As the Nebraska basketball team prepares for an encore to the best season in program history, the Huskers are also awaiting the return of leading scorer Pryce Sandfort to “full go.” Sandfort suffered a sports hernia last season and had surgery to repair it after NU wrapped up its NCAA Tournament run in the Sweet Sixteen. Speaking to the media about his thought process heading into the season, he also explained why he’s coming back at all, after first considering heading to the NBA.
“You know, looked at the NBA, some of the forms that you do when you reach out to GM’s and teams. Got some feedback, was going to be second round if I couldn’t improve stock with my surgery I had at the end of the season,” Sandfort told the media. “So I wasn’t able to do team workouts or anything. It’s possible I could’ve slid in the first round, but I really just wanted to come back for another year. It was just an amazing year last year, and I didn’t really want to give it up.”
Some Nebraska fans might think that Sandfort was just paying lip service to the idea of really wanting to run it back. After all, when he heard he might not even get drafted at all, it would seem like a no-brainer to come back and raise his stock.
However, the Husker scoring machine did make comments at the end of the season that made it clear he really was torn. Despite playing only one season in Lincoln, he’d adopted the Huskers and Husker fans as his own. The kind of excitement that surrounded the program last season would also be something pretty hard to ignore.
Pryce Sandfort explains why he returned to Nebraska basketball after NBA feedback
The program will certainly be boosted by having Sandfort back in the fold. However, the decision to return isn’t without risk. It will be hard to follow up on what he did last season, and if he suffers another injury, or simply struggles with a different supporting cast, the return might actually hurt his NBA profile. Still, his ability to shoot the basketball and be a focal point of the offense makes him seem as though he will at least have a 2026-27 campaign that’s on par with his first with NU.
Sandfort averaged 18.1 points, 4.9 rebounds and 2 assists per game. He started all 35 games despite that hernia bothering him for about half the season and was a major reason why the program made its first-ever Sweet 16 appearance. The sharpshooter led the Big Ten conference in three-pointers made. He ranked second all-time in conference history with 129 on the season.
Pryce Sandfort impressed onlookers plenty. The deadeye was rewarded for his efforts on the court as well. He earned first-team All-Big Ten honors for Nebraska. With reports that he’ll be full go in the next couple of weeks, he should be prepared to have an excellent final season with the Cornhuskers.
Add us as a preferred source on Google