Nebraska basketball exhibition game underlines consistency questions

If there is one thing that has plagued Nebraska basketball in the Tim Miles era it has been a lack of consistency.

While the Sunday game against Mississippi State doesn’t count the same disturbing lack of consistency showed up once again. For 20 minutes on Sunday, it looked like Miles had finally managed to put together a Nebraska basketball team that could run a solid if not spectacular opponent out of the gym.

Then the second half got underway. After hitting eight of 13 shots from beyond 3-point range in the first half, the team went 0-13 from beyond the arc in the second half. After shooting over 50 percent from the field in the first half, they shot under 40 percent in the second half.

After building a nearly 20 point lead in the first half and getting it up to 23 points early in the second period, they had to hold on to win by four points. We’ve seen this movie before with Tim Miles.

Yes, the Huskers have plenty of excuses for their Jekyll and Hyde performance on Sunday. Among those very good excuses is that this is the first real game many of these guys have played together. This is also obviously the first game of the season and it was one no one expected to play until it was announced early last week.

The issue is that there are always reasons for why the Nebraska basketball team doesn’t put together 40 full minutes under Miles very often. The Nebrasketball head man has littered his resume with big-time upsets. There have been even more near misses against top notch schools.

Right along with the team playing well against squads they likely had no business beating, are the games where they laid a giant egg. Even if this game didn’t count, failing to hold on today would have to have been put in that category.

There was plenty of good to see today, don’t get me wrong. James Palmer Jr. scored 17 points. Jack McVeigh and Glyn Watson were hitting threes … in the first half. Perhaps most importantly the Husker defense held Mississippi State to just 1-13 shooting from three-point land on the game.

Three-point defense was a big problem a year ago. It’s hard to tell whether the Bulldogs are just bad at the outside shot, or the Cornhuskers’ defense is better so far.

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The bottom line here is the Nebraska basketball team had a chance to play a team with quite a bit of talent in a game that doesn’t count. This was the kind of warmup game you just don’t see often at all. Here’s hoping Tim Miles and company can take the good and iron out the bad.