Breakout shooting night lifts Huskers to 88-74 win over Owls

Playing its final non-conference game of the season against Atlantic Sun foe Kennesaw State, Wednesday night was Nebraska's last chance to get right before the grind of 18 straight Big Ten games began next month.

It took nearly midway through the first half for them to get going, but the Huskers eventually took advantage of the opportunity with a 88-74 victory.

Coming in as one of the country's worst 3-point shooting teams, NU finally broke out of its slump by hitting a season-high 15 from behind the arc while going 52.6-percent from the field overall with a season-high 20 assists.

The 15 threes were the Huskers' most yet under head coach Fred Hoiberg, passing the previous high of 14. They were also the highest total since NU had 15 against Mississippi Valley State on Nov. 6, 2018.

Nebraska (6-7) had four players score in double figures, led by 18 on 4-of-7 shooting from deep from Keisei Tominaga. Alonzo Verge Jr. filled the stat sheet with 16 points, a team-high six rebounds, and a career-best and Husker Pinnacle Bank Arena record 12 assists.

The Huskers sputtered out of the gate to start the night, missing eight of their first 12 shots and falling behind by eight points after the first six minutes.

But a 3-pointer by Tominaga sparked 15 unanswered NU points, and another three by Lat Mayen capped the run at 19-2 to put Nebraska up 27-18.

Another 11-2 spurt and a trey from Trevor Lakes at the buzzer sent the Huskers into halftime up 45-35. The 45 points were the most Nebraska had scored in a first half this season, and the 88 total points were its highest in a regulation game.

Twelve straight points from Verge and Tominaga to open the second half pushed NU’s lead up to 21, and a layup by Lakes gave Nebraska its largest margin of the game at 76-51 with 8:10 left to play.

Derrick Walker posted 11 points on 4-of-5 shooting, five rebounds, and a career-high three blocks for the Huskers. Bryce McGowens added 11 points, four boards, and two steals while going 3-for-5 on 3-pointers.

Nebraska will return to action on Jan. 2, 2022, when it plays host to Ohio State for a 7 p.m. CT tip on Big Ten Network.

1. The lids finally came off

Throughout Nebraska’s awful shooting start to the season, Hoiberg insisted time and again that the shots would start falling eventually.

It took 13 games to do it, but the lid finally came off the baskets for the Huskers on Wednesday night.

Not only did NU knock down a season-best 15 3-pointers in the win, but it also had a stretch where it went 13-of-18 from behind the arc, including hitting six in a row early in the second half.

Seven players made at least one 3-pointer on the night, and five had at least two.

Nebraska shot a season-best 51.7 percent from downtown, and that was despite missing their final five attempts to end the game.

The previous season-high for 3-pointers had been 10 against Creighton, and the Huskers surpassed that less than three minutes into the second half.

2. Hoiberg sent a message this week

Having lost five straight games, including two embarrassing blowouts and an ugly home defeat to Kansas State its last time out, Nebraska’s season was at a tipping point before non-conference play had even concluded.

That’s why Hoiberg laid it all out there to his team with a brutally-honest film session and two grueling practices. Based on how the Huskers responded against Kennesaw State, they got the message loud and clear.

Going into the game, Hoiberg warned that he would have a “quick hook” with his substitutions if guys took bad shots or didn’t make the right plays with the ball. He stuck to his word from the beginning, as every starter subbed out within the first 6:39 and eight players saw the floor in the opening seven minutes.

Verge said knowing there would be little tolerance for poor decision-making got the Huskers’ immediate attention, and that tone was set as soon as NU got back to work on Monday morning.

“Of course, that gets a lot of people’s attention,” Verge said. “It can be a good thing and a bad thing because you don’t want your players overthinking, and you also want to have control over your players, too. So it’s just a mixture, and Coach is doing good with that.”

Verge later added: “We went through a lot of adversity this week in practice, and we fought through it. Usually, we would break down, and it would just go all over the place, and practice would be hell. This week, we fought through it, and we pushed through all the things Coach put us through, and I think that transferred over to the game. When we were down eight, we didn’t panic.”

Hoiberg was obviously pleased with how his group responded to his strategy on Wednesday night, but now the task was trying to bottle up that focus through the holiday break and on through the grind of Big Ten play.

“I hope so, and it’s just got to continue to carry over,” Hoiberg said. “The true test will be when we hit a rough patch, how are we going to handle it?”

3. Plenty of work remains to be done

As relieved as Nebraska might have felt following its 14-point victory, the game served as only a reprieve from a long list of issues the team still has to address entering the meat of league play.

When the Huskers hit their 3-pointers, they’re going to have a chance against almost anyone. However, they continue to live and die by the three rather than working for a more balanced offensive approach.

Nebraska shot 29 3-pointers compared to 28 attempts inside the arc against a Kennesaw State team that came in ranked 355th out of 358 Division I teams in two-point defense. Six of its first seven shots were threes as the nation’s 352nd-ranked 3-point shooting team.

The Huskers also turned it over 17 times, which the Owls converted into 20 points. As impressive as Verge’s numbers were, he committed a season-high seven of those turnovers.

NU has turned it over at least 14 times in five of its last six games and only did so once through its first seven contests.

“We can’t turn the ball over as much as we are right now and have a chance in these Big Ten games,” Hoiberg said.