Nebraska came into Friday night’s Big Ten opener at Indiana playing in its third straight road game and on the heels of back-to-back ugly losses.

Just hours before tip-off, it was announced that starting guard Jervay Green had been suspended indefinitely.

But even though all signs pointed to another long night for the struggling Huskers, they ended up giving the Hoosiers all they could handle for 40 minutes and then some in a 96-90 overtime loss.

Trailing by six with just 42 seconds left, junior guard Dachon Burke knocked down two clutch 3-pointers – including one in the final seconds – to tie the game at 82-82 and send it into OT.

Nebraska eventually ran out of gas in the extra period, though, as Indiana’s size and depth in the post took control and eventually put the game away.

The loss marked NU’s fourth defeat over the past five games and dropped it to 4-6 on the season, but the fight the Huskers showed amid as much adversity as they’d seen all season was still an important step for head coach Fred Hoiberg’s squad.

“I’m so proud of those guys for coming out and fighting the way they did…” Hoiberg told the Husker Sports Network. “We were undermanned tonight, there’s no doubt about it, with what happened before the game (with Green). But those guys went out there and played their hearts out and left everything on the floor.

“If we play like that, we’re going to have a chance to win a lot of games.”

The game got off to an inauspicious start with Indiana jumping out to an 11-2 lead, capped off with an alley-oop dunk by Justin Smith that forced Hoiberg to call a timeout after just three minutes of play.

But unlike a week ago at Creighton, the Huskers settled down and got things under control with a 12-0 run of their own to take an early 16-13 lead.

A 3-pointer by junior Thorir Thorbjarnarson, who started in place of Green and scored a career-high 17 points, put NU up 34-31. Despite only making one more field goal over the final 4:15, Nebraska only trailed 40-39 at halftime.

Five Indiana turnovers in the first five minutes of the second half helped the Huskers go up 49-46 on a layup by senior Haanif Cheatham. But the Hoosiers answered right back with an 11-4 spurt to match their biggest lead yet at 57-53 with just under 12 minutes to play.

A free throw by freshman Yvan Ouedraogo pulled NU back to within 59-58, but once again, IU countered with a 6-0 run to push its lead back up to 71-63 with 4:18 remaining.

Just when it seemed like Nebraska was done, Thorbjarnarson scored five straight points and then a 3-pointer by Burke cut the deficit to 78-77 with just 36 seconds left in regulation.

Down by three with 10 seconds on the clock, Burke got the ball and drilled another 3-pointer as time expired to knot the score and send it to overtime.

Indiana’s duo of Trayce Jackson-Davis and Rob Phinisee combined to score 12 of the Hoosiers’ 14 points in the OT, and five IU second-chance points and some tough missed shots by Nebraska proved to be enough to finally put the game away.

“Any time you don’t win a game, it’s devastating, especially the way we lost it,” Hoiberg said. “But again, we showed a fight tonight against a big, physical team that’s playing great basketball, and we came into a hostile environment on the road and handled it so much better than we did our first opportunity at Creighton.

“So it is something that should be a confidence builder for our team because of the way we played. We played the right way and great things happened out there.”

Burke scored 17 of his season-high 25 points after halftime while Cheatham followed up with 21 points and sophomore point guard Cam Mack scored 15 with 10 assists.

But Jackson-Davis was the difference for Indiana, as he scored 22 of his team-high 25 points in the second half and overtime to go along with 15 rebounds and three blocked shots. Justin Smith also posted a double-double for IU with 16 points and 10 boards, while Phinisee added 16 points.

Nebraska won’t have much time to dwell on the loss, as it returns to action a little more than a day and a half later to host Purdue for its Big Ten home opener on Sunday. Tip-off is set for 3 p.m. and the game will be televised on BTN.

“That’s the message that we need to take from this: it should sting that we weren’t able to pull it off, but if we come out with that kind of effort every time we step on the floor, we’ll have a chance to win pretty much every night,” Hoiberg said.

1. Nebraska’s offense was as efficient as ever

After another slow start, Nebraska quickly climbed back against Indiana in large part to some of its best overall offensive execution of the season.

The Huskers shot a solid 44 percent from the field, but they also made 12 3-pointers and went 12-for-18 (66 percent) from the free-throw line, which we both big improvements from their season averages.

As much as anything, though, NU’s spacing and ball movement were excellent, which allowed it to get numerous good looks near the basket and set up open shots on the perimeter. Nebraska finished with 19 assists on 33 made baskets and only turned the ball over eight times.

When Hoiberg talks about playing with the level of offensive pace and flow he’s looking for, that performance was a pretty good snapshot of what he’s talking about.

2. The defense was there, but Indiana’s frontcourt was too much

Hoiberg and defensive coordinator Doc Sadler devised a nice gameplan for how to slow down Indiana’s offense, which came in scoring 80.3 points per game.

Hoiberg said the strategy was to change up between man and zone defenses even within a single possession to confuse the Hoosiers and then pack the paint to dare IU to beat them with 3-pointers.

Indiana came in only averaging 5.5 made 3-pointers on 16 attempts per game, and it went 5-for-25 from behind the arc on Friday night. The Huskers also forced IU into 15 turnovers that directly led to 21 Husker points.

But while the scheme was drawn up and executed exactly as planned, one thing Nebraska couldn’t account for was the Hoosiers’ clear advantage in size, strength, and depth in the low post.

Led by Jackson-Davis, IU scored 52 of its 96 points in the paint with the help of a 54-31 rebounding advantage and 19 offensive boards. That led to a 26-10 edge in second-chance points, including outscoring NU 21-5 in that department over the second half and overtime.

Indiana also drew 23 fouls and shot a whopping 38 free throws on the night, making 27 of them. That’s a product of just being bigger and stronger than your opponent, and it’s something Nebraska is going to struggle with almost every night in the Big Ten.

3. Green’s suspension added more unexpected adversity

Nebraska was already a heavy underdog entering its first Big Ten road game of the season, but the optimism dwindled even further after the team announcement just hours before tip-off that Jervay Green had been suspended indefinitely for a violation of team rules.

The junior guard started the first nine games of the season and ranked third on the team playing 31.6 minutes per contest. The 6-foot-3 Denver native averaged 10.3 points and 4.9 rebounds a game and led NU in both 3-pointers made (15) and attempted (51).

Green’s suspension, paired with the early transfer of freshman guard Samari Curtis earlier this week, left the Huskers with just eight available scholarship players and only one walk-on – freshman Charlie Easley – who wasn’t set to redshirt this year.

To Huskers’ credit, they battled in spite of Green’s absence with all nine of those available players seeing action on Friday night. Mack (45), Cheatham (41), Thorbjarnarson (41), and Burke (40) all played 40 or more minutes in the loss, with Ouedraogo getting a career-high 33 minutes.

While the fight and toughness were impressive, that workload also put NU further behind the Eightball heading into Sunday’s game vs. Purdue. Nebraska is going to have some very tired legs working on less than 24 hours of prep and recovery, while the Boilermakers will have had a full week off when they arrive in Lincoln.

Not having Green in the rotation could prove much more costly the next time out.