Year three of the Fred Hoiberg era is about to begin for the Nebraska Basketball team, and for the first time as a head coach, Hoiberg has finally been able to have a full offseason. In his first season, he was given the impossible task of a complete rebuild and needed to assemble an entire team in about 2 months. He was able to get some quality talent that year but a lot of it never worked out at Nebraska and the chemistry was never there.
Last season was a lost season as Covid 19 took away any offseason that Nebraska would have had. The team last year was young and had a lot of new pieces so not having an offseason to come together hurt them badly. This year though the offseason is going to help this team build up the needed chemistry and has a chance to surprise a lot of people in the Big Ten.
Nebraska has been through it all in three short years. They have had the worst two seasons in the school history. The Huskers also had a 26-game conference losing streak which ended with Nebraska losing 31 out of a possible 32 games in the Big Ten in that stretch. Nebraska does not rebound well, and they have a hard time defending the three-point line.
Those things coupled with the extreme roster turnover and their inability to run consistent offense their first two seasons under Hoiberg have led to 14 wins in two seasons. This year things are looking up as they have more experience and the best recruiting class that has ever played at Nebraska.
Coach Hoiberg loves to run the floor and loves to shoot threes. That is still the offense Nebraska has been running, but they have yet to have found any legitimate threats from deep and they have yet to find a high-volume scorer, with good efficiency numbers. This year those things appear to be changing as through the first look at the Huskers they have some guys who can really shoot the ball and they do have a point guard and one of the top recruits in the country to alleviate the high volume scoring problem.
Nebraska has expectations, at least within the athletic department, for the first time under Hoiberg and the fans may finally get to see what they all envisioned when Hoiberg took the job. Nebraska could hold some massive sleeper ability if everyone stays healthy.