The Nebraska Cornhuskers made a statement earlier this week when the absolutely manhandled the Indiana Hoosiers, in Bloomington. While a home win over the Minnesota Golden Gophers made yet another statement at PBA.
Yes, Fred Hoiberg's crew was supposed to win this game. Yes, they, in fact, needed to win in order to make it clear that they were a tournament team. But they still managed to make this a statement game by how they played.
While Nebraska won by 18 points, it wasn't the fact that they staged another blowout win that was impressive. It was that for a period of time in the first half, things weren't clicking offensively. Neither team was hitting shots; it felt like there was a lid on the basket.
But even while the Nebraska Cornhuskers were having problems finding the net, they weren't allowing the Golden Gophers to take advantage. While NU was shooting just 34 percent from the field, they were only allowing Minnesota to shoot 28 percent in the first half.
The Huskers went down 5-0 to open the game. Once they got rid of that deficit, they never really looked back. And they took control of the game in a big way despite the fact that Keisei Tominaga was a total non-factor.
Nebraska Cornhuskers show toughness, will to win against Minnesota
Much like their win against Wisconsin, someone else stepped up when Keisei faded into the background. This time, it was Juwan Gary who scored a career-high 22 points. 18 of those 22 came in the second half.
The final cherry on the sundae, other than the fact that the Nebraska Cornhuskers got a big measure fo revenge for their worse loss of the season where they were outscored by 29 in the second half in Minnnesota, is that the Gophers never really had a shot.
There are now three games to go in the regular season for the Nebraska Cornhuskers basketball team. So far, they've only taken care of business on the road to the NCAA Tournament.