Fred Hoiberg shares latest on status of Juwan Gary

The Nebraska Cornhuskers have been without forward Juwan Gary for the last three games with a calf strain that he suffered against Rutgers. Now, head coach Fred Hoiberg shared the latest on Gary’s status.

Hoiberg explained that Gary has been practicing with the team but his status for the Cornhuskers’ next game is still up in the air.

“Juwan, he made it through a lot of practice today and hopefully he feels good in the morning,” Fred Hoiberg said. “We’ll get another opportunity in the morning to see how he does at shoot-around and see if we can get something out of him.”

Juwan Gary spent three seasons at Alabama, including a season where he took a redshirt, before transferring to Nebraska ahead of the 2022-23 season. Now in his fifth college season, Gary has brought tons of experience to the Cornhuskers during his two seasons in Lincoln.

This season, Gary is averaging 11.7 points, 5.8 rebounds, and 1.2 assists in 15 games.

“If he is available we are going to be careful. We’re probably not going to have him out there in a 30-minute stint if he does play, but hopefully get him back. Obviously, from a physicality standpoint, he helps us in a big way and that has been a big knock on our team, rightfully so, is we’re not consistent enough in the physicality department.”

Nebraska is getting set to take on Wisconsin in an important Big Ten game on Thursday night. Having Juwan Gary back would be huge, and help in the physicality department. However, Fred Hoiberg wants to see that improve from the whole team and he explained that he’s been pushing them in practice.

“We’ve had three really, really tough days in a row and I really didn’t care what their loads look like. We’ve got the analytics and the sports science department, and I pay a lot of attention to that. We’re very fortunate to have them, but when they lay out a load plan for me, I crumple it up and throw it in the garbage and I said, ‘We need to go hard. We need to go physical,'” Hoiberg said.

“And that’s exactly what we’ve done the last three days. I don’t care what their legs are like tomorrow. We had to get after it. The coach issued football pads, we were just short of going out and doing that. So, we’ll see how we respond to it tomorrow. I know these guys are sore, but again, I didn’t really care. We’ve got 10 games left and we need to get right and more consistent from a physicality standpoint. If we don’t, it’s going to be a bad second half of the Big Ten season.”

Coming into the game against Wisconsin, Nebraska is 5-5 in conference play, making the Cornhuskers one of four Big Ten schools to have a .500 record in conference. At 8-1, the Badgers are sitting atop the conference standings.

“Hopefully, we will get Juwan back on the floor soon,” Hoiberg said. “Get everybody right and if it has to be shorter stints tomorrow, so be it. But it’s a big game. Big opportunity, but I just felt we needed three really tough days of practice.”