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Nebraska shows it’s a tourney contender

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It’s been a while since Husker Nation could turn it’s lonely eyes to the Cornhusker basketball program to cure the doldrums of a bad sports year. Lincoln, Nebraska is almost assuredly a football town. 40+ years of success will do that to a community. So it seems odd that Doc Saddler’s boys would be the team that many Husker fans are pinning their hopes on for some honest to goodness joy this Holiday Season.

Coming off this Saturday’s huge victory over nationally ranked Oregon, Nebraska is quickly becoming a basketball school, at least for the time being. There hasn’t been this level of excitement surrounding the Men’s hoops team since the glory days of Danny Nee, when a first round exit from the NCAA tournament was considered under achieving.

It’s been almost a decade since Nebraska so much as sniffed a ticket to the big dance, and if things continue to go swimmingly, an at large bid to the field of 65 should be in the offing.

Oregon was a good win, but it was hardly the only win that Nebraska can put on its resume, the manhandling of another Pac-10 foe seems almost equally impressive after Arizona State, a 15 point loser to Nebraska a month ago, dominated 17th ranked Xavier in a game directly following the ‘Huskers’ win.

Even a win over a middle of the road Rutgers team isn’t as easily attained as it has been in the past.

Nebraska is all but assured an 11-2 non-conference record, as the Cornhuskers’ next three opponents have a combined 4-28 record. Nebraska’s next opponent, North Carolina Central, has surrendered 100 points three times this season, and has lost by 20 or more points in 11 of its 13 games. Alcorn State has the “best” record of the Huskers next three opponents, yet has no wins against division one teams, and has lost by an average of 26 points in going 1-6. And finally there’s Maryland-Eastern Shore, which has allowed 100 points twice, and 98 points once in going 2-10 on the year.

If Nebraska loses any of those three, or even struggles to win, they don’t deserve to go to the Tournament anyway.

Perhaps playing teams of that caliber is not the best way to ramp up for the Big 12 conference, especially when you play Kansas twice over a two week stretch, but if this basketball season has taught us anything, its that confidence is contagious, and Nebraska should have a ton of confidence when they take on the Jayhawks.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 17th, 2007 at 10:51 am and is filed under Other Basketball News, Basketball Game Recap (2007), Husker Basketball. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.