New look Huskers ready for first taste of Creighton rivalry
ATLANTA – Nebraska hadn’t even boarded the bus to go from McCamish Pavilion back to the airport before the team’s focus turned to yet another big first.
Just three days after falling to Georgia Tech in their first true road game of the season, the Huskers will travel again on Saturday just 60 miles up I-80 to begin a new era of the NU-Creighton rivalry.
Because of Nebraska’s massive roster overhaul in the offseason, junior guard Thorir Thorbjarnarson is the only player on the roster who has ever experienced the series with the Bluejays. That was a for grand total of one minute and 13 seconds of action in last year’s 94-75 victory in Lincoln.
Even so, Thorbjarnarson knows as well as anyone what the rivalry means to the state, and he’s already trying to prepare his teammates for what to expect up in Omaha.
“I just have to make sure they’re on their toes,” Thorbjarnarson said. “I know this game means a lot in this state, and the atmosphere in those games is just ridiculous. I try to tell them, ‘we need to win this game.’”
While Saturday’s game will be a unique experience for everyone but Thorbjarnarson, he’s not the only one who has been a part of a heated in-state rivalry.
Head coach Fred Hoiberg has seen plenty of those environments as a both a player and a coach in the Iowa State-Iowa series. He went 3-1 against the Hawkeyes as a player from 1991-94 and 4-1 as the Cyclones’ head coach from 2010-14.
While Saturday will be his first time as an invested party in a Nebraska-Creighton game, Hoiberg already has an idea of what he’s getting into: “I know they’re going to be pretty similar.”
“Rivalry games are great,” Hoiberg said. “I was part of some really good ones as a player playing against the University of Iowa and then coaching in that same game. It really is a great experience to play and coach in those types of environments, and we know Creighton has one of the best home courts in college basketball…
“We’re going to have to stay together and hopefully get off to a hot start, because we know it’s going to be electric in there. These are fun games. I’ve always loved playing in those rivalries.”
Senior guard Haanif Cheatham is no stranger to this type of game, either. He made two starts at Marquette in the Golden Eagles’ rivalry series with Wisconsin, going 1-1 vs. the Badgers.
His victory against UW came on the road in 2015, when he played 35 minutes as a true freshman and helped his team pull out a 57-55 victory in Madison. Cheatham still remembers taking the floor in a hostile road rivalry, and he expects it to be just the same on Saturday.
“It’s an amazing feeling, especially going into the arena,” Cheatham said. “I know it’s probably going to be red and blue in there. It’s going to be a great thing. Rivalry games are great. We need to lock in these next couple days and be ready to rock and roll.”
Creighton has dominated Nebraska in recent years, winning seven of the last eight meetings to tie the all-time series at 26-26. Even though the rivalry will get a bit of a fresh start this year with the arrival of Hoiberg, the connections between the coaching staffs already run deep.
Greg McDermott coached at Iowa State from 2006-10, but he left Ames to take over at CU in 2010 and has been there ever since. When McDermott left ISU, it opened the door for Hoiberg to return to his alma mater.
When Hoiberg took the job with the Chicago Bulls, he coached McDermott’s son, former Bluejay star Doug McDermott, from 2015-17.
The two coaches have only faced each other one time in their careers, when Hoiberg’s Cyclones defeated McDermott’s Bluejays 91-88 on Nov. 21, 2010, at the Global Sports Hy-Vee Challenge in Des Moines, Iowa.
But for Hoiberg, his career will always be linked to McDermott and Creighton.
“I guess to goes even back to Dana Altman: if he hadn’t taken the job at Oregon, Greg may not have gone to Creighton and I might not have gotten the Iowa State job,” Hoiberg said. “It’s just kind of crazy how we’re connected in that.
“I’m looking forward to this rivalry. Greg’s a good friend of mine. I coached Doug for two and half years in Chicago and I loved coaching him. Yeah, I’m looking forward to it.”