Nebraska basketball gets second ‘slap in the face’ in NIT seeding
The Nebraska basketball team appeared to be the NCAA’s whipping boy on Sunday as it missed the Big Dance, then got a bad NIT seed.
Sunday night was not a particularly fun or enjoyable night for the Nebraska basketball team. First there was finding out the team didn’t get into the NCAA tournament while squads like Texas, Oklahoma and Arizona State did.
To some degree, that was to be expected. We spent the week hearing that the Cornhuskers were long shots at best to get in. But then the second “slap in the face” as NU head coach Tim Miles put it, was finding out the team’s seeding in the NIT.
It’s safe to say most people thought Nebraska was going to be a second or third seed in the NIT. Almost everyone, even fans of other teams, believed the Huskers would host a post season tournament game.
It wasn’t to be as Nebraska was handed a five seed and told it was traveling to Starkville to play Mississippi State. A five seed.
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Perhaps even worse than the Cornhuskers getting the fifth seed and not getting a game in Lincoln is that Penn State got a four seed. You read that right.
The Nittany Lions finished behind the Huskers in the Big Ten standings. They have a worse RPI. They lost in Lincoln on the last day of the regular season.
Despite all of those things, Penn State is a four seed and is hosting the Temple Owls. The Nebraska basketball team is the fifth seed and will be traveling all tourney, barring a big upset.
It’s not clear exactly what the NCAA selection committee has against the Huskers but it seems as if a week spent talking about how Nebraska didn’t deserve to be in the NCAAs convinced everyone they barely deserved to be in the postseason.
This is despite the fact that the Nebraska basketball team went 22-10 this season and 13-5 in the Big Ten. This despite the fact that they lost the NCAA tournament one seed Kansas by a point. On Wednesday night at 8 PM central, it will be time to prove everyone wrong.