LINCOLN, Neb. — On the first Saturday of 2025, a sellout crowd packed into Pinnacle Bank Arena with a winter storm taking aim outside.
Heat rose in the building as the iconic blue jerseys and gold outlined letters, UCLA, shimmered in the spotlight of national TV coverage.
The Bruins last visited Lincoln in 1955, when Fred Hoiberg’s grandfather, Jerry Bush, coached Nebraska basketball to a win against John Wooden’s team. Nebraska has since outgrown two playing venues. Recently, Hoiberg’s Huskers turned into something of a monster at home.
The top two players for Nebraska on Saturday, Brice Williams and Juwan Gary, shot 5-for-19 from the field. It didn’t score until the under-16 timeout was overdue. Later in the first half, the Huskers absorbed a 15-0 run. They didn’t hit a field goal in the final seven minutes of the game.
And still, Nebraska walked out with a 66-58 win against No. 15 UCLA. There was no court-storming, as when the Huskers beat top-ranked Purdue and No. 6 Wisconsin a year ago.
This outcome was the expectation on Saturday — more meaningful than the delivery of some kind of a statement.
Nebraska did not punch above its weight in beating UCLA. The Huskers simply held serve, winning a 20th consecutive game at home to tie a school record. It marked a 12th consecutive home win against Big Ten competition.
PBA is no joke 😤#B1GStats x #B1GMBBall pic.twitter.com/wWVnCrRTit
— Big Ten Network (@BigTenNetwork) January 4, 2025
A rally cry echoed among some 15,000 fans as they exited into the afternoon air, pellets of snow hitting their windshields and the cold sidewalks around downtown Lincoln.
This is the year.
This is the year Nebraska joins every other major conference program in college basketball by winning its first game in the NCAA Tournament. It shouldn’t be such a hill to climb for a Nebraska team that’s won 19 of its last 29 games in the Big Ten regular season. The Huskers field an experienced, hardened nine-man rotation that pushed aside rugged UCLA after the Bruins went to the wire in splitting with North Carolina and Gonzaga to close 2024.
But it is. It is the burden Nebraska faces as a program that’s not made consecutive tournament appearances in more than 30 years and in 2024 went in with a higher seed against Texas A&M — only to get rolled in the first round by the more physical and athletic Aggies.
“I would say that this is a start for the world to know that Nebraska basketball is back and better, for sure,” said Gary, the senior defensive catalyst. “Like last year, how we started that run, this is a start for us. But we’ve got another notch to turn it up.”
GO DEEPER
Court Vision: Jim Larrañaga’s retirement, NIL lawsuit for FSU’s Hamilton come amid ACC decline
The Huskers (12-2 overall, 2-1 Big Ten) began Sunday at No. 34 in NET and 33rd in the KenPom ratings. They’re safely in the tournament today. But as Gary, an Alabama transfer in his third year with the Huskers, and Sam Hoiberg, the gritty coach’s son, said Saturday, no one is taking a rest.
Last year in the opening days of January, Nebraska beat the top-ranked Boilermakers and got caught up in the excitement, then lost at Iowa and Rutgers over the next eight days.
The Huskers play again at Iowa on Tuesday night and at Purdue on Sunday.
“We’re trying to be more business-like and not think that we’re the hot stuff right now,” Sam Hoiberg said, “because we’re not.”
This is the year because the Nebraska players know who they are — a tough-minded, tough-playing bunch built to withstand a bad matchup in March. The Huskers still can’t equal the athleticism of a team like the Aggies that they drew in the bracket last year.
But if a similar situation surfaces, Nebraska will be better equipped to find a way. The Huskers impose their will with defensive energy.
Make it 20-straight home wins for @HuskerMBB. The Huskers defense has been on lockdown during the six-game win streak. The Huskers held @UCLAMBB to 58 points Saturday. If Nebraska can find a way to win a few on the road they will be in the thick of a top seven finish in the…
— Andy Katz (@TheAndyKatz) January 4, 2025
“Defense has to be our constant,” Fred Hoiberg said.
The defense came Saturday from Gary, as always, but also from Sam Hoiberg and Andrew Morgan, bench players who sparked an 8-0 run over 64 seconds in the second half. With eight minutes to play, UCLA coach Mick Cronin stopped the action as a media timeout loomed when Nebraska pushed its lead to 50-38.
“We need tough guys out there,” said Fred Hoiberg, the sixth-year Nebraska coach. “Those guys made tough plays.”
Sam Hoiberg got a tough-guy steal when Nebraska, not making shots, needed it in the final two minutes. Gary delivered a rejection in the closing seconds to ice the win.
When Nebraska couldn’t score early, the intensity did not wane. Forward Berke Buyuktuncel set a screen so hard that UCLA guard Skyy Clark crashed to the floor and did not stand for several seconds.
Clark later went down in a collision with Nebraska center Braxton Meah. Clark left the game. He returned after two minutes and committed a turnover before Cronin subbed him out for good.
“You’ve gotta win ugly,” Fred Hoiberg said. “We knew it was going to be a rock fight. And we found a way. That’s what good teams do.”
Doubt Hoiberg at your own peril. This season looked to some like a step back after Nebraska lost leading scorer Keisei Tominaga from a 23-win team last year. Versatile big man Rienk Mast required season-ending surgery.
Hoiberg put this group together around Gary and Williams, who came to Nebraska in 2023 from Charlotte. Buyuktuncel transferred from UCLA, along with Meah (Washington), point guard Rollie Worster (Utah), sharpshooter Connor Essegian (Wisconsin) and the forward Morgan (North Dakota State).
Guard Ahron Ulis, an Iowa transfer, was ineligible last year. Only Sam Hoiberg, among the Huskers scoring more than 1 point per game, enrolled at Nebraska out of high school.
Sam Hoiberg said the Huskers adopted a mantra from one of Jay Wright’s national championship Villanova teams.
“Two claps,” Hoiberg said. “If something goes wrong, we clap twice and move on.”
Nine games remain for Nebraska against Big Ten foes ranked higher than it in the NET.
The Huskers since 2021 have hit their stride earlier in each season. They go to Iowa Tuesday on a six-game winning streak, lending support to the notion present with the fans who walked out of PBA on Saturday into another cold January.
This is the year.
(Photo: Dylan Widger / Imagn Images)
