3 thoughts on huge Nebraska basketball win over UCLA

Nebraska basketball feels unbeatable inside the Vault and only reinforced that idea with a 66-58 win over UCLA on Saturday to improve to 2-1 in Big Ten play.

The Huskers have beaten ranked team after ranked team inside the Vault, including No. 1 Purdue last season. On Saturday, UCLA started the game on a 7-0 run. Nebraska answered with 13 straight and eventually, the score was tied at halftime.

In the second half, the Nebraska defense overwhelmed UCLA. The Bruins shot just 14 percent (4-of-28) from 3-point range. The Huskers didn’t shoot the lights out, but they earned 16 more free throw attempts and gutted out a 66-58 win.

Brice Williams led the Huskers with 16 points, 11 of which came at the free-throw line. Andrew Morgan scored 12 off the bench. Rollie Worster pitched in with 11 and Juwan Gary added 10.

It wasn’t beautiful, but it will look pretty on the NCAA tournament resume. Here are three thoughts.

Nebraska basketball defense was suffocating

UCLA missed some shots, but Nebraska was all over the place defensively. The rotations were crisp and so were the closeouts. I thought the Huskers communicated extremely well on defense and didn’t give away many easy buckets.

They also made plays like Juwan Gary’s block and steal to end the game.

The Bruins shot 62 percent on 2-point attempts. Nebraska shot 37 percent. You usually don’t win doing that but the Huskers forced nearly half of UCLA’s attempts (28 of 57) from 3-point range and the Bruins only made four.

That and getting to the free-throw line 29 times was enough. It was a Big Ten grind-it-out game if there ever was one and the Huskers were the tougher, more disciplined team, simple as that. They held UCLA to 0.82 points-per-possession which is the definition of suffocating defense.

The Huskers won with fundamentals

Nebraska basketball’s defense will get much of the credit for the win, deservedly so. But the Huskers were just better fundamentally in critical areas. UCLA is one of the best teams in college basketball at forcing turnovers, but the Huskers turned it over just 13 times compared to 15 for UCLA.

Nebraska also out-rebounded the Bruins, shot more free throws, and had just 16 fouls compared to 24 for the Bruins. That’s a formula for success against just about anyone.

Nebraska is building an NCAA tournament resume

According to the NET rankings, the Huskers now have two quad-1 wins. The first was over Creighton, however, the Bluejays have dropped off. Hopefully, they won’t fall out of the top 75.

Still, with the neutral court win over Oregon State, Nebraska basketball has four wins over top-70 teams in the NET rankings and away from home. All four were by at least eight points and three of them were by double digits.

UCLA feels like one of the best teams in the Big Ten. The Bruins certainly have one of the best defenses, along with Nebraska. But in a wide-open year for the league, it feels like the Huskers could aim higher than just making the NCAA tournament.

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