Nebraska Basketball: Loss to Rutgers has Huskers back on the bubble

The Nebraska basketball team didn’t look ready to play Monday night at Rutgers and the Huskers suffered a loss that could be costly down the road.

For much of the season, the talk about this Nebraska basketball team was that it was different. Different from the other (except 2014) Tim Miles teams that failed to do enough to make the NCAA tournament.

After all., this Nebraska basketball club has proven more than once it can win away from home. The Huskers beat Clemson at Littlejohn and also beat Creighton for the first time in years.

Heck, Nebraska even beat Indiana just over a week ago, in a win that seemed like a turning point for the program. Since then, the Huskers battled Michigan State, the last unbeaten left in the Big Ten, before laying an egg Monday night against Rutgers, falling 76-69.

Maybe Nebraska still hadn’t recovered from a devastating loss to the Spartans, a game that the Huskers basically gave away with one of their worst shooting performances of the season.

Regardless of why the Huskers clearly weren’t at their best when they took the floor in Piscataway and it showed. Still, they rallied to grab a 38-33 lead at halftime and early in the second half, they pushed their lead to eight.

Then, as it did against Minnesota and Maryland, Nebraska fell apart. The Huskers led in the second half of both of those games too but couldn’t finish. After Geo Baker ripped off a 7-2 scoring run of his own early in the second, giving Rutgers a 52-49 lead, the Scarlet Knights wouldn’t trail again.

Nebraska eventually fought back and tied it on a pair of James Palmer free throws with just over two minutes left, but Rutgers scored on the next possession and when Palmer attempted a shot to tie, it missed. The Scarlet Knights then scored the next six points to put the game on ice.

As far as what this loss means for Nebraska basketball, well, it means the Huskers have less margin for error now. The Huskers are 1-4 on the road in the Big Ten and while the losses to Minnesota, Iowa and Maryland were explainable, this one wasn’t.

Nebraska needed to win this game and the fact that it couldn’t get it, against the No. 108 team in the Kenpom rankings is disturbing. When it comes to the NCAA tournament, you want to rack up quality wins and avoid bad losses.

Up to this point, Nebraska has done a nice job of accumulating good wins (Creighton, Clemson, Indiana, Seton Hall) while avoiding a bad loss. That’s why the Huskers were still projected as a No. 5 seed by ESPN’s Joe Lunardi.

That bracket was released Monday before the loss to Rutgers. It will be interesting to see how far the Huskers will fall. They aren’t going to fall out of the field yet. But as they sit at 3-5 in the Big Ten, Nebraska is much closer to being back on the bubble and with about six weeks left in the regular season that isn’t where you want to be.