The Nebraska basketball team managed to hide what were two abysmal outings against the worst teams in the Big Ten with a wild 15 minutes in the second half against Northwestern.
Husker head coach Fred Hoiberg understands that now. The question becomes, why were the outings so bad, and how does the team fix whatever went wrong on the road trip? For his part, Hoiberg doesn’t seem to know, and that’s a problem.
"I said that everybody's gotta look in the mirror, and it starts with me," the Nebraska basketball head coach said after the second straight game where his team played the worst basketball of the season. They trailed 50-27 at the half to a Penn State team that had lost 11 of 12 coming into Wednesday night’s game. The Nittany Lions had also lost seven in a row. On the other side, the Cornhuskers are trying to get into the NCAA Tournament, and their hopes took a hit. A big hit. A broadside hit.
Nebraska basketball searching for answers amid poor outings
“"Obviously this is two games in a row where we've gotten off to a start like this, and it is very disappointing with what's at stake for our basketball team right now, with what's in front of us with the opportunities we have," Hoiberg added. "We played 15 minutes of good basketball on this trip. It's not good enough. We have to find a way to get off to a start to get ourselves a chance, you just can't continue to try to dig yourself out of 20-point holes and expect to have any chance to win in this league. We're lucky to have gotten a split on this trip."
The problem is that while the starts against Northwestern and Penn State were especially bad, and the Huskers are talking about getting off to good starts, they really haven’t done that in a while.
NU has trailed at the half in five straight games now. That’s almost three full weeks. Against Maryland, Nebraska trailed by 7 at the half, and got off to, you guessed it, a bad start. They were down 16-8 six and a half minutes into the game.
Against Ohio State, they trailed 39-34 at the half and were down 21-12 seven and half minutes in. They managed to rally, outsourcing the Buckeyes 45-32 in the second half.
And they trailed by 10 at Washington at halftime, another bottom-of-the-Big Ten opponent, and trailed 28-15 at the 12 minute mark.
None of these were good starts. So why is it something the entire team seems to know needs to happen and yet, cannot do it?
The Nebraska basketball team has four more games in the regular season. The next game will be the toughest, against a red hot and 12th ranked Michigan. But when a team is playing as poorly as the Huskers are right now, no game is easy.
It’s been a very up and down season for the Cornhuskers and it appears they’re in another downturn. Lose on Monday night and they’ll have lost three of their last four during a period where they should have gone 2-2 at the worst.
There’s a lot of questions surrounding the Nebraska basketball team and the team and coaches asking those questions doesn’t bode well.