Nebraska Postgame Notes
*-Nebraska improves to 8-0 for just the third time in school history and first since a 10-0 start in 1977-78.
*-Nebraska has now 12 straight games dating back to the 2025 College Basketball Crown, which ties for the fifth-longest win streak in school history and longest since a school-record 14 game streak in 1990-91.
*-Pryce Sandfort finished with NU team highs in both points (20), rebounds (nine) and assists (four). His 20-poitns marked his fourth 20-point game of the season while his nine rebounds were a season-high, topping the eight against Winthrop on Tuesday. Sandfort now has a 22-to-3 assist-to-turnover ratio on the season.  Sandfort now has five career 20-point efforts.
*-Nebraska got a pair of double-digit efforts off the bench with 11 points apiece from Cale Jacobsen and Braden Frager. NU now has 10 double-figure efforts from its bench this season. Jacobsen also tied his career high with 11 points for the second straight game.
*-Cale Jacobsen’s five steals were not only a career high (previous best of three, set two times) and matched the most by a Husker in Fred Hoiberg’s six-plus seasons. The last Husker with five steals in a game before today was Juwan Gary, who had five against Bethune Cookman on Nov. 9, 2024.
*-Nebraska’s 17-0 first-half run was its highest of the season (16-0 vs. West Georgia)
*-NU has now held five of its eight opponents to under 40 percent shooting as USC Upstate shot 36.4 percent.

Nebraska Forward Pryce Sandfort
On slow starts at home
“Honestly, I don’t really know. It’s something about this building, like coach just said. We haven't been able to get up to fast starts. We have two great prep days, great communication days, and just not coming out and executing right away.”

On USC Upstate’s defense activity
“They had good hands in the passing lanes and they had a good game plan. Part of it is we weren’t hitting shots. We have to find ways to score and get to the rim when those shots are falling. I think we need to focus more on driving and kicks and driving and finishing.”

On not letting offense affect defense effort
“We’ve talked about not letting our offense dictate our defense, and having our defense dictate our offense. Once we start getting those stops and getting deflections. Deflections were a big part of it. Cale (Jacobsen) got us going there at the end of the first half, then we really started to push in transition and get open looks early.”

Nebraska Coach Fred Hoiberg
On slow starts at home
“No, I believe me, we talked about that before the game and certainly talked about it after the game. For whatever reason in this building, we've not gotten off to the type of starts that we need to get our incredible crowd behind us. And on the road, we've gotten off to really good starts when we went and played in those neutral site games. And it's just not carrying over right now here. And then I just didn't like our resolve tonight and our resiliency when they threw the first punch. And the team like that, they're going to milk the clock when they get a lead, and they built that thing up to double digits. And I just didn't like our toughness, and they were chasing us through screens, which we're going to see especially in these next three games. And I just didn't like how we handled it. We just kind of had that deer in headlights look. And finally, we had one deflection in nine minutes. That's pathetic. Finally, we got it going a little bit and started with Cale’s (Jacobsen) deflection. And it started with Braden Frager’s block. And that got us going in transition. It got Pryce (Sandfort) going. And I think we went on a 17-0 run to finish that half and to get the lead before, you know, that last possession where I thought we did a good job executing a foul on a foul to give and they didn't call it. They hit a three to cut it to two. Then in the second half, I did think we defended better in the second half, you look at Cale's five steals. We were getting our hands on a lot of balls, and that created deflections, as opposed to taking the ball out of the net like we were in the first half. The finish was really bad. We're jacking up a shot with 20 on the shot clock. I just, I don't know. I'm very disappointed with how we played overall today. The one positive, as I said to the guys, is we're 8-0. There's not a lot of people that can say that right now, and we've been battle tested. We played good teams. We need to learn from this one, which I'm confident our guys will do. They've been awesome, and they've handled adversity well, but for whatever reason, it didn't happen like it needed to today. 

