It was an ugly night for the offenses. Neither the Nebraska Cornhuskers nor the Michigan Wolverines were able to crack 50 points during their meeting in Lincoln on Monday night. In the end, it was the Wolverines who walked away with the win.
For Nebraska, it was another frustrating loss. That made for losses three of the last four games for the Cornhuskers. Despite that, one of Nebraska’s stars, Brice Williams, made it clear to fans after the game that it’s not time to give up on the Cornhuskers yet.
“We’re still playing for something,” Brice Williams said. “It’s not like we have no chance at the conference tournament or NCAA Tournament. This isn’t the time to fall off the wagon.”
The Michigan game was a frustrating one for Nebraska fans. They shot just 25.8 percent from the field and 21.4 percent from three-point range. The Cornhuskers were also outrebounded. At the same time, it was an excellent defensive effort by Nebraska, forcing 14 Michigan turnovers and holding the Wolverines to just 29.5 percent shooting from the field too.
For his part, Williams finished the game with 23 points. He was the only player on Nebraska to score more than six total points in the loss. He also outscored anyone on Michigan for the game.
“So, I’m encouraged. Our defense was really good tonight. We rebounded really good tonight, we boxed out, we played physical, we played hard, we played with energy,” Williams said. “We did everything we didn’t do at Penn State. It didn’t come out in our favor but we really set ourselves up nice and had a chance at the end. So, no bad takeaways.”
A silver lining to the loss was that Brice Williams himself hit a milestone in the game. He became the 32nd Cornhuskers player to surpass 1,000 points in his career with the school.
With the loss, Nebraska dropped to 17-11 overall and 7-10 in Big Ten play. That puts them in a tie for 10th in the conference standings.
Notably, not every team is going to make the Big Ten Conference Tournament this year. Only 15 out of 18 teams in the conference will make the tournament with the bottom three being left out. As of now, those three schools are Northwestern, Penn State, and Washington. However, with last place Washington sitting at 4-12 in conference play and three games left for Nebraska, it’s not impossible for a disastrous end of the season to drop the Cornhuskers into the bottom three.
On top of that, in the latest bracketology, Nebraska is considered one of the First Four Out of the NCAA Tournament.
Nebraska will hope to bounce back on Saturday when the Cornhuskers are set to host the Minnesota Golden Gophers.
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