Previewing the 2023-24 Nebraska Basketball Season
In the month of October, The Floor Slap will be launching our College Basketball Preview. We will be previewing all 14 Big Ten Teams, making predictions, covering the biggest storylines across the country and more! Follow @thefloorslap to stay up to date on all our Basketball coverage before the season tips off on November 5th.
by Jordan Beckley
Last year’s Cornhusker team might have been the most fun 16-16 team in College Basketball history.
Nebraska had it’s own version of Steph Curry in Keisei Tominaga capable of pulling up at anytime from anywhere. Derrick Walker would punch a ball through the rim every few games on top of some poor defenders head. Bench players with potential like Jamarques Lawrence or goofy ones like Wilhelm Breidenbach would have random spurts that would get the crowd going. Sam Griesel was a streaky player that was easy to root for being the homecoming kid.
Nebraska won just 9 games in the Big Ten last year, but 5 of them were by single digits. Fun, entertaining games. Big Red protected home court winning 6 of the 10 home games too. The Huskers even beat in-state rival Creighton. Coach Hoiberg gave the fans something to root for.
Now, Nebraska definitely was not good. 14 of the Huskers’ 16 losses were by double digits. Despite being .500 to end the season, no post-season tournament invited them to participate. Not the NIT or even the CBI.
Still, Coach Hoiberg was able to transform a truly dismal Nebraska team the year before to a fun team, if not a tournament team. And the Cornhuskers finished the year strong too. Nebraska won 6 of their last 8 regular season games.
Could Fred Hoiberg have finally figured something out with this roster? Could this year’s Nebraska team actually be good?
Last year, Nebraska brought in three transfers and a handful of recruits. This season there is a new and seemingly improved transfer class with plenty of players to be excited about. The recruiting class should make an impact too with Eli Rice and Ramel Lloyd Jr. figuring to be a big factor in what the Huskers do.
Given their playstyle and the personnel we know Nebraska will be a fun team to watch this season. Some people believe there is pressure on Fred Hoiberg to win this year. In the Big Ten, the difference between 11th and 2nd is 3 wins. Three more wins and Nebraska might be back in the Tournament for the first time in a decade.
Roster Breakdown
I’m going to try my best here, but Coach Hoiberg has a pretty intentional pivot to being positionless this season. So, if you think I am way off on a position and are upset about it. Bite me. It’s an article dude.
Guards: CJ Wilcher, Keisei Tominaga, Jarron Coleman, Ahron Ulis, Sam Hoiberg, Jamarques Lawrence, Cale Jacobsen
Coach Hoiberg will not have a shortage of options in the backcourt. Returning players like CJ Wilcher and Keisei Tominaga will have major roles. Tominaga was the player that powered the Huskers offensively last season especially at the end of the season. In Nebraska’s last ten games, Hoiberg let Tominaga loose with him shooting 7 threes a game. Tominaga averaged 19.4 ppg in that stretch with 7 games of 20+ points.
Wilcher is entering his third season in Lincoln and is likely going to be the starting point guard in name only. The positionless system that Hoiberg will run this season really means there isn’t a true point guard on the roster.
Iowa transfer Ahron Ulis is sort of a point guard but a gambling controversy has put his status up in the air. Given that there hasn’t been a punishment or suspension given out, we will have to plan for him to play. Ulis never fully figured it out at Iowa, maybe a change of scenery can unlock his ability.
Ulis’ questionable status lead to Nebraska adding Jarron Coleman late in the summer via the transfer portal. The Ball State grad transfer brings some shooting (35% 3pt), size (6’5″), and secondary playmaking (3.8 apg). Expect him and Wilcher to split the minutes at the 1 with both of them having about 25 or so each.
Jamarques Lawrence started to break out at the end of his freshman year. Lawrence had all seven of his double digit scoring performances happen in his last 11 games inlcuding four straight to end the year.
There are two non-scholarship players in Cale Jacobsen and Sam Hoiberg who likely will get minutes. After injuries to Juwan Gary and Emmanuel Bandoumel mid-season, Hoiberg played Hoiberg 21 minutes a game for the final 12 games. Jacobsen is a 6’4″ guard who made some plays in the Huskers foreign tour and I think might get some minutes.
Phew, Nebraska has a lot of guards.
Wings: Brice Williams, Juwan Gary, Ramel Lloyd Jr, Eli Rice, Josiah Allick
Cutting the line between the guards and wings are tough but this is the group that will mostly play the loosely defined 3 and 4 roles.
