The Nebraska Cornhuskers basketball team took on a ranked opponent on Thursday night and emerged victorious.
After six straight games of head coach Fred Hoiberg talking about how his team needed to find a way to get tougher, they did just that. It wasn’t just that they battled in overtime and outplayed the Illinois Fighting Illini in that extra period on the way to an 80-74 win. It was how the game even got to overtime in the first place.
If there has been one thing that has stuck out for the Nebraska Cornhuskers over the team’s six straight losses it’s been a decided lack of grit. And more specifically, a decided lack of defensive execution. On Thursday night, the thing that helped the Nebrasketball team off to a 12-2 start returned. Especially when it came to forcing turnovers.
Nebraska Cornhuskers basketball flips the script
Over the previous six games there had been two hallmarks of the Nebraska basketball team’s struggles. The first is that they were turning the ball over too much. The second is that they weren’t forcing many turnovers of their opponents.
On Thursday night, NU turned it over just six times. They forced a normally good ball handling Illinois team to turn it over 17 times.
“I would like to have an explanation,” Illinois head coach Brad Underwood said after the game. “We had four scouting report ones, I know, where we told our guys you’re not gonna throw the baseline pass, and we continually tried to do that. I don’t know. Tonight was very uncharacteristic of us from a scouting report standpoint making those turnovers. You’re not gonna beat anybody doing that.”
Compare those numbers to the last six games:
- At Wisconsin: Nebraska turned it over 12 times and forced 8 TOs.
- Vs USC: Turned it over 11 times, forced 9 turnovers.
- At Maryland: Turned it over 13 times, forced 12 TOs.
- Vs Rutgers: 8 TOs, forced 7 TOs.
- At Purdue: Turned it over a whopping 17 times, forced 10 turnovers.
- At Iowa: 14 turnovers and forced 13 turnovers.
Not a single time in the six game losing streak, the Huskers forced more turnovers than they committed. It’s clear that isn’t the end all and be all statistic in predicting a win. After all, Illinois beat Hoiberg’s Heroes on the boards by a wide margin.
But those TO numbers are a big improvement. And the Nebraska Cornhuskers got themselves a big win. Now the key is doing it again on Sunday against Oregon.