Who wins?
Nebraska basketball hit rock bottom with a seven-game losing streak, including some losses at home that might kill this team’s NCAA hopes when it’s all said and done. But there is still hope and the game against Penn State will dictate how the rest of the season will go.
Win tonight and the Huskers are in business. They will have won three straight and with a closing stretch that features a home game against Purdue, back-to-back road games against Michigan and Michigan State, followed by a home game against rival Iowa, the opportunity to impress the committee is there.
Beating Penn State tonight would count as a quadrant 1 win and so will the next four games. So if the Huskers can win four out of those five games, that would be extremely impressive and very hard to ignore.
In terms of who will win, both teams do a very good job on defense. Penn State is 36th when it comes to defensive efficiency and Nebraska is 30th. Offensively, the Huskers are rated as 47th, while Penn State is outside the top 100.
In the first meeting, Stevens was held in check and Penn State shot just 36 percent in a six-point loss. That’s a formula Nebraska would love to follow tonight. Roby scored 22 points and had 11 boards in the first matchup and was 8-of-9 from the field. Watson and Palmer also scored in double figures then too.
Repeating that effort in Happy Valley won’t be easy, but this Nebraska team seems to have found its groove and while the game tonight will be a struggle, in the end, I expect the Huskers three seniors to lead them to a narrow victory.