3 takeaways from another ugly road loss for Nebraska basketball

Nebraska basketball was brutal on Saturday and got dominated on the road by Maryland. Here are three takeaways.

At some point, you expect Nebraska basketball to look like an NCAA tournament team on the road. But that wasn’t the case on Saturday as the Huskers were blown out by Maryland.

Nebraska was off to a promising start, scoring 12 of the game’s first 14 points. The first 15 points from the Huskers came from beyond the 3-point line. However, that would be a theme. Nebraska settled for way too many deep shots. They also turned the ball over and failed to defend the 3-point line, again.

It was a lot of the same mistakes and that’s what made it so frustrating. Wisconsin is coming to the Vault next, followed by road games against Illinois and Northwestern. A four-game losing streak could be staring this team directly in the face if they don’t wake up and figure out how to play on the road.

Here are three takeaways from the loss to Maryland.

Nebraska won’t make the NCAA tournament if it can’t win on the road

Nebraska basketball has 10 games left. Five of those are on the road and five are at home. They might have to sweep those five home games but even that might not be enough to make the tournament.

The Huskers have blown opportunities in winnable road games against Rutgers and Minnesota in Big Ten play and with each bad performance on the road (this is the third double-digit loss in five games) the committee will ding them for it.

In some road games, the offense has been bad. Some games, the defense but on Saturday, it was everything and it was a disaster.

Turnovers doomed Nebraska

The lack of a true point guard has hurt Nebraska all season. In nine of 10 Big Ten games, the Huskers have turned the ball over at least 10 times. On Saturday, that number was 18 (Maryland got 25 points off turnovers), and many of them were in the first half when the Huskers couldn’t muster any offense.

At one point, Maryland had three different 7-0 runs in the game. The Terps dominated the battle of second-chance points. They also doubled their production at the 3-point line. Maryland averaged 5.4 3-pointers made per game coming in and hit 11.

That’s not a surprise either because Nebraska allows more 3-pointers to opponents in Big Ten play than any other team. The Huskers had a chance to prove they were an NCAA Tournament team on Saturday and a squad that could contend for a top-4 spot in the Big Ten standings and they failed to take advantage.

All or nothing

The shot selection wasn’t great at times. Nebraska made 10 3-pointers in the game but attempted just 43 shots total. 21 of those attempts were 3-pointers. The Huskers made just 7-of-22 shots from inside the arc. Not a single starter reached double figures and the only player who did was C.J. Wilcher with 14 points on 4-of-6 shooting from 3-point range.

Nebraska’s defense was terrible. The Huskers couldn’t take care of the ball and they were out-rebounded by 18. It was a butt whopping in every sense of the word and leaves more questions than answers as Nebraska gets ready to host 13th-ranked Wisconsin on Thursday.

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