SIOUX FALLS, S.D. — No. 21 Nebraska women’s basketball improved to 4-0 on the season with a record-setting 113-70 win over South Dakota Saturday night at the Sanford Pentagon.
The Huskers started the game with a Logan Nissley 3-pointer on the first possession and never looked back, making 20 of their 34 attempts from behind the arc (58.8%).
The 20 made 3-pointers were a program record. The previous Nebraska record for 3-pointers was 17, and the record away from home was 15 in the 2022 Big Ten Tournament.
“The ceiling for this team is as high as we want it to be,” Husker coach Amy Williams said.
Here are three takeaways from the win.
Offensive Explosion
The Huskers used a 27-5 run in 8:27 in the first half to score a women’s basketball arena-record 113 points in the win.
The 63.1% from the field (41-of-65) was the seventh-best percentage in school history, helping the Huskers record the program’s sixth game with 113 or more points.
Nine of the 12 Huskers that played made a 3-pointer, and there were plenty of records broken Saturday night.
Alexis Markowski saw double- and triple-teams at times and found the open shooters on her way to a career-high seven assists.
The Huskers shared the ball extremely well all night, finishing with 33 assists on 41 made baskets while only committing eight turnovers. Markowski led 10 Huskers who had two or more assists. The 33 assists were the fourth-highest total in school history.
Seniors Kendall Moriarty (13) and Kendall Coley (12) each had career highs in points and 3-pointers made. Moriarty went 3-of-4 from distance, while Coley’s four 3s (on four attempts) came in the fourth quarter.
Nebraska’s 60 halftime points were the third-highest first-half total in school history and marked the second-most points the Huskers scored in a half on the road, trailing only a 61-point effort at Idaho in 1993.
“We have great shooters,” Williams said. “I told this team in the locker room before the game that I felt like we have a chance to be the best shooting team in the country. Because everyone on our team can do it and do it at a high level. We don’t want to hang our hat on that and that was something we were really emphasizing, how can we do other things well, and I thought that we saw that today.”
Potts and Prince
After the Nissley 3-pointer to start the game, freshman point guard Britt Prince sliced and diced the Coyotes for seven straight Husker points. Both Prince and sophomore forward Nattalie Potts missed just one of their first five (4-5) attempts in the first quarter.
Prince finished the game with a career-high 23 points on 10-of-13 from the field, with four assists and zero turnovers.
Potts missed just two of her 10 attempts, both at the rim, and finished with a career-high 22 points and seven rebounds. She hit both of her 3-pointers and is now 8-of-11 from deep to start the season.
Lineup Changes
For the first time with a fall complement of players available, Williams switched up her starting lineup, with Logan Nissley and Alberte Rimdal starting in place of Allison Weidner and Callin Hake. The head coach said the change was both a strategic decision and a reflection of the team’s depth and versatility.
“As you could see today, this is a very deep team, and we feel like we’ve got about eight or nine lineups that we could go to,” Williams said. “They played their last two ball games playing all zone. We thought maybe they might come out in a zone defense. We’ve talked as a group, as a team, that there are probably going to be some adjustments to our lineup throughout this year based on what we feel like gives us the best opportunity to get off to great starts, maybe what matchups are the best for us defensively. I expected zone and they came out in man. Sometimes you guess right, sometimes you guess wrong.
“But I did feel like this group got us off to a great start, but even more than that, the production that we got off the bench — Kendall Moriarty, Kendall Coley, both coming in giving us huge sparks, staying ready. I just feel like everybody has kind of bought into the fact that the ceiling for this team is as high as we want it to be, and if everybody keeps buying into that, we don’t know who’s going to be in the starting lineup, we don’t really know, we don’t really care, we just want to make use of the minutes that we get.”
Ten of the 12 players who saw the court scored, half of which reached double figures. Nebraska outscored South Dakota 38-8 in bench points. Nissley shot 3-of-7 from deep for nine points while Rimdal hit her only triple and scored seven points. They each dished out a pair of assists as well. Hake dished out four assists off the bench while Weidner played just eight minutes but totaled four rebounds, three points, two assists and a steal.
Nebraska’s next game is at home against North Alabama on Tuesday, night and the Huskers’ first true road test comes later in the week at rival Creighton Friday at 4 p.m.
