1 week Ago By Tom Shatel World-Herald Columnist
“We’re No. 69! We’re No. 69!” Come on.
I’m kidding. Nebraska won the College Basketball Crown championship on Sunday. Fred Hoiberg’s Huskers beat UCF 77-66 to win the inaugural “Crown” postseason basketball tournament.
After closing the regular-season on a five-game losing streak, the Huskers won four straight. What happened in Las Vegas isn’t staying in Vegas. The Huskers are bringing home a crown.
That’s a big deal. Embrace the moment. Embrace the effort.
Salute a signature send-off for Juwan Gary and Brice Williams. This isn’t 1996 all over again. This is a different team, different era.
But there's a similar feeling here. Also, 29 years later, there’s a different perspective from this corner. In 1996, Danny Nee’s Huskers won the NIT Championship in Madison Square Garden.
It was celebrated by some. Not here. After that game, I wrote, “We’re No.
65! We’re No. 65!” I mocked the accomplishment (there were 64 teams in the NCAA tournament then). That was a supremely talented Husker team, maybe the best in school history.
I felt the team had underachieved. That Husker team started the year 15-4 and was on their way to a fifth NCAA tourney bid in six seasons. That was the new norm for Nebraska.
Then came the slide — they lost 10 of 11, including the first round of the Big Eight tournament. That team had internal issues. It boiled over in a locker room shouting session at Iowa State.
The players marched to Athletic Director Bill Byrne’s office and asked for a new coach. In my mind, the NIT was an underachievement that could not be glossed by a six-game run over Colorado State, Fresno State and St. Joe’s.
But that disappointment should not have overshadowed what that team was able to do in the moment: pick itself up and gain a large measure of pride and respect. That was the story. And I missed it.
Now, on April 6, 2025, here it was again. Different, yes. We don’t know what the College Basketball Crown is yet.
It doesn’t have the history of the NIT in 1996. It’s as much of a TV show as a tournament, created by Fox Sports, with $300,000 of NIL money for the winning team. This is college basketball in 2025.
And with the carrot of money and a TV contract with the Big Ten, Big East and Big 12, the CBC was able to wrestle away the top tier of non-NCAA teams away from the NIT. In so many ways, the CBC looks like the new second-tier tournament, while the NIT has fallen back to No. 3.
So, what the Huskers won on Sunday is very much like the old NIT — in an event where teams played on even after losing key players in the transfer portal. Villanova had an interim coach. That said, this crown is not to be taken lightly under any circumstances.
Yes, this Husker team underachieved at the end of the season. Heading into the final week of the season, the state of the NCAA tourney bubble was such that NU needed to beat lower-level Big Ten teams Minnesota, Ohio State and Iowa to secure an NCAA tourney bid. That would have been the first back-to-back trips to the Big Dance since 1993-94.
No small deal. But the Huskers lost all three and ended the regular-season on a five-game losing streak. They came out flat against Minnesota and Iowa at home.
To be sure, it was a disaster. But not an ending. Like in 1996, the team gathered itself.
They showed energy and purpose in beating Arizona State (with seven players), Georgetown, a salty Boise State team and finally UCF in a mostly-empty arena in Las Vegas. They finished the year with a celebration, on a ladder cutting down nets. And with a story to tell.
Over the years I’ve talked to members of that 1996 Husker team, including Erick Strickland and Andy Markowski, who live in Lincoln. They recognize that they fell short. But as they grew older, they found an appreciation for what they won.
It was more than a trophy. It was self-respect. It was resilience.
It was the bond as a team they felt and still feel years later. I wonder if the 2024-25 Huskers might feel the same way one day. They say these postseason tournaments can be used as a springboard to the future.
Funny, but after 1996, Nebraska made three NCAA tournaments — in 1998, 2014 and 2024. And they hadn’t won another postseason tourney until Sunday. Here in the age of the transfer portal — especially with the portal going on during March — that springboard is almost impossible to use.
The Huskers didn’t lose a player to the portal. And while there was cold hard cash waiting for them at the end of their Vegas run, you could sense that Gary and Williams were on another kind of mission. To regain some pride and perhaps rinse out a sour taste from the 0-5 finish.
Hoiberg has taken his share of shots the last month. But what his team did says a lot about the program he is building. Where was this energy and purpose when NU needed it the last week of the season — when a return trip to the NCAA’s was sitting up on a tee? It’s maddening and frustrating.
But Husker fans know maddening and frustration all too well. It’s part of the program’s identity. Part of the identity of this Nebraska basketball program, also, is an undeniable resilience.
The fans. The teams. They get knocked down repeatedly and get back up and keep fighting.
Now they have a crown to show for it. They should celebrate it. Here’s the thing about the winning basketball programs, from Duke to Houston and Florida and Michigan State on down: they covet winning.
Any winning. All winning. Nebraska, fighting for its history, can’t be any different.
If there’s a game, you want to play it. If there’s a tournament, you play to win it. And you proudly put the trophy, any trophy, on display for all to see.
And if someone gives you a crown, you wear it. No kidding..
