ATLANTA - Over the past seven days, Nebraska had an assistant coach take an indefinite medical leave of absence, multiple players miss time with an influenza bug that swept through the team, lost a key piece of its rotation to a knee injury, and dropped two nationally-televised games by an average of 33 points.
So it’s understandable why freshman guard C.J. Wilcher said the Huskers were feeling the pressure of their season already being on the brink after just 11 games.
“I think a lot of guys are definitely stressing,” Wilcher said following NU’s 99-68 loss to Auburn in Atlanta on Saturday. “I mean, we’re all human, so we stress about things. But it’s about us figuring out how to get ourselves out of that slump and not focusing on the things we can’t control.”
Towards the end of the 2016-17 season, former Nebraska head coach Tim Miles said his team was dealing with “a crisis of confidence” while eventually losing 13 of its final 16 games to end the year.
It’s still early, but third-year NU coach Fred Hoiberg appears to have a similar situation brewing at the moment.
Wilcher, who snapped out of a three-game shooting slump with a career-high 17 points vs. Auburn, said he had gotten to the point where “I kind of got away from having fun with the game, and who I am as a person, I kind of got away from that.”
Wilcher also said he could tell during Nebraska’s walk-thru on Friday that the focus and attention to detail wasn’t nearly where it needed to be for a group trying to upset the No. 18 team in the country.
“I feel like it started going wrong yesterday (Friday) in the walk-thru,” Wilcher said. “Some guys - we weren’t completely locked in as a team. You play how you practice, and that’s how we played. It starts there.”
Hoiberg continued to insist that the woes plaguing Nebraska were all things that could be addressed and solved through practice and time.
The Huskers will have a much-needed week off before returning to action on Saturday at home against Kansas State.
During that time, Hoiberg said he planned to make some schematic adjustments and add some offensive “wrinkles” to create better control with the basketball, especially at the beginning of games.
“It’s all fixable. It’s all correctable,” Hoiberg said of NU’s struggles. “We’ve just got to get back to doing the little things. There’s got to be more urgency. When you get embarrassed and you get humiliated in two straight games, we’ll see what we’re made of.
“I hope it does embarrass us as a group. It certainly embarrassed me when you get it handed to you like we did the past couple games.”
As for any developing issues with confidence, Hoiberg said the Huskers didn’t have the luxury of feeling sorry for themselves after falling to 5-6 on the season.
“I’m not worried about that. I can’t worry about that,” Hoiberg said. “We’ve got a week to get it right now… We’ve got a week to find a way to get it right. We’ve got to start doing the little things better, doing the basics. It’s a big week for us. It’s going to be demanding, but we’ve got to get this thing right.”
