Nebrasketball isn’t in the Final Four. Heck, they weren’t even a Top-68 team. But Nebraska football was.
Here’s a little something to tide you over, football fans.
We took the top 68 teams from TeamRankings.com’s January 10th rankings and matched the overall seeds to where they would be placed in the NCAA basketball tournament structure.
Instead of boring directional regions, we separated them into the Rose, Fiesta, Sugar and Orange regions (props to PredictionMachine.com for the idea).
Once the seedings were set, we used the (pretty awesome) SimMatchup tool on WhatifSports.com to simulate each game.
The Draw
Nebraska was placed as a 12-seed in the Ohio State Buckeye-led Sugar Region. Their first round foe, the Western Kentucky Hilltoppers, earned a 5-seed with a 10-3 record and a Conference USA Championship Game victory over Louisiana Tech.
The win against the Bulldogs avenged one of the three Hilltopper losses on the year, the others being to two SEC programs: Alabama and Vanderbilt.
WKU owned one of the most explosive offenses in the nation in 2016, racking up the second-most yards in the FBS (7,324), second only to the national champion Clemson Tigers.
The Hilltoppers are led by junior Mike White, a 67.3 percent passer with over 4,300 yards, 37 touchdowns and just seven interceptions.
White throws to two receivers who gained 1,000-plus yards in seniors Taywan Taylor and Nicholas Norris. He also hands off to a solid complement at running back in Anthony Wales.
Wales ran for over 1,600 yards and 27 touchdowns in 2016 (his senior year), both career bests.
Another intriguing facet to the first round matchup with the Hilltoppers is the impending departure of head coach Jeff Brohm who accepted the same job at Purdue, replacing Darrell Hazell.
The game between Brohm and the Huskers will be the first of many in the coming years.