Nebraska men’s basketball shook off yet another slow start at home to defeat USC-Upstate, 72-63, Sunday at Pinnacle Bank Arena. The win moves the Cornhuskers to 8-0, just the third time in school history Nebraska has started a season 8-0 and the first time since 1977-78, when NU won its first ten games.
But it didn’t start rosy for the Huskers. The Spartans built a 23-11 lead midway through the first half, to the suprise of Fred Hoiberg.
“For whatever reason in this building, we’ve not gotten off to the type of starts that we need to get our incredible crowd behind us,” Hoiberg said. “And on the road, we’ve gotten off to really good starts when we went and played in those neutral site games. And it’s just not carrying over right now here. And then I just didn’t like our resolve tonight and our resiliency when they threw the first punch. And the team like that, they’re going to milk the clock when they get a lead, and they built that thing up to double digits. And I just didn’t like our toughness, and they were chasing us through screens, which we’re going to see especially in these next three games.”
The next three games loom large for Nebraska, as the Huskers are next in action next Sunday against in-state foe Creighton, followed by conference games against Wisconsin and Illinois.
Fortunately, Nebraska shook off the poor start, scoring 17 straight points to build a 32-27 lead with 47 seconds remaining in the half. Isaiah Skinner cashed in a Husker turnover for a three to cut the NU lead to 32-30 at intermission.
Early in the second half, USC-Upstate tied the game at 35, before a 7-0 run with Bryce Sandfort scoring five of the points gave back the lead to Nebraska, 42-35, with 17:28 to go in the game. Nebraska led by as many as 16 with 90 seconds to go before a late surge by the Spartans cut the lead back to single digits.
Still, the win was the Huskers’ 12th straight, dating back to last year’s postseason run in the Crown Tournament. The winning streak is tied for fifth longest in school history and the longest since the 1990-91 team won 14 straight en route to a school record 26 wins.
“The one positive, as I said to the guys, is we’re 8-0,” Hoiberg said. “There’s not a lot of people that can say that right now, and we’ve been battle tested. We played good teams. We need to learn from this one, which I’m confident our guys will do. They’ve been awesome, and they’ve handled adversity well, but for whatever reason, it didn’t happen like it needed to today.”
Still, Hoiberg was not satisfied with his team’s performance Saturday.
“We just have to have better resolve, better toughness,” Hoiberg said. “So we have to start getting off to better starts.”
Pryce Sandfort led Nebraska with 20 points, his fourth 20-point game of the season. Sandfort also added nine rebounds and four assists, both totals leading the team. Rienk Mast tallied 15, while Braden Frager and Cale Jacobsen both scored 11. Karmani Gregory led the Spartans with 20 points, one of four double-digit scorers for USC-Upstate.
The Huskers will have eight days to get ready for their next contest, Sunday, Dec. 7 at Pinnacle Bank Arena against Creighton. Tipoff is slated for 4 p.m., with pregame coverage at 3 p.m. on KLIN.