Brice Williams shouldered the load when his team needed him the most.

With their backs against the wall and needing a win to keep their NCAA chances alive, the Nebraska Cornhuskers were in Columbus, Ohio, on Tuesday night to play the Ohio State Buckeyes in the penultimate game of the regular season.

Williams, NU's 6-foot-7 star guard, scored a career-high and Nebraska single-game record 43 points, but it wasn't enough. OSU had too many answers and NU's defense too few stops.

Behind four Buckeyes who scored at least 20 points, OSU escaped with a 116-114 win in double overtime inside the Value City Arena.

The loss extends NU's losing streak to four games and sets up a must-win situation Sunday in Lincoln against Iowa.

"We fought, we battled. Even though we dug ourselves into a little bit of a hole early in the game, we didn't hang our heads," NU head coach Fred Hoiberg told Huskers Radio Network following the game. "We need to finish this thing out the right way. We obviously have a huge one coming up on Sunday. Anything can happen in these conference tournaments."

Hoiberg said the locker room had a positive tone to it following the loss.

"Our guys, their heads were high in the locker room after the game," Hoiberg said. "Now we have to move on."

Due to the storms in the Nebraska area on Tuesday night, NU will stay in Columbus for the night before flying back to Lincoln.

It was a thriller of a game that will be overshadowed by controversial calls from the officiating crew of Brian Dorsey, Randy Richardson and Kelly Pfeifer, which had a couple no-calls late in the second overtime period that went against NU.

"They slam the ball on the ground and it goes above the basket, no call," Hoiberg said. "That just bothers me. And running on the sideline, I don't think it's allowed."

NU, a team coming off a short turnaround after playing Minnesota on Saturday, just didn't have enough firepower to get the win. Williams, who's making a strong case for first-team All-Big Ten, nearly willed the left-for-dead Huskers to a win by himself, but had good help from Juwan Gary, who added 24 points.

While Williams and Gary scored 67 of the 114 points, the Huskers didn't get enough from everyone else, who combined to score 47 points and shoot 44% (16-of-36) from the field and 4-of-13 from 3-point range.

Connor Essegian, who finished with 16 points, fought through a slow start before heating up in the second half and making three 3s.

With the two extra 5-minute periods, NU faced depth problems as fouls started mounting. Three Huskers fouled out on the night, including Rollie Worster, Sam Hoiberg and Berke Büyüktuncel, who again struggled with his shot by going 0-of-2 from 3 and 2-of-4 from the free-throw line.

There was another one of those patented slow starts for NU on Tuesday. At one point, OSU, which had fresh legs after not playing since Wednesday, had upped its lead to 11 points, 19-8, at the 12:52 mark of the first half.

But NU responded by going on a 17-8 run that included five points each from Gary and Essegian that helped put the Huskers just 2 points away from the Buckeye lead at 27-25. Gary and Williams each scored 12 points in the first half — Essegian added 7 points — to keep the Huskers in the game.

Nebraska went into halftime trailing 45-39 thanks to a deep 3 from OSU point John Mobley Jr., his third at that point in the game.

OSU again got its lead up to 11 points in the second half, but the trio of Williams, Gary and Andrew Morgan, who scored 11 points in the second stanza, led NU back. Williams had a chance to give his team the lead at the free throw line with 8 seconds left, but he wound up splitting the two opportunities and OSU couldn't score, sending the game into the first overtime.

"Unfortunately, his last one rolled out," Hoiberg said of Williams' second free throw. "But they didn't hang their heads in the huddle. They kept going out and swinging and clawing and fighting and battling, and that's what you need out of your team and that's what we're going to need on Sunday."

Of the 25 points NU scored in overtime, Williams had 20 of them and went 3-of-4 from 3.

"It hurts, there's no doubt about it," Hoiberg said of the loss. "This was a win we felt we had to get, so it hurts like hell."

Williams’ 42 points was his sixth career 30-point game. His previous high was 32 on two occasions. The school record Williams broke Tuesday night was Eric Piatkowski's. Piatkowski scored 42 against Oklahoma in the 1994 Big Eight Tournament.

"He was unbelievable," Hoiberg said of Williams. "That's All-Big Ten first-team. If that doesn't lock that up, I don't know what else you can do. He's just been so consistent for us, our go-to guy as a scorer. I thought defensively he was rock solid tonight as well. He's willed us to some big wins this year, and hopefully he has another big run in front of him."

Nebraska's regular-season finale is Sunday at 11:30 a.m. against the Iowa Hawkeyes in Lincoln.

It's a rematch from Jan. 7, when the Huskers traveled to Iowa City and blew a 15-point lead with 15 minutes left in the second half to lose 97-87 in overtime.

This could be a game where the winner qualifies for the 15-team Big Ten Tournament. The Hawkeyes, who are a game behind Nebraska with six league wins, will host No. 8 Michigan State on Thursday night.

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