A Rienk Mast-less Nebraska men’s basketball team sank North Dakota 83-75 Wednesday night.
It wasn’t pretty, but if you follow Nebraska men’s basketball they historically have lost the buy game before Christmas. At 10-2, Nebraska has its best start since a 10-2 record in December 2018.
Here are three takeaways from the win.
Resiliency
Nebraska trailed 42-32 at the half and got out-rebounded 28-17 in the first half. Nebraska junior guard C.J. Wilcher kept the Huskers in the game in the first half with his nine points in nine minutes off the bench.
“The biggest difference between this team and the past teams I’ve played on is our resiliency,” Wilcher said. “We don’t get down. We always chop wood. They went on a 14-point run today and we just stayed level-headed. Our coaches got on us a little bit and we just picked it up. I think that’s the one thing that’s different. A lot of teams I’ve played on here probably would’ve just quit, or had just a couple of guys pick it up. We would’ve stayed in that little slump we were in and probably wouldn’t have found a way to win the game.”
It was a bad start for the Husker offense, 1-of-7 from the field and 0-of-5 from 3-point range, and the Fighting Hawks took an 8-2 lead early.
It felt like Nebraska just needed to get through the game and get a few days off. There were missed layups, moving screens, missing uncontested mid-range jump shots and shot attempts they could get whenever they wanted that were out of system.
Defensively the Huskers didn’t start switching until later in the second half, something they don’t normally do. They felt a step slow defensively with cutters running free and not closing out on the North Dakota 3-point shooters.
Let’s face it, Nebraska loses this game in a lot of other years (see Incarnate Word and Samford in the past). The Huskers have one more nonconference game, Dec. 29 against South Carolina State. If they can win that, which they will likely be heavy favorites to do so, a 10-1 nonconference record is likely better than most would have predicted in the preseason.
Mast Effect
A win without Rienk Mast, whose impact when he’s on the court is tremendous, is something that probably shouldn’t be understated.
“Rienk had some swelling in his knee last week a couple days before the Kansas State game, and got a scan on it just to figure out the best treatment option for him, and they found a little loose piece of cartilage in there,” Coach Fed Hoiberg said. “The decision was made to play the Kansas State game. He could not do further damage on it. We just didn’t want that piece floating around and get into a spot where it caused some trouble down the line.”
Mast, the team’s starting center, wore a sleeve on his left knee in Manhattan. A timetable for his return is undecided, however it sounds as if they are targeting the home game versus Indiana on Jan. 3.
“We made a decision with the doctors and with Rienk, a decision that he was comfortable with to go in and take care of the problem,” Hoiberg said. “Surgery went very well and the doctor was really happy with how it went. He’s got very minimal swelling, he’s moving around really well. He actually walked on the treadmill today, a little bit faster than my treadmill workout that I did this afternoon, but overall hopefully we’ll get him back. We don’t have an exact time frame, I can’t give you an exact day that he’ll be back, but we’re hoping sometime in early January.”
Nebraska missed Mast, not for his rim protection but for some of the long misses that turned into long rebounds for North Dakota that he would normally at least tip to a teammate or secure for a rebound.
Nebraska did a better job in the second half, winning the rebounding battle 21-14, but for the game, the undersized Fighting Hawks out-rebounded Nebraska 42-38 and 19-13 on the offensive glass. It is just the third time this season Nebraska has lost the rebounding battle in a game.
Mast is a key cog to the Husker machine this season. His toughness and presence in the paint are pivotal to the continued success this season.
“It definitely changes things,” Hoiberg said of his big man’s absence. “You’ve got guys playing different positions than they have been playing. Rienk obviously has been as good as anybody we have on the floor for us, especially in those two wins against Michigan State and Kansas State. His absence was felt, I thought, early. They dominated the glass in the first half, they crushed us out there getting loose balls.”
Numbers
Nebraska had six players in double figures. It is the first time Nebraska has done that since six players scored in double figures against Minnesota on Feb. 25, 2022.
The 14-point second-half deficit is the largest comeback since overcoming a 17-point deficit against Wisconsin on Feb. 11, 2023.
Wilcher’s team-high 16 points were the 10th double-figure effort off Nebraska’s bench in 12 games and marked the fourth time this season the Huskers’ leading scorer came off the bench.
Nebraska is now 21-4 under Hoiberg when scoring at least 80 points, including 16-1 over the last three seasons.
The Huskers are 6-0 when they make double-digit 3-pointers after hitting 11 of them against North Dakota.
