[ad_1]
Major college basketball’s longest winning streak in more than a decade ended at 24 games Tuesday night with No. 5 Nebraska’s 75-72 loss at No. 3 Michigan.
“To beat Michigan, you have to play almost perfect, and we had a lapse at the end,” Cornhuskers guard Sam Hoiberg said.
Nebraska did not score over the final 3:20, missing its last five shots after leading most of the game despite two key players being out of the lineup.
“That just proved, hopefully to everybody, most importantly to the guys in the locker room, that we can compete with anybody,” coach Fred Hoiberg said.
Rienk Mast missed the game with an illness, and double-digit scorer Braden Frager was out for a second straight game with an ankle injury.
“It’s unfortunate, but I give our guys a lot of credit for the fight they showed in the game from start to finish,” Fred Hoiberg said.
The 24-game winning streak was an improbable run for a school with a modest history in men’s basketball. Nebraska emerged as the feel-good story of the season before hitting a bump in the road at the Crisler Center in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
The Cornhuskers’ previous loss came in last year’s final regular-season game, 83-68 to Iowa at home on March 9. The streak started when they swept through four games to win the inaugural College Basketball Crown tournament in Las Vegas last April.
“We haven’t had this feeling in a long time. It’s been almost a year,” Fred Hoiberg said. “They were hurt by it. We’re going to find out what we’re made of.”
Nebraska will have some time to regroup before hosting No. 9 Illinois on Sunday.
The Huskers’ 20-1 start remains the program’s best, and their No. 5 ranking in this week’s AP Top 25 poll is the highest in school history.
The 24-game streak was the longest in Division I since Gonzaga reeled off 35 in a row between 2019-21.
The winning streak captured the imaginations of college basketball fans because so little is expected of Nebraska on the hard court.
The Huskers are the only power-conference program that has never won an NCAA tournament game, with an 0-8 record in March Madness. Nebraska’s most recent regular-season conference championship was in 1950, and the school has finished with a winning conference record in just three of its first 14 seasons in the Big Ten.
The program has produced one consensus All-American — Sam Carrier in 1912-13 — and just three NBA first-round draft picks, none since 1998.
The Huskers’ fast start was a breakthrough for Fred Hoiberg, who won 115 games in five seasons as Iowa State coach and took the Cyclones to four NCAA tournaments. Nebraska hired him in 2019, and the Huskers were 24-67 overall and 9-50 in the Big Ten in his first three seasons. Since then they’re 80-41 overall and 37-32 in Big Ten play.
The Huskers had to erase double-digit deficits in five of their wins during the streak, including comebacks from 16 points down against Oklahoma on a neutral court in November and Indiana on the road.
The veteran team is led by Mast, a seventh-year big man who returned from a major knee injury that caused him to miss the entire 2024-25 season.
Pryce Sandfort transferred from Iowa, Jamarques Lawrence returned after spending one season at Rhode Island and Berke Buyuktuncel has elevated his game while teaming with Mast in the frontcourt. Sam Hoiberg, son of the coach and a former walk-on, is a glue guy who does a bit of everything.
One loss changes nothing in the big picture.
Fred Hoiberg has talked often about how he believes this team has a chance to do something few, if any, have done before at Nebraska. The Huskers won 11 games against opponents from outside the Big Ten to go unbeaten in nonconference play for the first time since 1928-29. The 9-1 start in conference games was Nebraska’s best since 1965-66. A league title is still out there for the taking and, of course, the opportunity to end that nagging NCAA tournament drought.
[ad_2]
