‘Something that will be in my heart’: Huskers cherish inaugural Crown title

LAS VEGAS — After the final buzzer sounded, after the white championship hats were donned and the shimmering gold ball denoting the game’s Most Valuable player was awarded to Juwan Gary, after the giant throne was carried from the VIP section along the baseline to midcourt for a photo opportunity Nebraska‘s players and coaches will never forget, after the black and gold confetti spilled across the court at T-Mobile Arena and “We Are the Champions” blared through the sound system, after everyone took turns snipping a piece of the net, there was a fairly simple explanation for why the Cornhuskers won the inaugural College Basketball Crown on Sunday afternoon.

One day after UCF point guard Darius Johnson exploded for a career-high 42 points in a semifinal victory over the Villanova Wildcats, who still nearly beat the Knights in overtime, Nebraska smothered and stymied the superstar into his worst shooting performance of the season before he unceremoniously fouled out with 1:02 remaining, just a single field goal to his name. Nobody had blanketed Johnson, who averages 17.8 points per game, to that degree since the Knights suffered a brutal loss to Cincinnati in January of last season. UCF’s first three opponents here in Las Vegas? They had been shredded for 88 combined points by Johnson on sizzling 26-for-58 shooting.

But on Sunday afternoon, during the game that mattered most, and with the largest chunk of this event’s $500,000 NIL package at stake, Johnson could only produce four lowly points. Without him, the Knights were felled, 77-66, by a group of Cornhuskers that reveled in the program’s first postseason championship since winning the NIT in 1996 — long before anyone on the current roster was born. 

“Listen,” Hoiberg said, “we didn’t get the goal that we wanted for playing in the NCAA Tournament. But we made the most of it and came out here focused and stayed together as a group and played some pretty darn good basketball this week. Hopefully it will give us some momentum heading into next season, and I think the experience of playing in a postseason event will help everybody that will be back on our roster next year.”

If the broad strokes behind Nebraska’s victory could be distilled to its defensive effort against Johnson, whose only field goal came with 5:28 remaining in the second half, the guts were more in keeping with what Hoiberg said in the preceding quote. This was a group of Cornhuskers that, despite losing five consecutive games to end the regular season, came to Las Vegas without any defections via the transfer portal and without any early departures for NBA Draft preparation, a rarity among the 16 teams who participated and a positive reflection of Hoiberg’s culture. This was a group that enjoyed each other’s company enough to stomach the hollowness of failing to qualify for the Big Ten Tournament — let alone the NCAA Tournament — and still wanted at least one more opportunity to share the court, with Monday’s opening-round victory over Arizona State kickstarting an eventual four-game winning streak by an average of 10.3 points per game.

So, while the credit for Nebraska’s emergence in Las Vegas still starts and ends with the greatness of lead guard Brice Williams, a first-team All-Big Ten selection who topped 20 points in three of the Cornhuskers’ four games, including 21 against UCF as he set the school’s single-season scoring record, the list of players Hoiberg wanted to thank during the postgame news conference was far longer. And rightfully so.

He heaped plenty of praise on Gary, the springy small forward who came close to averaging a double-double at this event by scoring 19 points and grabbing eight rebounds per game. The Cornhuskers trailed by six when Gary suffered a blow to the head that briefly sent him to the locker room early in the second half. When he returned a short while later — after watching the deficit balloon to 11 — Gary responded by scoring nine points in a little more than two minutes to ignite what would finish as a seismic 24-3 run. “M-V-P! M-V-P!” his teammates chanted roughly an hour later during the on-court celebration.

There were flowers given to shooting guard Sam Hoiberg, the coach’s son, for a masterful defensive shift against Johnson in 36 grueling minutes. It was Sam Hoiberg who harassed Johnson into contested 3-pointers and walled-off layups that were interspersed with costly turnovers. That he finished with the team’s second-best plus-minus rating (plus-16) despite not scoring a single point speaks to how valuable the remainder of Sam Hoiberg’s contributions truly were: seven assists, three rebounds, two steals, one block, zero turnovers.

There were kind words bestowed on sixth man Connor Essegian, who had become the focal point of Nebraska’s offense when Williams battled foul trouble in the second half. Essegian made back-to-back 3-pointers that tied the game at 52-52 with 11:04 remaining and scored 14 of his 21 points after the break. Sunday marked the second time in this tournament that Essegian chipped in at least 17 points after shining in the opener against Arizona State.   

Both Hoiberg and Gary went out of their way to highlight the effort from guard Cale Jacobsen, a utility player if ever there was one, who chipped in five points and six rebounds to continue exceeding expectations in an outsized role. Jacobsen logged more minutes in Las Vegas — 104 across four appearances — than he did during the entire regular season combined, rewarding his coach with excellent defense, positional versatility and rugged physicality no matter the size of his opponent. Gary went so far as calling Jacobsen the tournament’s real MVP.  

“It was just one of those teams where they were all in it for each other,” Hoiberg said. “We went through some tough times. We had hard film sessions. We had difficult conversations. But they never pouted and they just kept growing. That’s why we played our best here these last three games of the season. Our last couple years, our best basketball has been played at the end of the year. And we found a way to get back to that [during the College Basketball Crown], and that’s something I’m really proud of.”

Which is why Hoiberg beamed amid the postgame celebration that will be remembered forever by the droves of Nebraska fans who traveled to Las Vegas, far and away the biggest contingent of the week. It’s why backup center Berke Buyuktuncel was so eager to grab the scissors from an event staffer and climb the ladder to begin cutting down the net. It’s why Gary proudly posed on the giant thrown with the gold MVP ball in his lap, a championship cap on his head and the actual Crown trophy perched on top. It’s why the football team’s star quarterback, Dylan Raiola, came to T-Mobile Arena in time for the title game and made his way onto the court for the postgame celebration. 

This tournament meant something to Hoiberg and his players, to Nebraska’s program as a whole, and that was a huge reason why the Cornhuskers wound up winning it all. Because no matter the setting and no matter the moment, it’s pretty darn special when a team can end the season victorious. 

“We won a championship today,” Gary said. “It might not be the NCAA Tournament championship, but it’s a postseason championship. We can still call ourselves champions. So down the line, the next three or four years, we’re going to come back to Nebraska and people are going to know who this team was, the Crown basketball champions. And that’s something that will be in my heart for sure.”

Michael Cohen covers college football and college basketball for FOX Sports. Follow him on Twitter @Michael_Cohen13.

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