Umm... Nebraska?
Maybe all that football failure was a set up to finally be mediocre at basketball
On Sunday, Nebraska beat Creighton.
That doesn’t quite cover it; Creighton never got out of first gear offensively and every single time they did anything to cut into a deficit the Cornhuskers possessed for most of the game, Nebraska scored, often easily, often at the basket, often without much defense in sight. Sam Griesel had an 18-12-7 stat line and Derrick Walker led all scorers with 22 points.
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This wouldn’t be news, for the most part. An unranked high-major team beat a highly-ranked high-major team on a neutral court. The only reason that sort of thing doesn’t happen more often is that big money spends much of November and December financing small money, because big money needs wins and small money needs… well, money. The fun power-versus-power games like Gonzaga-Texas? Those are the exception, not the rule. The rule is Texas Southern being a traveling 20-point home win for high-major schools in the name of Gettin’ Dem Checks.
Nebraska did its part to stimulate the basketball economy for Maine, Omaha and Arkansas-Pine Bluff in November, and also lost to Oklahoma, Memphis and St. John’s, because that is the sort of thing Nebraska basketball has spent a long time doing—beating the dregs, losing to good teams, mostly existing near the bottom of the Big 8/10/12/14 and its derivatives.
Nebraska also beat big-conference bottom-feeders like Florida State and Boston College in November, which should have had no bearing on anything. Except that Nebraska has no history of beating big-conference anyone, bottom feeder or otherwise. Except that doing so seems to have handed Nebraska the sort of unearned confidence a team that hasn’t finished above .500 since 2019 might need.