Juwan Gary started all 17 games last year before his season ending injury. The former Alabama player rebounds well for his position which will be essential for this smaller Cornhusker team.
Brice Williams is a 6’7″ grad transfer who grabbed 5 boards a game and shot 40% from three as a senior. Williams can also put the ball on the ground and score inside the arc (51.6% career on 2s) which makes him a perfect fit on the wing for this positionless style.
Ramel Lloyd Jr is a top-100 recruit who redshirted last season. Eli Rice is a top-125 recruit who has some serious size at 6’8″ but also some great touch for that height. Rice made some noise on the foreign tour and both of these young bulls should be big players for Nebraska this year.
Finally, Josiah Allick is a local kid who played high school ball at Lincoln North Star. Allick isn’t much of a shooter (15% from 3 last year) as much as he is a rim runner with a 65% 2pt fg percentage. Again his rebounding will earn him minutes at the 4.
Bigs: Rienk Mast, Blaise Keita, Matar Diop
What Hoiberg hopes will unlock Nebraska’s positionless potential is Bradley grad-transfer Rienk Mast. The 6’9″ big will play as a floor spacing center shooting 35% from 3 last year but also is a career 57% shooter inside the arc. If Mast can drag out bigs like Zach Edey and Cliff Omoruyi from the paint, it could open up lanes for all their slashing players. Can Mast do well enough on defense that the Huskers don’t leak points on the other end to bigs like Edey and Omoruyi?
Blaise Keita is a former JUCO transfer entering his second year for Big Red. Could he look more comfortable in year two in the big leagues? Either way Keita will be more of a traditional big coming off the bench.
Lastly, Matar Diop is a late added recruit who I don’t know much about. Here is Nebraska’s bio for Diop:
A late addition to the Nebraska roster, Matar Diop (pronounced MA-TAR CHOPE like hope) joined the Husker program at the start of the fall semester. A 6-foot-10, 213-pound forward from Dakar, Senegal, Diop provides the Huskers with size and length on the inside, as he possesses a 7-foot-2 wingspan. A product of the NBA Academy Africa, he moved to the United States for his senior year and averaged 13 points and 13 rebounds per game at Keystone Athletic Academy. Diop possesses elite-level athleticism and plays with a high motor. He will look to challenge for minutes in a deep Husker frontcourt while adjusting to the college game.
I don’t agree with the depth at the frontcourt, but I do agree Diop will be more of competing for minutes than accumulating them in his first season.
But will the Huskers be any good?
Coach Hoiberg is taking a gamble by going positionless, and with how he built this roster he is all in.
Going positionless and emphasizing wing type players with ball skills will differentiate the Cornhuskers, but will it separate them?
What’s that overused quote about trying the same thing over and over again and expecting different results being the definition of insanity? Yeah, well a lot of Big Ten teams are insane.
Too many programs try to build out rosters and have the same playstyles as the better programs like Purdue, Illinois or Wisconsin. But what makes those teams successful? The fact they have a defined playstyle.
Purdue runs offense through a traditional big better than anyone. Wisconsin slows the game down, plays great defense and exploits mismatches. Brad Underwood’s flex offense was dominant with Kofi Cockburn. If you’re playing Iowa you know you have to outscore them.
All of those programs have defined playstyles and have been consistently finishing near the top of the conference.
Going with a Villanova or NBA influenced five out offense hasn’t really been done in the Big Ten. We saw a smaller Fairleigh Dickinson team exploit Purdue’s lack of speed and upset the Boilermakers. FDU got creative defensively and found a way.
Sometimes Basketball comes down to is my advantage on offense better than your advantage on offense.
Beyond Tominaga, there isn’t any obvious All-Big Ten level player. However, there also isn’t a player that can’t go out and get buckets. Good luck having a bad defender out there, because former Bulls coach Hoiberg will attack him.
Are you starting to see the outline of how this roster and playstyle could actually work out for the Huskers? It’s also easy to see where it could go wrong.
Last season, the Huskers were near the bottom of the Big Ten in rebounding and assists per game while being near the top in turnovers. Taking away traditional hurts rebounding and having no true point hurts playmaking while increasing turnovers. Nebraska’s starting PF Derrick Walker lead them in apg last year at 3.9. Nobody on this year’s roster has averaged more than 4 apg in their career. Sacrificing the glass and limited playmaking could sink Hoiberg’s positionless strategy.
Coach Hoiberg and Nebraska will be conducting an experiment this year. No one knows for sure if it will work, but it is worth the risk.
We know this Nebraska roster will be fun. We will have to wait to see if the playstyle experiment also makes the Cornhuskers good.