Welcome to peak Nebraska-Iowa
The rivalry, reluctantly accepted 15 years ago, has been growing, and now we have the biggest Husker-Hawkeye game yet.
Nebraska’s sideline shirts for this NCAA Tournament read “Legacy on Lock.”1 This is false as Husker basketball just altered program history over the course of three days.
Legacy on Lock would’ve been Nebraska losing to Troy as a double-digit favorite and remaining the only power-conference team without a tournament win. That legacy had to be altered, and it was. After a back-and-forth first 10 minutes, the Huskers controlled the final 30 and won by 29. The scarlet letter could just stand for Nebraska now.
So, the masses of Husker fans who invaded Oklahoma City—and those watching anywhere else—got to experience what it was like to win a tournament game. It was, I think, the only thing the fan base wanted this basketball Christmas.
Then Nebraska fans to got to unwrap something they didn’t ask for, and it was even better. They got to experience what it’s like to live a classic March Madness game rather than just being entertained by one. Most schools you can probably think of have had this experience because you probably know the rarest schools because of big tournament wins. St. Peter’s had this experience. Fairleigh Dickinson had it. Florida Gulf Coast and Santa Clara had it. But all of the heavyweights—Duke, Kentucky, Kansas, UCLA, etc.—have had it, too.
Before beating Troy, Nebraska was a tournament oddity. Winning one game, unless your team is a huge underdog from an ESPN+ conference, is sort of the least the tournament can offer. And, because it hadn’t happened before, it would’ve been tough to be disappointed with just that.
But by beating Vanderbilt 74-72 in classic March Madness style—two teams trading increasingly big punches which somehow only increases the resolve of both teams until the each get one more possession—meant witnessing the most the tournament can offer outside of a national title.
Yet the Huskers are still alive for that. Optimistic as it may seem, it’s a fact for at least four more days. All they have to do is beat 1-seed Florida…no, wait…Iowa. The Hawkeyes got that maximal-type of win, too, Sunday, knocking off the reigning national champion Gators.
Welcome to peak Husker-Hawkeye hate. In Houston.2
If you’re a fan of rivalry, the hate3 in Iowa-Nebraska, across all sports, has been developing nicely. Based on my age, Nebraska-Oklahoma will always be No. 1 among Husker rivalries, but it was mostly built on immense stakes and opposite archetypes.4 Colorado offered some of the same, but for a shorter period of time, and if you want to lump Texas in during the Big 12 years, that had political roots.5
Previous conference alignment prevented this, but Iowa always sat there as a classic rivalry candidate. Proximity matters a ton in these things, and there’s a greater natural overlap of Husker and Hawkeye fans than there was with Oklahoma, Texas or Colorado.6 Feeling constantly needled is important.
Yet, my memory of NU entering the Big Ten in 2011 is that neither fan base was particularly amped about this new, designated rivalry that made perfect sense. Iowa football already played for, I don’t know, what seems like eight rivalry trophies each year, so it didn’t really need another one. And Nebraska football fans, who had seen iconic games against Oklahoma, Colorado and Texas with national implications, were slow to accept the Hawkeyes as from the same weight class.
That all changed when Shawn Eichorst fired Bo Pelini after a win in Iowa City, said what he said about the Hawkeyes, and Iowa has kicked Nebraska’s ass in football for a decade. That ramped up the hate real quick, and other sports started to contribute.
One of Nebraska basketball’s six losses this season came on the road at Iowa, 57-52, a punchy game that started with the hate meter at 11 given the presence of Pryce Sandfort, a former Hawkeye star who has been the Huskers’ best scorer in 2025–26, and ended with Fred Hoiberg slapping the phone out of the hand of a Hawkeye fan as they stormed the court.
Nebraska got its revenge three weeks later, beating Iowa 84-75 on Senior Day in Lincoln.
The stakes for the next game in both teams’ tournaments went through the roof with Iowa’s win over Florida. I don’t want to say Nebraska was completely on a free roll after reaching the Sweet 16 for the first time, but if Florida awaited this week, that’s kind of what it was. The Gators probably would’ve been a favorite of at least 7 points or more. They were favored by 10.5 over Iowa.
On Sunday night, Nebraska started as a 2.5-point favorite over the Hawkeyes. This is optimal for both teams. Iowa just beat a team better than Nebraska, has already beaten Nebraska and the oddsmakers view it as basically a coin flip.
The Huskers are suddenly a small favorite in the Sweet 16,7 have already beaten Iowa and get a way better stylistic matchup8 than they would’ve had against Florida.
Sandfort is still a former Hawkeye starring for the Huskers. The teams are still similar in how they play. The fan bases still (healthily) hate one another.
From a Nebraska perspective, what happened this weekend was a) it outlasted Vanderbilt to make the Sweet 16, and b) its third-round matchup went from close-to-zero stakes to the most stakes.
In an increasingly fierce rivalry, this is the biggest Nebraska-Iowa game we’ve seen yet in any sport.
Just when I though Nebraska’s tournament run had already offered more than was reasonable to expect, now there’s more.
There’s Iowa.
I feel a strong need to do a full history on these March Madness shirts, which is only counterbalanced by nobody’s need to read it. In short, I hate these shirts. I hate that the shoe companies come up with a milquetoast-but-technically-inspiring phrase and just give it to every school it partners with. St. John’s and Kansas, both Adidas schools, both had their Legacy on Lock when they met Sunday, and I wasn’t sure which to root for because of this. (St. John’s won on a buzzer-beater.) Nike’s version this year is “Lock It In.” Okay, thanks for the advice. The shoe companies could do something simple like provide new shirts with the school name on them, but instead they brand them all the same with a nothing phrase that can apply to any team. Anyway, how’s your bracket looking? Do you have a Legacy on Lock team winning it or are you team Lock It In? Much locking this March.
6:30 p.m. CT, TBS.
Healthy hate, to be clear. We’re not talking about tree poisoning here.
Tom Osborne was one sort of guy, Barry Switzer was another. Pick a side. That’s great stuff for a rivalry, as is the two teams being the clear class of Big Eight football for decades.
Except in volleyball, where it was Nebraska-Oklahoma.
I grew up much closer to the Colorado border than the Iowa border, and I can tell you that I wasn’t constantly bumping into Buff fans in the 1990s. There’s just not enough people in those parts of Nebraska or Colorado for that.
Imagine predicting that back in the fall.
If Florida had won, I was planning to jump right into the matchup for today. Instead, I’ll save that for game day, on Thursday. Because Iowa.