Nebraska coach Fred Hoiberg knows all too well about the dangers of the getaway game.
His 11-0 Cornhuskers, ranked 15th in the nation, are flying high after a dramatic win over then-No. 13 Illinois on Dec. 13. Their last game before Christmas comes Sunday against North Dakota in Lincoln, Neb.
Hoiberg dealt with a form of the getaway game when he coached the NBA’s Chicago Bulls — that last game before the All-Star break, it wasn’t always easy to keep his men concentrating on the job at hand.
But there’s a more recent and more visceral example he can point his players toward. Two years ago, Nebraska hosted North Dakota on Dec. 20, the final game before a brief Christmas break, and the Huskers did not play close to their best game.
Nebraska trailed North Dakota 42-32 at halftime that night and fell behind as many as 14 points, but it rallied to an 83-75 win. Hoiberg doesn’t want a similar close call this time.
“It’s been pretty easy, to be honest with you, to keep these guys focused with what happened a couple years ago in this exact same game, in the exact same scenario: having a week off and then facing a good North Dakota team that had us down 14 in the second half,” Hoiberg said.
There’s the complicating matter of Nebraska being one of the darlings of college basketball right now and the increased national attention that comes with that. The 11-0 start is the best in program history.
In the Cornhuskers’ last three games, they plowed through rival Creighton by 21, whipped Wisconsin by 30 in Lincoln, and then stunned Illinois on the road 83-80 on Jamarques Lawrence’s 3-pointer with less than two seconds to go.
All the more reason for a basketball team not to get complacent before going home for a short spell.
“It’s human nature,” Hoiberg said. “You look forward to having a few days off and getting an opportunity to spend time with your family, but you have to stay focused and go out and take care of business before your little, I guess, semi-vacation starts.”
Rienk Mast leads Nebraska with 17.9 points and 6.5 rebounds, while also averaging 3.0 assists per game. Pryce Sandfort has averaged 17.1 points per game and dropped a career-high 32 against Illinois.
North Dakota (5-9) has just three wins against Division I opponents this year, but one came on Thursday when the Fighting Hawks took down visiting Winthrop 90-88.
In similar fashion to Lawrence’s heroics for Nebraska, Eli King buried the go-ahead 3-pointer for North Dakota with five ticks on the clock. He had a career-high 25 points to lead all scorers.
King was a reserve on the North Dakota team two years ago that nearly pulled the upset of Nebraska. Lawrence also suited up in that game, scoring 14 for the Cornhuskers.
North Dakota records 10 steals per game, a top-25 mark in Division I. But Nebraska commits just 9.8 turnovers per game.
–Field Level Media
