for about 35 of the 40 minutes. Penn State got 19 points apiece from Yanic Konan Niederhauser and Zach Hicks, and Hicks was was 5-of-9 behind the arc.
The Huskers miss Berke Büyüktuncel, who didn’t make the road trip and has missed three straight games with an ankle injury. Starting center Andrew Morgan picked up his second foul just 93 seconds into the game. Morgan finished 8-of-8 from the field and scored 18 points in just 16:45 of play due to foul trouble.
“Obviously Andrew’s fouls hurt us,” Hoiberg said. “They hurt us early. You see how efficient he was when we were able to get him the ball in the pocket in the second half … So that was a factor in our start. But hopefully we get Berke; we’ll see how he’s doing at the end of this week. He’s one of our best rebounders and he’s one of our better post defenders … We’re not going to push him if he’s not ready but it would be great to get him back on the floor. But there’s some soul-searching we’ve got to do within our group.”
Another positive was that Connor Essegian got going, scoring 20 on 8-of-15 overall including 4-of-9 from distance.
Nebraska needs to flush this one and look ahead to a home game Monday against No. 12 Michigan. To win that game, or any of the four remaining games, Hoiberg’s message to the team after the game needs to ring true.
“Compete. That’s it. Go out there and compete. That’s what this game’s about,” Hoiberg said. “If you don’t compete and don’t play with energy, I don’t care what the game plan is, you’re not going to have a chance. You can go through every play in their playbook but if you don’t play with energy, if you don’t play with an edge, it doesn’t matter. So it’s all about going out there and competing.
“If we compete, we have a chance. If we don’t, we’re going to duplicate what happened in the first half these last two games.”
