When it comes to the sports world, being known for one thing above all others is more often than not something you’d like to avoid. Case in point, Nebraska Cornhuskers basketball.
Sure, the Huskers have a famous head coach (Fred Hoiberg) and a cool nickname (Nebrasketball!), but if you ask the average college hoops fan the one thing they know about the program, most will respond with this: Nebraska is the only power conference program in the sport that has never won a game in the NCAA Tournament.
That’s a heavy stigma to bear.
And this isn’t one of those situations where the program has been absurdly close time and time again, making the blot on their escutcheon horribly misleading.
Nebraska has played in the NCAA Tournament just eight times. The closest they’ve come to winning a game in the Big Dance was an 89-84 upset loss to 14th-seeded Xavier in the first round of the 1991 tournament. That team, which was a No. 3 seed, is the only Husker squad to ever earn better than a 6-seed for March Madness. Despite its first season coming in 1896-97, Nebraska has won just seven regular season conference championships, with the most recent coming in 1950. A surprise run in the 1994 Big Eight conference tournament represents their one and only league tournament championship.
At this specific moment in time, however, Nebraska fans would like you to be aware of some other things.
For starters, the 10th-ranked Cornhuskers are 15-0 and one of the six remaining unbeatens in college basketball. They’d also like you to know that Hoiberg’s team owns the nation’s longest active winning streak at 19 games (shoutout to the 2025 College Basketball Crown tournament champions). Lastly, they’re very proud of the fact that Nebrasketball is 4-0 in Big Ten play for the first time ever, and just won a game as a top 10 team in the AP poll for the first time since March 1, 1966.
For the folks in Lincoln, this is obviously cause for celebration.
For the outside world, it’s cause for examination and question asking.
Can they really be this good?
Is this finally the year?
Should Nebraska be the temporary love of every college basketball fan who doesn’t have a solidified favorite team?
The predictive metrics aren’t quite as sold on the Cornhuskers as the human pollsters are. They currently sit at No. 20 on KenPom and No. 21 over at Bart Torvik. Still, Nebraska’s overall resume at this point in the season is solid. They didn’t exactly face a murderer’s row during the non-conference portion of the year, but they still managed to notch solid wins over the quartet of Oklahoma, Kansas State, New Mexico and Creighton. They were also never really threatened in any of their buy games.
But it’s been the early days of conference play where the Huskers have really shown their merit.
They pummeled Wisconsin by 30 in their opener and then put the entire country on notice three days later with an 83-80 road upset of then-No. 13 Illinois. In the last week they’ve dispatched of Michigan State in a 58-56 rock fight, and then gone on the road to take down Ohio State (72-69) in a game where they were once again an underdog. Still, they’re expected to be a slight underdog yet again when they face unranked Indiana in Bloomington on Saturday.
So what in the world has happened to allow Hoiberg to make the move from one of the hottest seats in college basketball a few years ago to … this?
For starters, they already had a bit of momentum coming into the year. Hoiberg took himself off the hot seat by making the NCAA Tournament in 2024 — the Huskers took a 98-83 first round loss to Texas A&M in an 8/9 game — and then won 21 games and a postseason tournament (again, shoutout to the College Basketball Crown) a year ago.
In 2025-26, Hoiberg seems to have found the perfect mix of returning contributors and impactful imports.
In his second season with the program, big man Rienk Mast is playing the best basketball of his five-year college career. Despite dealing with a lingering knee injury, the Netherlands native is averaging a career-best 16.3 ppg and hit the biggest shot of the team’s emotional win over Michigan State. Sam Hoiberg, the coach’s son, has taken a sizable step forward as a senior. When he gets going, Iowa transfer Pryce Sandfort is about as talented an offensive player as there is in the Big Ten. Jamarques Lawrence — who played two seasons at Nebraska and then one at Rhode Island before returning to Lincoln for his senior season — is Mr. consistency and provides the type of poise and stability that every power conference contender has to have. And then Lincon native Braden Frager has been far more impactful as a redshirt freshman than his recruiting rankings (No. 253 in the class of 2024 according to On3) indicated he’d be.
All of these parts have come together to create a team that may not do any one thing exceptionally, but so far, has done everything well enough to be 15-0.
“These guys have been professional,” Fred Hoiberg said after the team’s win in Columbus earlier this week. “That’s the biggest thing that I give them credit for throughout this stretch is nobody’s getting too high. If things turn the other way, I’m confident that they won’t get too low. That’s what it takes. Great teams find a way to win these games, and I’m proud of how the guys have responded to this point. We’re pretty much at the halfway point now, and we’ve got a lot of work in front of us. “
Whether Hoiberg wants to address it or not (he doesn’t), everyone associated with the program is fully aware that the second half of the season could be one loaded with history for the Huskers. It’s history that would be a long time coming for a fan base that has ranked in the top 15 in home attendance in 11 of the last 12 years, despite not having nearly as much to celebrate as the other programs that can lay claim to the same distinction.
While Nebraska football continues to struggle for the right combination of coaches, players, whatever to bring itself back to the place in the sport’s hierarchy where its fans believe it should be, Cornhusker hoops is discovering the same thing Indiana football has: Who you’ve been doesn’t have to matter anymore.
What Nebrasketball appears to be, at least for the time being, is a team that has the level of cohesiveness and defensive intensity necessary to do the one thing that no Cornhusker team before it has been able to do.
Dangerous as it may be, it certainly feels like this is the year to believe.
