Considering how bad the Nebraska basketball team was in the early years of Fred Hoiberg’s tenure, it’s hard to say the program hit rock bottom on Sunday afternoon.
Despite the reality of what has been a truly awful coaching job over a six-year stint for Hoiberg, the loss to Iowa really does feel like rock bottom. Consider the fact that the loss was the second of the season to an Iowa head coach who somehow has a hotter seat than Hoiberg.
With an 83-68 loss to Iowa, at home, on the last day of the regular season, the Nebraska basketball finished the year with five straight losses. Had they not forged that ridiculous second-half comeback against Northwestern, it would have been seven straight losses.
Nebraska basketball ends embarrassing run towards end of the season with another loss
In the process, a team that was a program that was solidly in the NCAA Tournament for most of the season is now talking about how they’ll go play in the NIT or the CBI, whichever tournament gives them an invite.
Over the course of the next few weeks, there needs to be some hard conversations about what happened. About how a head coach who has been in Lincoln for six years couldn’t get a team that started the campaign 12-2 and finished with a 5-12 run to play better.
There needs to be a conversation about how he plans on actually building this team, rather than leaning on transfers every season. And if leaning on transfers every season is what he plans to do to make sure the Nebraska basketball team has more players it can lean on.
The end of this season was not remotely acceptable. Hoiberg’s buyout is probably big enough that he’ll get another year, whether he deserves it or not. But there needs to be some conversations about how once again, he’s going to fix his own mistakes.