Nebraska Basketball: Pitt transfer becomes Huskers top target
The Nebraska basketball team knows it has to replace a big body in Derrick Walker and that’s why Pitt transfer John Hugley is at the top of their targets.
John Hugley led the Pittsburgh Panthers in both rebounding and scoring. Even better than that, the Nebraska basketball target has basically the same body type and build as Walker, making him seemingly the perfect person to fill the opening on the Huskers roster.
The question now just becomes, can the Nebraska basketball team find a way to land Hugley? So far this early in the transfer season, the Huskers haven’t seemed to make much headway when it comes to landing their transfer targets.
The Huskers do indeed seem to have a real shot of actually landing this particular transfer target. At least they’ve got their foot in the door for the big man. The 6-foot-9, 265-pound junior will be on campus from April 17-19. It’s late enough in the transfer season that the Huskers might even be hoping that he’ll be committing to Fred Hoiberg and company during that particular visit.
Nebraska Basketball needs to land John Hugley
When looking at what Hugley did for the Panthers, it’s clear that the Huskers are hoping he can return to the form he showed in the 2021-22 season. This past campaign he appeared in just eight games, starting six of them.
Despite seeing very limited action in the Panthers’ run to the NCAA Tournament, he still averaged eight points a game and hauled 3.6 rebounds per contest. However the season before that, he showed off the kind of skills that could help him have Derrick Walker-like performances for the Cornhuskers.
In his sophomore season, he scored 14.1 points and brought down 7.9 rebounds per game.
If there’s one place where Hugley falls short of really looking like Derrick Walker it would be his assists numbers. Of course, that’s a spot that made Walker uniquely valuable to the Nebraska basketball program. Perhaps they can still haul in someone like Kerr Kriisa to take over those numbers.