Postgame Notes

• Nebraska moved to 10-0 on the season to tie the best start to a year in program history. The 1977-78 squad also started 10-0.
• The Huskers extended their nation-leading win streak to 14 games, which ties the longest win streak in program history. NU also won 14 straight games during the 1990-91 season.
• Nebraska’s 14-game win streak is the nation’s longest win streak, as it dates back to last season.
• NU held Wisconsin to a season-low 60 points. The Badgers came in averaging 87.9 points per game.
• Nebraska’s 30-point margin of victory was its largest in a conference game since a 34-point win at Rutgers in 2016.
• The 30-point margin of victory is NU’s largest in the 41-game series (previous high, 21 in 1991).
• Nebraska’s 90 points was its most against the Badgers since joining the Big Ten in 2011-12, and third 90-point effort for the Huskers in 2025-26.
• Rienk Mast was the leading scorer for NU with 17 total points and 11 in the first half. Mast also grabbed 10 rebounds for his third double-double of the season and 29th of career.
• The Huskers held reigning Big Ten Player of the Week John Blackwell to a season low in points and field goal percentage (7, 1-of-11).
• Jamarques Lawrence tied his career high in assists with seven. It was his third career game with seven assists
• Nebraska’s 54.1 percent shooting marked the first opponent to shoot 50 percent against Wisconsin this season.
• The Huskers had five shooters in double figures for the second time this season – Mast (17), Frager (15), Buyuktuncel (14), Sandfort (14) and Hoiberg (12). NU also had five double-figures against FIU.
• Nebraska won its Big Ten opener for the first time since the 2018-19 season.
  Nebraska had two double-figure runs (10-0 to close the first half and an 11-0 run in the second half).

Nebraska Head Coach Fred Hoiberg

On Buyuktuncel’s improvement from last year and the team’s mindset going into the rest of the season
“I think he's playing with confidence. Even when his shot was not falling, he was still having a huge impact for our team. The one I'll point to is Creighton. He didn’t shoot the ball well but he had 13 rebounds and played a really good floor game, made good passes, made good decisions. I think comfortability in the system is coming into his second year. His health, his body, I think he's in much better shape right now. We're going to keep going. As soon as we get satisfied, this thing is going to be over. Our guys are going to keep this hunger. They were all talking about what we have to do to put this one behind us.” 

On the defense 
“I thought our defense was really good after the first five minutes. I thought we weren’t really sharp early at all of the things we’d worked on the last three days. We’re not showing up on the court. Then we started getting active. We had zero deflections in the first eight minutes of that game. Once we had some activity going, going out on the break, that’s what fuels everything with our team. The energy in the building was off the charts. The past two games, you look at Creighton and this game tonight against Wisconsin that is exactly what we need out of our crowd. Our guys just feed off of that energy. I thought BK was unbelievable the way that he went out there and that block when he cut his mouth was really impressive. It was great to see him knocking down those shots and it started with those free throws. I think he made his first four free throws and then was able to knock down that corner three. I thought our guys’ movement on the offensive end, it was really Jamarques (Lawrence) who had great pace. Once we had to settle down, we didn’t have to call a lot of plays in the first half, it was just out of flow. We talked about playing to the next action. Wisconsin is really good at warring and fighting over screens, and if it wasn’t there, I thought we did a really good job getting to the next action. The biggest thing I look at against the Wisconsin team is that we outscored them 44 to 24 in the paint. That’s hard to do against a Wisconsin team. I think our guys did a really good job of executing and attacking the paint when the shots weren’t there.” 

On Buyuktuncel’s play and going on the road
“Berke has been playing like that on defense. It’s just tonight he had 14 points. He goes out and does little things every game that don’t show up in the box score, and tonight he goes out and has a couple blocks. The thing about it was that he made shots; he was four for five. He went out there and did a little bit of everything for our team. He had 14 points and I think it would have been a lot higher had he not cut his mouth open. I’m proud of Jared (Garcia). The way Jared played tonight gave us the opportunity to sit Rienk (Mast) a pretty extended time. He’s been playing a lot of minutes for us and for Rienk to only play 25 minutes in a very important league game win, I think it shows that we do have the depth on this team. You can see Jared get more comfortable every time he’s out there. It’s good to see Kendall (Blue) knock down that shot there in the second half; that should give him some confidence. Those guys are right, we now have to go into our first fully hostile environment and we’ll see what we’re made of. We did exactly what we were supposed to do; we took care of home court against two really good teams on Sunday and tonight. Now, we have to bounce back and have a great effort if we want any chance at all to go in there and compete against a top-15 Illinois team that’s got unbelievable length and physicality and shot making. We will put this behind us, we’ll get to work on Illinois, our assistants have been doing it for the last couple days, but I’ll dig in tonight. We’ll put a game plan in tomorrow and hopefully go out and execute it on Saturday. They gave us a tough schedule. You play Creighton Sunday, now you bounce back to play a short prep against Wisconsin, and the consolation prize at the end of the week is you get Illinois on a two day prep. I believe in these guys, and I believe in our group. We have experience, we have age, and they’re battle tested. I love the swagger we played with tonight. What’s that mean on Saturday? I don't know. I like how we’re playing. I like the maturity of this group, and we’ll see what happens on Saturday.”

Senior forward Rienk Mast
On the team’s mindset after being ranked
“I think we have a very mature group but also we try to tell everyone to not be satisfied now. We’re ranked, yeah, but that doesn't mean anything. We just got to go play our best game the next game. I think we made some good steps against Creighton. Our defense was really good and we carried that over to this game. That has to be a constant this whole season. We have a very mature group. I liked our talk in the locker room after this game. We were supposed to defend home court. You have a huge advantage at home. And now we have to go on the road and get a tough one. I liked our talk after the game, and we have a very mature group.” 

Junior forward Berke Buyuktuncel
On the level of activity he was playing with 
“It is our normal defense that we need to do every game. It was maybe a little bit extra effort, but it is our normal defense to be aggressive like that. It was just a normal defensive thing for us. I was not shooting well. I was more of a cutter and traditional five man player. I just improved my game that way. When I made two threes and Rienk (Mast) was always scoring, when they double teamed, I started cutting and my teammates found me and finally I made two.” 

Senior forward Jared Garcia
On everyone making an impact and the team embracing their roles
“It’s very important to know your role and carry the momentum coming off the bench. Once your number is called, just doing everything to the best of your ability, being the best teammate, being the best overall player for the team, and just see the impact on the game.”

Wisconsin Head Coach Greg Gard
On Wisconsin’s defensive identity
“We don’t have a defensive identity. We haven’t all year, so we need to search to find one. I’ll find guys that want to play defense. Everybody gets all ‘rah, rah’ about our offense, but it’s the other end of the floor that cost us the most trouble for the most part.” 

On Nebraska
“They’re playing well. Fred (Hoiberg) is doing a good job. You got Rienk Mast kind of anchoring that, quarterbacking what they do offensively and it puts a lot of pressure on you. When you’re connected defensively, when you’re guarding individually instead of collectively as a team, they feast on them. Any good offensive team does.” 

On the defense
“Maybe there at the end we had some better defensive possessions. Hayden Jones was in the game. He did what we wanted him to do and handle screens. I’ll watch the film and really evaluate it. We started well, offensively specifically. We were doing some good things early and then we went completely away with what was treating us really well. We took bad shots, put them in transition, let (Pryce) Sandfort get loose for some threes and we get back to (Sam) Hoiberg getting a wide open three. Just consistent mistakes that we have nine days to work on things.”