Nebraska Basketball: Potential impact of landing transfer Keyontae Johnson
By Bryan Mauro
No Open Scholarships
As I type this on 08/17/2022, the 2022 Nebraska Cornhuskers and head coach Fred Hoiberg do not have an open scholarship. In the Big Ten, you can over-sign, but the Huskers will need to be down to the allotted 13 scholarship player limit before practice begins for the season. This is going to be a tough decision for coach Hoiberg to make because often these decisions will come back to haunt you.
If Nebraska does decide to take on the wing, they are going to have to pull the scholarship of a player who has been with the team and been practicing with the team this summer. Those moves are things that can make a team turn on you in no time and can affect team chemistry, especially if the player doesn’t work out.
Coach Hoiberg is also in a tough position here as he has not performed the best in his first three years as the leader of the Nebraska program. He must find the best players who are going to work now and who will turn the team into a winner. He doesn’t have to make the NCAA tournament but finishing .500 overall would go a long way towards showing the administration that they made the right decision to bring him back and see this through. Coach Hoiberg doesn’t have the luxury that some others have when it comes to retooling the roster and trying new guys, especially guys who have not played basketball in 2 years.
Johnson has tons of upside if he is healthy, but the fact that adding him to the roster could come at a detriment to the team chemistry and at the reputation of coach Hoiberg. It isn’t going to sit well with the player who gets the unfortunate last cut, especially since that player has been working out with the team all summer and likely was a holdover from last season’s team. The player is not going to like it that the coaching staff feels they were so easy to replace.
Aside from that, team chemistry is important. If Johnson doesn’t fit well with the Huskers already and doesn’t get along with the players this could end badly.