Some losses take longer than others to get out of your head, and for Fred Hoiberg, Tuesday night’s loss at the hands of No. 13 Purdue in PBA lingered.
On Wednesday’s Sports Nightly, Hoiberg recounted his sleepless night following the overtime loss to the Boilermakers. Then, after replaying nearly the entire end-of-game sequence, Hoiberg finally seemed able to flip the switch and look ahead to Northwestern on Saturday, something he demanded of his players.
"I told them after the game last night, 'We've done a really good job of putting big emotional wins behind us. Now here's the flip side of it, you have to put the tough, emotional loss behind you now.' Really, what will determine if you have success at the end of the year is how you handle those situations. Our guys have done a masterful job on the emotional wins. And now after that one, which, believe me, it's eating at all of us still,” Hoiberg said.
Fred Hoiberg’s Huskers are frustrated, but flipping the page to Northwestern on Saturday
Nebraska has become all too familiar with this feeling after a 20-0 start to the season. Since hitting a tough stretch that began with a trip to Ann Arbor for Game No. 21, the Huskers have lost three of their last four, dropping matchups with Michigan, Illinois, and Purdue. To make matters worse, the latter two losses came in Lincoln.
Now, Hoiberg’s group will get a bit of reprieve from that midseason gauntlet with three top 15 teams. Starting with Northwestern, Nebraska does not have another ranked team left on its schedule. However, that could change with Iowa receiving the second most votes of unranked teams in last week’s AP Poll. The Huskers will see the Hawkeyes twice down the stretch, including the regular-season finale on March 8.
Nebraska’s hopes of claiming a No. 1 seed in just its ninth-ever trip to the NCAA Tournament are all but gone with those three losses, and undoubtedly, there will be those who discredit the team altogether for dropping those games against their toughest opponents. However, as long as Nebraska can flush this loss and handle its business down the stretch, the Huskers will be in Big Ten title contention and positioned well to make the program’s first-ever run past the first weekend of the big dance.