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Searching for a Solution to Nebrasketball's Road Struggles
Nebraska men's basketball is currently at its best run in the Fred Hoiberg era. The Huskers are currently 15-5, fourth in the Big Ten standings, and on the road to qualify for their first NCAA tournament since 2014. Despite the team's early success, there’s been one glaring problem for the Big Red.
How the team performs away from Pinnacle Bank Arena.
When the Huskers play at PBA, they are one of the best teams in the country. NU boasts a 13-1 home record and has defeated high-quality teams such as Purdue, Northwestern and Michigan State. All three were ranked at some point this season.
But away from the vault, it’s a completely different story.
The team is one of four Big Ten Conference teams to be winless in league road matchups. Winning on the road in the Big Ten is hard—like really hard. Away teams in the Big Ten this year have combined for just 16 wins in 57 attempts. That's good for a road winning percentage of just 28%, which is the lowest of any power conference.
It’s also not like NU was given a bad draw regarding road opponents. Three of the Big Red’s four road games have come against teams in the league's bottom half: Rutgers (13th), Iowa (11th) and Minnesota (10th).
You might ask, "Matt, how do the Cornhuskers turn it around and win some big road games?" I have a couple of potential solutions.
FINISH
NU struggles to close out games. Nebraska held second-half, double-digit leads against both Minnesota and Rutgers and found a way to lose. This also isn’t a road-exclusive problem. Nebraska nearly blew another second-half, double-digit lead at home against Northwestern.
Nebraska has the luxury of having many offensive weapons. On any given night, Rienk Mast, Keisei Tominaga, Brice Williams and CJ Wilcher can go off.
It’s great, but it’s a double-edged sword. Every team in the country wants multiple guys who can contribute, but who is the closer? Who is the go-to guy when the team needs a bucket in crunch time? We’ve seen a couple of those guys play the role but no one has taken a hold of it. None of them have consistently put games on ice. If the Huskers are going to make a deep run in the Big Ten and finally win an NCAA tournament game, they need one of those guys to make the final four minutes of a game their time to shine.
REBOUND
Nebrasketball is one of the worst teams in the country at allowing offensive rebounds. Nebraska allows 10.1 offensive rebounds a game, ranking 310th out of 362 teams. In their four losses in hostile territory, they gave up 49 ORBs, totaling 53 second-chance points. Their total margin of second-chance points in their four losses is -18. They need to do a better job cleaning up their glass and ending possessions.
PRAY
Basketball is a weird sport. It's one of the few sports where you can do everything right for an entire possession and still have a negative outcome. Sometimes it's your night, and sometimes it's the other team's. Nebraska fell victim to the latter twice this season against the Badgers and Hawkeyes.
The Badgers shot 55% from the field and 50% from three. Iowa shot 52% from the field and 42% from behind the arc. You might think, “Well, they need to be a better defensive team.” That's partially true, as Nebraska’s defense hasn’t been as good or consistent as the unit was last year, but it is not a glaring problem. Both those games came down to the fact that the opposition was firing on all cylinders, and the Huskers couldn’t keep up. They can’t fully prevent that, and they have to pray it doesn’t happen often during this second stretch of the season.
Nebraska will get a chance to notch a conference road win Saturday at Maryland, albeit still without Juwan Gary who remains day-to-day. The Huskers and Terrapins tip at 11 a.m. CST and can be heard across the Huskers Radio Network, including 1400 AM & 99.3 FM KLIN in Lincoln.
