Nebrasketball gets crowned

The Huskers won the first iteration of The Crown tournament, and it wasn't even the program's best news from the weekend.

Courtesy Nebraska Athletics

You come for The Crown, you best not miss, and the Huskers didn’t all that much. Really.

Over four games in Las Vegas Nebraska shot 48.1% from the field, up from 45.5% on the year, and 41.8% from 3, more than 8.5 percentage points above the season-long average. After beating Arizona State and Georgetown during the week, the Huskers bested Boise State (79-69) Saturday and claimed The Crown¹ with a win over Central Florida (77-66) Sunday.

Nebraska had to work for it, though. UCF opened the second half on a 14-0 run, holding the Huskers scoreless for more than 5 minutes while building a 49-35 lead. NU went on a 36-10 run from there over the next 12 minutes. Connor Essegian contributed 14 of his 21 points during the run as the Huskers built a double-digit lead UCF couldn’t really dent over the final 3 minutes.

Brice Williams’ 93 points over four games, including 21 against the Knights, pushed his season total to 711, setting a single-season record² at Nebraska. Juwan Gary, who averaged 20.5 points and 8.0 rebounds in the tournament, was named King of the Crown and awarded a jewel-encrusted basketball or something that looked like that. If you’re going to have a basketball tournament in Vegas, it would be derelict not to be glitzy . . . or have money on the line.

There was that, too. By keeping the Knights crown-less, Nebraska took home the winner’s share of NIL money, $300,000.

Now, I suppose, we should talk about what this means. Given the Huskers have now won The Crown, in its first year of existence, and the NIT (1996), the jokes are about as easy to make if you’re not a Nebraska fan as all of the possible Medieval Times turns of phrase The Crown has gifted us.

I get it. One NCAA Tournament win would be cause for more celebration than this title, and we can acknowledge that without diminishing the Huskers’ performance over the past week. Nebraska didn’t make the Tournament. The most it could do was take The Crown, and it did while playing some pretty good basketball. I don’t mention this because this tournament was in Vegas, but because it’s the quickest way to support the previous assertion: Nebraska covered the spread all four games and was, on average, more than 6 points better than projected.

Had NU done that over the final stretch of the regular season we’d be having a different discussion right now, but they didn’t. Winning The Crown was the best possible discussion to have, and that’s worth something.

But there was arguably even better news for this program’s future in recent days. The Huskers landed Iowa transfer Pryce Sandfort on Friday. Iowa’s prep Mr. Basketball in 2023, Sandfort tied for the team lead at 16.7 points per game as a sophomore for the Hawkeyes in 2024–25. You might remember him as the guy who dropped 30 points on Nebraska in Iowa’s 97-87 overtime win in Iowa City in early January.³ In the Huskers’ home finale, Sandfort again led the Hawkeyes in scoring with 22 points.

It might be unfair to describe his game as Hoibergian at this point—Fred played 10 seasons in the NBA, though he was also Mr. Basketball in Iowa (1991), something he and Sandfort can talk about now—but it’s not so implausible that I don’t want to at least lay claim to the term. Anyway, pretty big get.

And Nebraska wasn’t done. Central Michigan transfer Ugnius Jarusevicius committed Saturday. A 6-foot-10 forward from Lithuania with international experience, Jarusevicius averaged 16.2 points as a junior in 2024–25 on 53.7% shooting, earning first-team All-MAC honors. He was also a double-digit scorer (11.5) as a sophomore at Cal State Bakersfield.

The Huskers undoubtedly added some big scoring potential for next season, which they’ll need with the departure of Brice Williams. Now if they can just figure out if there’s another Juwan Gary out there.⁴

Odds & Ends

• Matt Rhule met with the media Saturday, which was about the midpoint of spring drills. I’ll have some thoughts later this week on a few things, but the big news item was that Kentucky transfer wide receiver Hardley Gilmore IV was dismissed from the team. Not really more details from Rhule on why, other than it wasn’t anything criminal, but the Huskers are down a receiver they brought in to help. He had six catches for 153 yards and a touchdown as a freshman for the Wildcats in 2024.

• Nebraska baseball couldn’t complete a sweep of Rutgers, falling 7-5 on Sunday, but the series win was at least a bit closer to preseason expectations for this team. The Huskers head to Kansas Tuesday before a weekend series at Iowa.

• Husker bowling is on to the final four after a Regional win in Pittsburgh over Maryville this weekend. Nebraska will travel to Las Vegas—where Fred Hoiberg claims he has residence now—for the Championships April 11–12.

1. I’ll say this for this competition, The Crown is a good name and because of that these sentences just kind of write themselves. It’s good visually, too. A gold crown on its own little stand is just an objectively better trophy than the board with a medallion the NCAA Tournament champion will win tonight.

2. James Palmer held the record previously at 708, and Williams didn’t pass him until the final minute against UCF.

3. It was “Superhero Night” at Carver-Hawkeye Arena that day. Do with that what you will.

4. Here’s an ambitious legal strategy since the NCAA seems willing to shrink from anything related to players’ rights at the moment: What if a high-powered attorney sued the NCAA on the grounds that Gary’s game is just too pure? Walter White pure? Not purely skilled or purely effort, but the most pure combination of both currently available. A player like that shouldn’t have his eligibility limited. It deprives him, it deprives us.