Nebraska earned its title as one of the most predictably unpredictable teams in all of college basketball even more on Saturday, as the Huskers once again were all over the board in a wild 62-57 loss at Northwestern.

After knocking off Iowa at home on Tuesday, NU traveled to take on a Northwestern team that was winless in Big Ten play. Yet the Wildcats dominated the game for the first 20 minutes and led by as many as 18 points in what looked to be another lopsided road blowout for head coach Fred Hoiberg’s squad.

Nebraska flipped the script in the second half, though, and came back with a furious late rally to make it a three-point game in the final minute. But the Huskers couldn’t finish the comeback and dropped to 7-9 overall and 2-3 in Big Ten Conference play.

“It’s a great lesson for our guys that you have to have urgency for 40 minutes,” Hoiberg said on his post-game show on the Husker Sports Network. “We guarded the heck out of them in the second half and showed what we’re capable of…

“But you give them those easy looks early in the game… We didn’t do a good enough job.”

Northwestern (6-9, 1-4) came into the game that ranked dead last in the Big Ten in scoring (67.1 points per game), 11th in field goal percentage (42.6), and 10th in 3-point percentage (31.0).

Yet Nebraska provided the just what the Wildcats were looking for, as they started the game off with one of their best halves of the season offensively.

Nebraska actually got off to a decent start with a quick 7-2 lead out of the gates, but it was all downhill from there. Northwestern quickly erased the deficit with a 12-2 run and then followed that up with a 16-1 rally to take a commanding 36-19 lead with 4:26 remaining in the half.

The Huskers went into halftime down 42-27, marking the Wildcats’ highest first-half point total of the season. Northwestern, which hadn’t made more than 10 3-pointers in a game all year, shot 8-of-14 from behind the arc in the first half alone.

Nebraska again got out to a hot start to open the second half and scored 12 points in the first five minutes to trim a once 18-point deficit down to eight on a layup by junior Thorir Thorbjarnarson.

But the Huskers followed that up by going nearly five minutes without making a field goal and allowed Northwestern to extend its lead back up to 14 with 10 minutes left to play.

“I thought our pace was really good (to start the second half), but again, we got stops,” Hoiberg said. “When you get stops, you can get out and run. When you’re taking it out of the net, it’s hard to get that same type of pace and tempo to get the ball down the floor before the defense gets set. We’ve shown we’re so much better when we get out in transition, and we got some of those opportunities by getting those stops in the second half.”

Down 12 with less than four minutes on the clock, though, Nebraska rallied with three straight 3-pointers from Matej Kavas, Kevin Cross, and Cam Mack to make it a one-possession game at 60-57 with just 51 seconds to go.

The Huskers were able to get a key defensive stop and had a chance to tie it, but Dachon Burke 3-pointer with 12 seconds left was off the mark after a questionable no-call from the officials.

Miller Kopp knocked down two free throws on the other end to seal the game for Northwestern, as Nebraska fell to 0-4 in true road games this season.

Mack led NU with 11 points, 10 rebounds, and seven assists while Haanif Cheatham was the only other Husker to score in double figures with 10 points.

Cross and Kavas both added nine points off the bench, while Kopp scored a game-high 15 points for the Wildcats.

After a blistering first half, Northwestern went cold after halftime and shot 26.7 percent from the field and made just 2-of-15 3-pointers. But prior to those three late 3-pointers, Nebraska made just one field goal over a stretch of nearly nine minutes.

The Huskers will stay on the road with a trip to take on Ohio State on Tuesday. Tip for that game is set for 5:30 p.m. CT and will be televised on FS1.

“We’re going to have to come out and play a full 40-minute game,” Hoiberg said. “The inconsistency on the defensive end cost us tonight. We had 20 very poor minutes and 20 excellent minutes. You’ve got to string together 40 minutes if you’re going to have a chance to win on the road.”

1. Nebraska's first-half defense was inexcusable

Yes, Nebraska was able to trim an 18-point deficit down to three with a strong second-half rally, but it wasn't good enough to erase how disastrous the first 20 minutes of that game was.

All of the things the Huskers did in their upset over Iowa, especially on the defensive end, were non-existent on Saturday. Part of it was Northwestern making a surprising amount of shots early, but much of that was caused by lazy closeouts and rotations that provided numerous open looks for the Wildcats.

When Northwestern did miss in the first half, it countered by holding a 9-0 edge in second-chance points.

Iowa missed a bunch of shots, sure, but the Huskers were aggressive and swarming on nearly every Hawkeye possession, and that effort had a major impact in NU controlling that game from start to finish.

When Nebraska comes out with the level of defensive energy it showed in the first half vs. Northwestern, there's not a team in this conference that won't exploit it to the fullest. Even one of the worst offensive teams in the league.

2. It wasn't just the defense, either

While Nebraska played great defense in its win over Iowa, it also complemented that with a strong effort on offense, shooting nearly 50 percent from the field and making 10 3-pointers.

But the team we saw on Saturday reverted back to the one that showed up in the other ugly true road game losses.

The Huskers shot just 31.3 percent from the field vs. Northwestern, marking their second-worst clip of the season ahead of only its 29-percent effort in the opener vs. UC-Riverside.

That included going 10-of-21 on layups and 11-of-27 on shots in the paint and making just one field goal over a span of 7:32 in the second half.

After the game, Hoiberg said he liked most of the looks his team got, especially on the drive-and-kicks that were such a big part of the offensive game plan going in. But the Huskers just missed too many of them, wasting one chance after another to complete the comeback.

3. Green's absence shows there's probably more to the story

Jervay Green did not play a single second on Saturday for the second straight game, and now it's becoming pretty clear that his situation goes beyond Nebraska just playing its best lineups.

The junior guard traveled to Northwestern after watching all of the Iowa game from the bench. Hoiberg said after Tuesday's win that Green didn't play because NU wanted to use the rotation that was so effective in previous games vs. Indiana and Purdue when Green was suspended.

Well, Nebraska was pretty bad all day against the Wildcats and Green still never saw the floor.

The Huskers stuck with an eight-man rotation for the second-straight game, so maybe it's a matter of wanted to pair down the lineup going forward. But given how poorly pretty much everyone was shooting on Saturday, it probably wouldn't have hurt much to give Green - who is still averaging 9.2 points per game - a chance to try and provide a spark.

Of course, that's unless there's more to the story as to why Green is not playing.