Postgame Notes
• Brice Williams and Juwan Gary each scored 21 points for Nebraska. Today marked the sixth game this season where NU had multiple players score 20-or-more points and the fifth time with both Williams and Gary hitting that plateau. 

• Juwan Gary’s 21-point effort marked his sixth 20-point effort of the season and ninth of his career. 

• Brice Williams had his 16th 20-point game of the season and his eighth in the past nine games dating back to Jan. 30. He has been in double figures in 27 of NU’s 29 games.

• The Huskers committed only six turnovers, tying their season low in that category. 

• Connor Essegian added 11 points off the bench, his 13th double-figure game off the bench this season. 

• Rollie Worster notched his 500th career assist, making him the first Husker basketball player to total 1,000 points, 500 rebounds, and 500 assists. 

• Nebraska had eight steals in the game, marking the seventh Big Ten game this season the Huskers have had eight or more steals. The Huskers scored 19 points off turnovers. 

• Nebraska held Dawson Garcia to just nine points, the fifth time he has not reached double figures this season. 

• Minnesota got 31 points from its bench, including a team-high 20 points from Brennan Rigsby, who had just 30 points and four 3-points in 14 Big Ten games prior to Saturday. 

• Minnesota won in Lincoln for the first time since 2012 with Saturday’s win

Quotes

Nebraska head coach Fred Hoiberg

On the 19-point deficit
“To start, we were even and then they went on a 16-3 run, we scored the last six to get it back under 10, and then just came out really flat in the second half. We talked about going out and throwing the first punch from the very first possession, and we allowed them to do that. They scored nine in a row to start the second half, and all of a sudden we got the urgency that we needed out of the gate and you just can’t do that in this league. You can’t get down 18 or 20 and all of a sudden decide to flip the switch. We’re not good enough for that, and this league is too good for that to do it to anybody. We did a lot of really good things in that run, but it wasn’t a long enough stretch and I know we’ve talked a lot about that this year. Our pace finally got to where it needed to be, our urgency defensively, we got deflections, we were at the level, and that led to a good, efficient offense. When we’re taking the ball to the net, we’re just not a very good team right now. We don’t have enough weapons to knock down shots out there for a long enough stretch. When we get stops and allow our defense to turn into offense, we’re a pretty good team. That urgency has to be there from the jump, there’s too much at stake right now. I thought our practice yesterday was unbelievable, but who cares. You have to carry that over to the game. For us, we get two more opportunities to put the uniform on guaranteed. After that, there’s nothing for certain at this point. We have to bounce back tomorrow, we can’t let this one affect what’s going to happen Tuesday night in a quick turn around, but we need to have two great days here heading into the rematch against Ohio State on their home floor, and throw everything we’ve got at them. We’re running out of chances, so a big couple days ahead.”

On his emotions for his team
“I’m absolutely sick on how that whole thing played out. Give Minnesota credit, Ben (Johnson) has done a great job with that team, it’s their fifth road win. Those guys are fighting, they’re scrapping, and you can see that out of them right from the beginning. The things that I talk about in the locker room, the keys, you have to go out and execute those. Right now, we’re just not doing a good enough job at it. The ball was hitting the big, and we just stood there. The offense, with what we worked on the last couple days after Michigan, didn’t carry over until we got some urgency in our game. Then we got the pace we needed and got some things happening in transition, got the ball to the right guys, we screened better, Andrew (Morgan) had a couple plays, I thought he was terrific in that run that we had. But again, you expend so much energy when you have to climb out of that type of deficit, and we just didn’t have enough to finish it off. Great play by Juwan (Gary) at the end there, I thought we executed the play well to get Brice (Williams) downhill, and crashed everybody. Juwan got the tip in, and unfortunately couldn’t get the stop on the other end.”

Senior guard Brice Williams

On energy and effort
“It’s always about energy and approach with us. It’s not really talent. It’s not really ability or anything. Making shots, that’s a given. The game rewards people who play hard. People who have the right approach, people with good attitude. We didn’t start with that but Minnesota did. Our energy, effort, and intensity picked up and the game got right. The score got right. It seems like I’m saying the same thing every game. We start out butt and then we finish straight. But then it’s too late. You can’t turn it on, turn it on, we have to come in turned on.”

On NCAA Tournament hopes after loss
“It’s frustrating. We’re trying to take it one day at a time. We’re not going to be there if we can’t handle today. We didn’t handle it today. Something’s got to change. We have the ability. We have the want. We’ve got to have it more consistently. It’s there, but we have to go out there and take it. Nobody is going to give it to us, especially in this league.” 

On feeling in locker room
“It’s still belief. It’s still optimism. We know we can do it but there has to be some level of ‘I’m going to go out there and take it’. Nobody is going to go out there and give it to us. It’s in there. It’s in our hearts. It has to come out. For the last 16 minutes, it was coming out, it was showing. For the other 24, it was not there. Minnesota had it the whole game. We climbed back in, but they still had the intensity. We just made our run. We can really run teams out the gym and shoot teams out the gym and really lock people down. Tonight we did not do that for the first 25 minutes.”  

On emotions
“It’s probably a little bit of all of it, just because it’s a loss for one. It’s a loss at home. And, we’re on the bubble. We still have optimism. We still have hope. We still have fight. We’re not going to give up. Something has to change, we have to come out and play a full 40 minutes now. We should’ve been doing that the whole season.”

Minnesota head coach Ben Johnson

On matching Nebraska’s intensity and urgency
“For whatever reason, we’re really good on the road. We’re confident, we just lost two games too, so that was the whole message. We could care less for lack of better words, not just them but anybody. We have to hold ourselves to a higher standard, everybody’s losing this time of year. It’s about the response, we lost two games. What’s our response? I didn’t care if it was a home game or happened to be at Nebraska. This game had to mean more to us than anybody in this building. We had to play with that urgency. Our guys knew that, we talked about it, emphasized it. This was a lot about us today and our mentality because our mentality was not very good the last two games, so that was the message. Our guys were dialed in and locked in. Obviously, I thought we did a pretty good job defensively to start, that kind of led the aggression, and it kind of carried us.” 

On Brennan Rigsby being comfortable taking big shots
“I give him so much credit. His minutes have been kind of up and down, but he’s never changed. He’s the same guy every day, no ego. He gets up his shots, extra work, positive attitude. He makes that three, you guys don’t know we played in Orlando in a tournament, and he had a three. I do not know how it didn’t go in. I mean, he hit every part of the rim and rolled out. And the basketball gods, when you do the right thing, and he’s done it ever since, to this point, they reward you, and that’s why that shot went in because he’s about the right stuff. Just so proud of him and just all of our guys.”

On message to the team as Nebraska began to come back
“Somebody must’ve made a shot at halftime because I heard everybody go nuts. And in my mind, I’m thinking, ‘Oh my God, here we go’. So I planned accordingly. We knew they were going to make a run for sure. I didn’t want it to get that close, but we knew. So we had already talked about it, we took it in four-minute segments, four-minute wars. That’s all we talked about. What war are we in right now? Just worry about this possession, this four-minute period. Again, they’re a good team. It’s the first time we’ve ever won here. So we just talked about all that, we’re going to bend but never break, and to keep our confidence. We’ve been in a lot of games like this, non-conference and conference. I think our guys talked a lot about that in the huddle, that we’re kind of built for this. We win ugly, we win nasty, that’s just what we do. They’ve built confidence over the year, they’re able to make plays down the stretch because we’ve been there so many times.”