HOUSTON – Iowa and Nebraska men’s basketball teams matching up in the Sweet 16. Who would’ve thought?
Both of these teams are in rare territory. The Hawkeyes are playing a second weekend in March Madness since 1999. The Cornhuskers never won an NCAA Tournament game until this year, when they happened to win two. The corn rivalry split the regular season series, 1-1, and now have a surprise matchup with an Elite Eight appearance on the line.
Winner moves on. Loser goes home.
One fan base has all the bragging rights. The other has to hear about it for the foreseeable future.
Familiar foe and familiar face
The two matchups Iowa and Nebraska had during the regular season were very intense. The first one was in Iowa City, where an unranked Iowa squad desperate for that season-defining victory mounted the then-No. 9 Cornhuskers, 57-52, on Feb. 17. Former Hawkeye Pryce Sandfort was the team’s leading scorer with 13 points on a night where Nebraska shot 41 percent from the field and 21 percent from three.
Three weeks later on March 8, the Hawkeyes traveled to Lincoln and fell in a 84-75 overtime loss. Iowa head coach Ben McCollum was critical in the team’s efforts during postgame media after the road loss and expressed some of those same feelings during media availability on March 25.
“The second time we were actually playing pretty well too. We just didn’t show up. I just didn’t think we competed,” McCollum said. “I think we probably buy into the chess match way too much. It’s probably just more of who’s gonna play better and who’s gonna play harder.”
One of the bigger storylines in a game full of them is Sandfort. The first two years of his college basketball career were spent with Fran McCaffery and the Hawkeyes. Once McCaffery was let go and his older brother Payton’s departure to the pros, Sandfort entered the portal and committed to the Cornhuskers – a team he grew up rooting for.
He showed great promise during his Iowa days. Now with Nebraska, he’s been the go-to player in the program’s best season it’s ever had. And while Pryce is grateful for time he had in Iowa City with Payton and being coached by McCaffery, he was reluctant to spread any love for his former school ahead of the rivalry’s biggest game in its history.
“I’m not really sure what to say about that, honestly,” he said. “I’m a Husker. It’s where I am and it’s where I’m meant to be. So I’m super happy I’m here.”
Scouting Nebraska
Nebraska is a heavily-reliant three-point shooting team, and it starts and ends with Sandfort. Ahead of the NCAA Tournament, 30 of the Cornhuskers’ 59 shot attempts a game came from distance – narrowly over 50 percent of its looks. It’s 10.6 made threes per game ranked third in the Big Ten, with Sandfort’s conference-leading 3.6 made threes per contest.
Iowa led the Big Ten in opponent points per game nearly all season up until last week, when Nebraska’s 65.8 opponent points stole the lead spot in that category. And while the Cornhuskers allow 8.7 threes on 28.9 such attempts, both sitting bottom three in the conference, the 30.1 opponent percent rate tops the conference and their second-best 40.2 opponent field goal percentage. Their defense is the main reason why the Cornhuskers finished 28-6 on the season – second-best record in the Big Ten.
One of the advantages Iowa held in its win over No. 1 Florida is that the Hawkeyes’ pace-of-play was vastly different than the Gators. Its slow tempo controlled the pace for the majority of the game and was key in the upset win. Nebraska, however, has seen this offense twice now and has shown it can seemingly adjust to a slower-paced contest.
All in all, the third matchup should be no different than the first and second ones. It’ll be a slower-paced, defense-driven contest, and whoever out-hustles the other towards the end of the game will likely walk away victorious – and move on to the Elite Eight.
