Fred Hoiberg reveals his halftime message in Penn State win

Nebraska led Penn State 28-22 at the half on Saturday, looking to stay unbeaten at home in conference play. Coach Fred Hoiberg knew his team needed to come out hot in the second half.

He didn’t want the Nittany Lions sniffing a close game.

“That was the message is these first five minutes are huge,” Hoiberg said of his halftime speech to the team. “They’re important. We talked about getting some flow and pace into our offense. We’ve been a pretty darned good offensive team this year, and again, they force you to play different than pretty much anybody else because of your alignment against the press. You’re not in the same spots that you’re normally in.”

Nebraska seemed to figure it out just fine, coming out of halftime and putting together an immediate 10-2 run to put some distance in the contest.

The Cornhuskers never surrendered their double-digit lead the rest of the way and would even build it out to 22 points at one point.

Hoiberg thought that was related to one key aspect in the game.

“I thought we did a really good job of getting it into the paint in the second half,” he said. “We outscored them 36-18 in the paint, and I thought second half we established that pretty early.”

Penn State made a few attempts to get back into the game, but ultimately came up short as Nebraska’s offense kicked into gear.

And when the shots are falling and the defense is on point, it’s usually a pretty good combo.

“Keisei (Tominaga) hit a nice one. We had a couple good looks as well, I thought,” Fred Hoiberg said. “But they force you to play a different game than you’re used to and that affected us early. But again, we kept defending, and that’s important when you’re going through tough stretches. Your defense is going to keep you in those ugly games when it’s not going in the basket.”

The win was Nebraska’s second straight blowout, but the real key will be figuring things out on the road, where the team has yet to win a conference game.

Next up will put that to the test: a road trip to Indiana on Wednesday at 8:30 p.m. ET.