On what to say after a game like this
“Honestly, it's as loud as I've been with this group after the game, it was so disappointing and disheartening to see the just the blank stares out there. And we prepared really well. And I know nobody wants to hear that. Nobody gives a crap about that, but we did. Our voice was really good all week. When you prepare for a team like this who runs ball-screen motion and they have a million different wrinkles off it, you have to be a great communicating team. And then when they went on the run early, that's when you got to get tougher. That's when you got to get louder. And we just never did it until we started getting some deflections and got a little swagger going. But, that's too late against the teams that we're about to face. You're going to be down. Instead of 12, you're down 25. Give Upstate a lot of credit for coming in here and having a good game plan and executing it very well. We just have to have better resolve, better toughness. So we have to start getting off to better starts.”

On how injuries have affected the team
“I mean, it is what it is. I mean, there's nothing that anybody can do about this right now. It's out of everybody's control. I just talked about it in the locker room. We lost a guy that helped win a lot of games for us last year with Connor (Essegian), and we're still waiting on Ugnius (Jarusevicius) and Leo (Curtis) to get back healthy as well. I thought Jared Garcia gave us as good a stretch as he's as he's been all year. We actually had him guard the five a little bit, and I liked the way it looked when he was out there with BK (Berke Buyuktuncel). But he was plus 17 in his 10 minutes. And he had five big defensive rebounds for us. This is a growth game for Jared. Kendall (Blue) is going to have to give us minutes moving forward as well. It's good to see him get out there on the floor in that first half. So, it's just that next man up mentality. That's what you have to have. I'm confident our guys are going to bounce back with a good effort. It's a good wake up call. I don't know what you call this for our guys, but we need to bounce back with great effort and preparation, obviously, for a big game coming up next week.”

USC Upstate Coach Marty Richter
On playing a Big Ten team like Nebraska
“Our guys played really, really hard. They executed what we were trying to do for probably 30 of the 40 minutes, and of those 10 minutes, five of them were wasted. In the first half, they went on a 17- 0 run. In that second half, when we got a little bit closer, we gave up back-to-back slip cuts off the ball, which we had told them not to do, which is part of the growth of their players. But that then led to them making another three, and I think it was a 7-0 run. And then all that's the game. That's the game when you play a good team; Coach Hoiberg does an unbelievable job. He's been a head coach since 2010, I think. He played in the NBA for nine years. He's an Iowan. He can really coach his offense scheme is terrific so you cannot have mental mistakes during the course of the game, because they will punish and they did, like in the first half, one of our mental mistakes was right in front of me, and we point switch and Pryce Sanford, who is a really, really good player. I love Pryce Sandfort. I've known him since he was a little squirt. We saw him last year. You just can't point switch, and we point switch, and he drills it, yeah, and then we lose him in transition. Those are the plays that you can't get back, and the players are not understanding that, and I have to keep coaching on that. And then on the offensive side, they did a great job of flying around in the first 12 minutes of the game; we were point five basketball. We were moving it. So when the guy came to you, we drove the clothes out, we drove the shot fake and drove them and made the next the rest of the night, we didn't do that, and we have to be able to sustain for 40 minutes.”

On the difference today
“I thought we did a good job rebounding. They got 10 offensive rebounds. We got nine. I thought we did a good job with that. I thought we took care of the ball. We only had 11 turnovers against a team that forces you to turn the ball. We had some timely ones that you can't give up, but that's part of it. I thought we did a pretty good job of being connected, but we've got like three closed fingers, and we've got like pinky and thumb out. We got to get all five of us to be a closed finger, closed fist, like I thought we did some really good things. The disappointing thing is you got beat by nine. We went three of eight from the foul line. You can't do three. Do that when you've on the road against a team that is Nebraska. You can't have like I thought we rebounding. We just missed more shots. That's why they have more rebounds. It's really one one-point rebound. I thought we did a good job of controlling the pace and making it an ugly game. You're not beating this team playing pretty. You have to beat them playing ugly, because they want it during that 17-0 run they got going up and down.”