Nebraska Basketball: What we learned from Huskers 100-point explosion

Nebraska basketball dominated Mississippi Valley State Tuesday night in Lincoln and the way the Huskers did it was maybe the most impressive thing.

Winning is generally about two things in college basketball: scoring and playing great defense and in its season debut against Mississippi Valley State Tuesday, Nebraska basketball did both.

While the Huskers were expected to win easily, Nebraska basketball put on a show. Nana Akenten and Glynn Watson Jr. each made five 3-pointers. As a team, the Huskers were 15-of-37 from deep en route to a 106-37 win.

If you didn’t know, Mississippi Valley State is among the lowest-rated teams Divison I basketball, but still, the Huskers couldn’t have done much more than beat an opponent by 69 points. The Delta Devils shot just 19 percent from the field and made just one 3-pointer. The offense gets all the attention, however, the work on defense was impressive too.

Certainly, there were things Tim Miles probably wasn’t happy about, such as the 21 turnovers. Yet, the 23 assists on 38 buckets were pretty good and so was the fact that 64 points came from Watson, James Palmer, Akenten and Isaac Copeland.

Akenten, a sophomore who contributed little as a freshman, was a really big bright spot, scoring 18 points in just 13 minutes. Hopefully, he wasn’t just a flash in the pan and can contribute points and solid minutes off the bench as the season goes along.

Obviously, scoring a bunch of points against a poor basketball team isn’t anything to write home about. But this Huskers team also had a different feel to it, especially on the offensive end of the floor.

Last season, the Huskers were 219th in the country in points scored and 237th in 3-pointers attempted. But if we are to judge this team based on what we saw Tuesday night, both of those rankings should improve. Nebraska basketball is going to be shooting a lot more treys this season and theoretically, it should score more points.

The Huskers have a solid nucleus, one that was pretty stout defensively a season ago, ranking in the top 100 in scoring defense, 2-point percentage, 3-point percentage, and steals.  Nebraska knows how to defend and if it can be a prolific scoring team this season, with a deadly arsenal of 3-point shooters then watch out, because the ceiling will be much higher than just making the NCAA tournament.

The ceiling instead, might just be winning or at least having a chance to win the Big Ten championship.