OKLAHOMA CITY \u2014 Nebraska coach Fred Hoiberg sets the standard for calm and measured among the 16 head coaches left in the NCAA Tournament.<\/p>\n
Dan Hurley, Tom Izzo, Rick Pitino, Brad Underwood, Kelvin Sampson, Rick Barnes and Sean Miller need not apply. Hoiberg\u2019s adversary Thursday in Houston, Iowa\u2019s Ben McCollum \u2014 in the first Sweet 16 ever for Nebraska and first in 27 years for Iowa \u2014\u00a0just sent it right back the other way to vicious trash-talker Todd Golden amid a shocker over Florida. Of the rest, demeanors vary, but only Hoiberg can yell at officials and still manage to do it in a sort of friendly way.<\/p>\n
But no, he isn\u2019t always like that.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, there\u2019s an intense side that you guys don\u2019t really see at all,\u201d Nebraska guard Jamarques Lawrence said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s very kind of level in front of the media and everything, but he\u2019s actually a pretty goofy guy,\u201d said Hoiberg\u2019s son and starting point guard, Sam Hoiberg, citing his father\u2019s behavior during epic family sessions of the board game Catch Phrase. \u201cHe\u2019s kind of the family clown.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fred Hoiberg himself has bristled when asked if he yells at his team \u2014 of course he does \u2014\u00a0and last week gave a real-life example of emotions getting the better of him: the \u201cmeltdown\u201d he would have as a kid on the rare occasions his beloved Nebraska Cornhuskers football team would lose. As with the screamers left in the field, there\u2019s more to the person than relatively brief public glimpses convey.<\/p>\n
The next question is whether there\u2019s more to his program. The next one after that: How much more? South Region No. 4 seed Nebraska (28-6) is a rubber-match victory over No. 9 seed Iowa (23-12) away from following up the first NCAA Tournament win<\/a> in program history and the first Sweet 16 with the first Elite Eight \u2014 and if No. 3 seed Illinois (26-8) beats No. 2 seed Houston (30-6) on the other side, the Huskers would square up for a Final Four spot against another team they split with, winning on the road.<\/p>\n This is the best story, the closest thing to a Cinderella, remaining in the tournament. That\u2019s because of the program history unfolding. It\u2019s the fact Nebraska fans are beyond melting down about football losses and deserved something like this. It\u2019s Hoiberg\u2019s own history \u2014 a grandfather who used to coach Nebraska basketball and another who taught sociology at the university \u2014 and the family experience he\u2019s sharing with Sam and Sam\u2019s twin brother, graduate manager Charlie.<\/p>\n It\u2019s the seven-year journey to this point, including two seven-win seasons, a pay cut and a philosophy change<\/a>. And it\u2019s the general likability at hand. You\u2019ve got the Hoibergs but also Lawrence returning home to his rightful basketball home after a year at Rhode Island, and Pryce Sandfort starring after playing with his brother as a reserve at Iowa, and Lincoln\u2019s own fiery freshman Braden Frager scoring the basket to beat Vanderbilt in a classic, and Rienk Mast leading and facilitating on a knee <\/a>that probably shouldn\u2019t allow him to play.<\/p>\n Now the idea is to make this the norm. To cease reducing lifelong fans to tears with each March triumph. To get less likable.<\/p>\n Moments after Thursday\u2019s win over Troy to taste the first NCAA Tournament success in nine all-time Nebraska attempts, that\u2019s what athletic director Troy Dannen was talking about outside the victorious locker room \u2014 sustained success.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s found the formula for winning at Nebraska,\u201d Dannen said of Hoiberg. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of (recruits) who are gonna like the way that the program treats the athletes, and the way the fans treat the athletes.\u201d<\/p>\n Hoiberg has two four-star, top-100 recruits signed for next season in 6-foot-8 Colin Rice from Waukee, Iowa \u2014 Sandfort\u2019s hometown \u2014 and 6-foot-5 Jacob Lanier from Little Rock, Ark. Hoiberg beat out Iowa and Illinois for Rice, and TCU and Ole Miss for Lanier. Those are quality adds. But Hoiberg\u2019s here with an old team right now, will lose three foundational seniors from this team and, like most other coaches, must count on transfer-portal scores each spring.<\/p>\n Nebraska general manager Luca Virgilio said the NCAA Tournament success \u201cwill definitely help the perception out there\u201d of Nebraska basketball. It also gives Hoiberg a platform to sell. He took advantage in Oklahoma City.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat it does to help us moving forward, I don\u2019t know,\u201d Hoiberg said. \u201cWe live in a weird world right now with NIL and all those different things, and the portal, that we deal with. But it doesn\u2019t hurt. I think the system and the style that we play, if you\u2019re a skilled big, it\u2019s a great system for you. \u2026 If you can shoot the basketball, you see what Pryce is doing in our system this year, and Braden, and multiskilled players. Yeah, I mean, when everything opens up and we try to reconstruct the roster, we\u2019ll talk a lot about this. We\u2019ll have edits and be able to show potential recruits on what it looks like if they come here.\u201d<\/p>\n They\u2019ll have financial discussions, too, of course. As fulfilling as this season has been for Nebraska, the view from the Sweet 16 also reminds of the difficulty of the neighborhood.<\/p>\n Look at what McCollum did in his first season in Iowa City. Look at Dusty May\u2019s two-year rocket ship of success at Michigan. Izzo at Michigan State, Underwood at Illinois, Matt Painter at Purdue \u2014 they aren\u2019t going anywhere.<\/p>\n And football school Indiana hasn\u2019t stopped investing in the search for its former hardwood glory. Same with basketball school Nebraska and its former gridiron glory.<\/p>\n \u201cI can tell you we\u2019re not at the top,\u201d Virgilio said of the program\u2019s payroll compared with the rest of the Big Ten. \u201cI think we\u2019re right around the bottom. Not bottom, bottom, bottom, but we navigate those waters. Retention is important; we\u2019ve got to do more with less. Our margin for error is not big because of the resources available. We\u2019ve been working with the administration a lot recently to try to maximize the resources, and that\u2019s been great. We\u2019ve just got to keep finding ways to find guys who fit our system on and off the floor.\u201d<\/p>\n And perhaps Hoiberg\u2019s breakthrough team, with an as-yet-undetermined finish line, will motivate donors just as Curt Cignetti did to keep Indiana football rolling. \u201cMore with less\u201d is impressive, but sometimes means you miss on that one player who could put you over the top. It can lose you a coach, too. Rest assured, Hoiberg\u2019s name will be on speculative lists for openings at programs with more resources.<\/p>\n Luckily for Nebraska, this is more to Hoiberg than just his latest job. And while he may have his moments \u2014 cheating at Catch Phrase, really? \u2014 that gentle, unrattled public demeanor is Hoiberg\u2019s default, according to those who know him best. His consistency is a powerful trait, more and more reflected by his basketball program.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen we were struggling, now that we\u2019re winning, he\u2019s been exactly the same,\u201d said Cale Jacobsen, a fourth-year junior and former walk-on. \u201cHe\u2019s never changed how he treats everybody, and he treats everybody the same.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"OKLAHOMA CITY \u2014 Nebraska coach Fred Hoiberg sets the standard for calm and measured among the 16 head…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":680105,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3723],"tags":[7,217,354,231,772,1544,8905],"class_list":{"0":"post-680104","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-basketball","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-college-basketball","10":"tag-mens-college-basketball","11":"tag-ncaa","12":"tag-ncaa-basketball","13":"tag-ncaab","14":"tag-nebraska-cornhuskers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116295657502244919","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=680104"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680104\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/680105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=680104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=680104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=680104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}