Mike Rhoades compliments Nebraska fans, 'cool' arena after road loss

Nebraska improved to 16-1 at home this season with an impressive 68-49 win over Penn State on Saturday. Nittany Lions coach Mike Rhoades was obviously disappointed that his team dropped the game, but he did admit that he enjoyed playing at Pinnacle Bank Arena.

The Cornhuskers have not dropped a Big Ten game at home all year. Their only home loss was to Creighton in early December.

“I don’t know if it’s hard to play in, it’s just really cool,” Mike Rhoades said. “If it’s not your arena, everyone’s against you. The fans are great. I just think it’s a beautiful arena. Everybody’s on top of you. It’s straight up. Your fans are loud and they’re into it.”

Nebraska led by only six at the half, before pulling away for the 19-point victory.

Rhoades is not only impressed by Pinnacle Bank Arena but also with the Cornhuskers team as a whole.

“I think the team’s good, how about that? I mean your fans are really cool. I think our fans are better. That’s just bias. But they’re good,” Rhoades said. “Fans are really good when the team’s really good. And I think that’s what you’ve got right now.”

Fred Hoiberg reveals his halftime message in Penn State win

Nebraska and Penn State were locked in a tight battle for the first 20 minutes, before the Cornhuskers eventually pulled away.

Nebraska coach Fred Hoiberg shared his message to his team ahead of the strong showing in the second half.

“That was the message is these first five minutes are huge. They’re important,” Hoiberg said. “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.”