Nebraska men’s basketball got the slightest taste of March Madness in 2024.
But for the purposes of applying it to the coming season, it was plenty.
The Huskers experienced traveling to the NCAA Tournament, the increased attention and the heightened stakes that come with postseason play.
NU got its feet wet enough that coach Fred Hoiberg thinks the Huskers won’t be blinded by the brighter lights the next time they flick on. Entering his sixth season at Nebraska, he spent the previous two summers building mature, veteran teams that could make NU competitive late in the season. He attempted to do the same thing over the past three months, adding six players out of the transfer portal.
Now, the stakes are higher. The roster-building and tournament experience won’t mean anything without a payoff this year. Nebraska will assemble its current iteration for the first time in an organized capacity Wednesday. Its offseason workouts will be the first trial of many in Hoiberg’s eyes, an early step in the march back to March.
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“Our motto next year will be â€Take the next step,’” Hoiberg said. “We got there this year, but now we gotta go into March expecting to win games in the tournament, and that’s what we’re all gonna try to do, and it starts on June 12. That’s our first workout. That’s when it starts. It doesn’t start the first day of the season. It starts as soon as we hit that court next Wednesday.”
As is the nature of a program that builds through the portal as much as Nebraska, the team that steps onto the practice floor at Hendricks Training Complex on Wednesday will look different from the one last seen trudging off the court in Memphis. Still, it will once again be veteran-laden, filled with players Hoiberg sees as fitting the mold Sam Griesel, Emmanuel Bandoumel and Derrick Walker established two seasons ago.
Consequently, Rollie Worster (Utah) Andrew Morgan (North Dakota State) and Braxton Meah (Washington) all came aboard for their final seasons of college basketball, 11 years of experience among them.
It all means Nebraska will have plenty of candidates to fill the leadership void left by Josiah Allick and C.J. Wilcher’s departures. Rienk Mast is still with the team but won’t play as he recovers from knee surgery.
Hoiberg said the naturally introverted Brice Williams made strides as a leader last season, and Juwan Gary, the other returning starter, will be asked to use his voice on the floor more often. Worster’s gritty style of play goes hand-in-hand with leadership, and Connor Essegian, who spent the first two years of his college career at Wisconsin, brings more knowledge of what it takes to succeed in the Big Ten.
“I think this team is full of leaders from what I’ve seen, and just talking to coaches or support staff at their previous schools, and I think we’re gonna have a lot of guys that can lead this team,” Hoiberg said. “And you want your returners to be really good in that area.”
The first four-week summer workout session will revolve mostly around individual skill development, shooting and passing fundamentals and footwork. The coaching staff won’t start introducing schematic aspects until close to the end of the session. In July, Nebraska will conduct more typical practices before players get some time off and things ramp back up in September.
Nebraska has taken the proverbial next step in each of the past two seasons, from doormat to respectable Big Ten team to the NCAA tournament for the first time in a decade. To move forward from there would mean winning a tournament game for the first time in program history.
Adding to the challenge of building on past successes is the constant turnover of a program that prioritizes experience as it constructs a roster. New players have to step up. Old ones have to get comfortable with a different set of teammates. Wednesday will mark the first step in doing so — the first step toward the next step Hoiberg seeks.
“I’m excited about our group,” Hoiberg said. “I’m not gonna put any — as far as goals on this team, as far as ceilings on this team. I think with the makeup of this group, I think we’ve got a chance to hopefully improve on what we did a year ago.”