Miles preaches perspective after another tough loss

For the second time this season, Nebraska found itself sitting in an opponent’s visitor locker room wondering how they had just let an important victory slip away.

After blowing a 13-point lead in the second half to fall at Minnesota a month early, the Huskers again failed to capitalize on a number of opportunities in a 74-72 loss at Maryland on Wednesday night.

While the Terrapins dominated the glass 38-28 and made eight 3-pointers on 47-percent shooting from behind the arc, NU still left College Park, Md., knowing it was another crucial conference road game it should have won.

“They’re disappointed,” head coach Tim Miles told reporters after the game. “You hear the celebration in the opposing locker room, and it’s disappointing that you probably played well enough to win, but you just didn’t do enough little things… We had our opportunities, but we just didn’t capitalize.”

Nebraska still holds a strong 11-3 overall record, but it dropped to 1-2 in Big Ten play and still has just one true road victory on its resume.

The good news for the Huskers is they still have 17 more games remaining in arguably the best conference in college basketball, so plenty of future chances await. In fact, three of NU’s next five games will be away from Pinnacle Bank Arena this month alone.

Of Nebraska’s seven remaining games in January, six will be against teams currently ranked in the top 50 by KenPom.com. Even after Wednesday’s loss, KenPom still projects the Huskers to win 12 of their final 17 Big Ten contests.

The hard part for Miles and his staff is making sure the players keep their focus on the long haul and don’t get derailed by a couple early bumps in the road.

“That it’s going to happen eight more times, and that might be this month,” Miles said of his message to the team after another frustrating road performance. “This is the way it goes. You just have to look ahead, bounce back against Iowa, and get ready to go…

“We played well enough to win both games on the road, and we haven’t. But it’s early in the year, and you’ve got to look at it from a global, big-picture perspective and say, listen, this is just the way it’s going to be, and it’s a good problem to have.”