Fred Hoiberg endorses Nebraska players' fight after low-scoring loss

The Nebraska Cornhuskers came up just short of upsetting the Michigan Wolverines in a defensive battle. Despite ultimately losing the game, head coach Fred Hoiberg was happy with the fight his team showed in the game.

The final score of the low-scoring loss ended up being 49-46. It’s a game where, with things on the offensive end not working, it would have been easy to let up on the defensive end. Nebraska didn’t do that, though, and it’s what Hoiberg was happy with after the fact.

“I told the guys how proud I was of them for how they played,” Fred Hoiberg said. “From playing this game, when the ball is not going in the basket when you are missing shots you make a lot of times, it is not easy to continue to battle and defend and keep yourself in the game on the other end, but our guys did that.”

Nebraska shot just 25.8 percent from the field and 21.4 percent from three-point range. Despite that, it was a strong defensive effort that often forced Michigan into uncomfortable situations and led to a Wolverines team that is normally excellent at shooting the ball to shoot just 29.5 percent from the field.

“If we have that type of fight these next three games, we’re going to be fine and we’re going to be playing in the postseason, and that can’t change. Offensively, yes, we need to be better. I think we will be better,” Hoiberg said. “But that defensive effort and intensity and edge that we had tonight has to be the same for these remaining three games.”

With the loss to Michigan, Nebraska has dropped three of the last four games this season. The Cornhuskers have also dropped to 17-11 overall and 7-10 in Big Ten play, which is a tie for 10th in the conference standings. Despite that, one of Nebraska’s stars, Brice Williams, doesn’t want fans to hop off the wagon now.

“We’re still playing for something,” Williams said. “It’s not like we have no chance at the conference tournament or NCAA Tournament. This isn’t the time to fall off the wagon. So, I’m encouraged. Our defense was really good tonight. We rebounded really good tonight, we boxed out, we played physical, we played hard, we played with energy. We did everything we didn’t do at Penn State. It didn’t come out in our favor but we really set ourselves up nice and had a chance at the end. So, no bad takeaways.”

Next up for Nebraska is a bounce back opportunity against the Minnesota Golden Gophers.