Nebraska Basketball: 3 keys to beating Texas A&M in 2024 NCAA Tournament
By Bryan Mauro
Focus on the Game
Everyone knows the committee loves stories and things to get written about. Well, if they were looking for a story about Nebraska and Texas A&M pairing those two teams together is a story enough. Yes, they are former Big 12 foes, and both teams have a superstar who is going to get talked about in the NCAA tournament. Nebraska with Keisei Tominaga and Wade Taylor IV for the Aggies. Each team has huge wins that got them to this point. Nebraska beating Purdue and Wisconsin and the Aggies beating Kentucky twice and Tennessee to secure their 9 seed. Those are all great things to write about but there is another thing that ties the school’s together forever that the committee absolutely knew about, and the casual fan may not know about.
That is that current Texas A&M Athletic Director, since last Wednesday evening, is Trev Alberts. Alberts was most recently the Athletic Director at Nebraska. The man who is responsible for not firing coach Hoiberg two seasons ago when things were getting bad, the man who hired current football coach Matt Rhule, and the man who left Nebraska without any warning and without much of a reason given. I know that Alberts can do what he wants but his departure so close to the NCAA tournament and the start of football season has left a very sour taste in the mouth of many at Nebraska. It is something that is going to get written about and talked about ad nauseum for the next couple of days because it is a big story leading up to the game.
The Huskers need to block all of that out and focus on the Aggies Basketball team not the Athletic Director of that said team. As center Rienk Mast said “we are playing the Texas A&M Basketball team not the Athletic Director.” That is the proper attitude to have given that the Aggies will present some challenges to Nebraska especially if they are not ready to play. The stories are for the media, the game is for the players. The stage will be big, and it is nothing that any of the players for Nebraska have ever experienced. Block all of that out and focus on the task at hand and go win the first NCAA tournament game in school history. If the Huskers do that no one will be talking about who the Athletic Director used to be, they will only be talking about the basketball team.