When Nebraska joined the Big Ten, it was greatly questioned as to how the sports teams would fare. The football team performed well, as did the women’s basketball team. The men’s basketball team however continued to struggle. Doc Seidler’s system just wasn’t working and it was time for him to go. With that, Nebraska set their sights on Tim Miles, then the head coach of Colorado State. Miles had turned the team around, from the bottom of their conference and turning them into an NCAA tournament team. Nebraska hoped that Miles would be able to do the same at Nebraska.

Led by solid defense and the now popular “Us Always” slogan donned by Nebraska on their warm-up shirts, Miles has turned the Husker program from bottom of the conference to top half of one of the toughest conferences in the country in only two years.

A very young team, with four out of five starters being underclassmen, Nebraska has a lot of room to grow. Led by Big Ten player of the year candidate Teran Petteway, Nebraska is using suffocating defense, strong shooting, and all around effort to turn the program 180 degrees and get the program headed the right way.

The new facilities might also help, with the opening of the Pinnacle Bank Arena, Nebraska has some of the best facilities in the country, and with over 15,000 fans cheering at every game, home court advantage is an understatement. Nebraska is 13-1 at home, their only loss to Michigan on a last second missed layup that would have won the game for the Big Red.  The Pinnacle Area and the always-loyal Husker fans are turning Nebraska into something that it has never been: a basketball state.

Nebraska has turned it around. From being picked by most everyone to finish last in the conference, Nebraska now finds themselves in the hunt for the NCAA tournament. Nebraska still has work to do, but it is not impossible to think of Nebraska becoming a respected program in the near future. Tim Miles is the perfect fit for Nebraska, and the young players that are there want to play for him, and the unity that the team has shows when they step on the court. It will be interesting to see how Nebraska finishes their season, with winnable games coming up before the big ten tournament. If the Huskers can win out, they are almost guaranteed a spot in the “Big Dance.” Nebraska is currently “on the bubble” on the ESPN bracketology, which means that if the teams for the tournament were picked today, Nebraska would just miss out on the tournament.

Nebraska basketball, or “Nebrasketball” as many call it, is on the way up, and there is no reason not to believe that with the young talent that the team has, that Nebraska will soon be a top 25 team.  #Nebrasketball