Hoiberg, Huskers navigating next steps of unprecedented offseason

With the sports world essentially being put on indefinite hold during the coronavirus pandemic, Fred Hoiberg is still trying to get used to his new daily routine.

He wakes up every day around 7 a.m., has a cup of coffee while watching Good Morning America, and hopefully gets in a workout on his Peloton before 10 a.m. (otherwise the workout probably won’t happen).

After that, he gets back to work on revamping the entire look of Nebraska basketball.

Despite rigid new recruiting restrictions that ban all in-person visits with prospects, Hoiberg and his staff still managed to haul in an impressive five-man class of transfers on the first day of the 2020 spring signing period on Thursday.

The Huskers still have one more available scholarship remaining for the 2020-21 season, but for the second-year Husker head coach, the main focus now is trying to navigate his team through an unprecedented offseason while still living up to its lofty potential.

But with so many unknowns about what lies ahead with COVID-19’s impact on the country, Nebraska is left guessing along with everyone else as to when that process will actually be able to begin.

“They’re hungry, and they’re ready to get to work,” Hoiberg said of his newly assembled roster during a teleconference with local media on Thursday. “Unfortunately we don’t know when that is.”

As of Thursday, Hoiberg said NU planned to have its players back on campus by June 6 for the start of the team’s offseason conditioning program.

Of course, that continues to be a completely fluid situation given all of the uncertainty over when college athletics will be allowed to resume normal operations.

In the meantime, Hoiberg said he and his staff remain in constant communication with their players to keep them on track academically and provide as much help as they can with home workout and nutrition plans.

“We’re going to do everything we can to try to give our guys the means to get their workouts in based on what equipment they have in their homes,” Hoiberg said. “We’re trying to help give our guys some type of foundation for when they back to where we can hit the ground running…

“But we don’t know as far as everything moving forward.”

Those efforts will also be helped by the Division I Council Coordination Committee voting on Wednesday to allow teams to require up to eight hours per week of “virtual nonphysical countable activities like film review, chalk talks, and team meetings.”

Hoiberg said he planned to hold virtual film sessions via Zoom with all of NU’s five new signees starting Monday to get them as up to speed as possible on learning his system.

He’s also assigned “projects” for assistant coaches Doc Sadler and Armon Gates, special assistant to the head coach Bobby Lutz, and video coordinator Matt Holt to study some of the best teams in college and the NBA and pick up some new concepts, particularly on defense.

So while their options are limited, the Huskers are still finding ways to make this unusual offseason as productive as possible. However, Zoom meetings and home workouts obviously don’t do much in addressing arguably the biggest issue facing Hoiberg’s squad going forward – building chemistry.

Last season, Nebraska learned the hard way about how important having a cohesive roster both on and off the court was. Now NU is working with another group of players who once again haven’t even all been in the same room at once, let alone played a game of basketball together.

When the team is allowed to return to work, it won’t just be about bonding as teammates, either. Hoiberg said he’s been holding weekly virtual meetings with his strength and training staffs to formulate a plan to ease the players back into high-major basketball shape while avoiding potential injury setbacks.

It won’t be an easy hurdle to clear, but the silver lining for Hoiberg is he feels he has a roster – which includes eight scholarship juniors and seniors – that is more than suited to handle that type adversity.

“That’s as important as anything we do is try to get everybody together and on the same page and build good chemistry, and I think we’re going to have that,” Hoiberg said. “It’s going to be important as far as how much time we’re going to have to get everyone on the same page as quickly as possible…

“There’s still a lot of things we can do to build chemistry and get everyone on the same page. I don’t have any concerns about that.”