INDIANAPOLIS – In one sense, Fred Hoiberg has the valuable luxury of having as many as 12 players he trusts to play in a game this season.
However, that has also become one of his most daunting tasks.
The reality is that while the Huskers have a multitude of options and potential lineup combinations to work with, Hoiberg will ultimately have to pair that rotation down and establish his core group.
Nebraska returns more than 70 percent of its scoring and minutes from last year, giving it a foundation of experience and continuity that it hasn’t sniffed going into Hoiberg’s first two seasons.
It also brought in eight new additions from the high school and transfer market that expect immediate impacts in 2021-22.
A little more than a month before the season opener vs. Western Illinois on Nov. 9, Hoiberg and his staff have already begun walking the fine line of evaluating their best lineups and grouping while also managing egos.
“It is going to be my single most difficult part of the job this year, is figuring out a rotation, who starts, and more importantly who finishes games, who we can trust in those late-game situations,” Hoiberg said.
“The biggest thing you have to express to your team is role acceptance, going out there whatever role you’re given, star in it. We got three weeks to figure it out. What we start with with a rotation may not be what we finish the year with.
“We’re doing our best to put the best players on the floor, the best five that fit together to give us the best chance to win. That’s ultimately the goal.”
As a player both at Iowa State and into the NBA, Hoiberg had just about every role on the team imaginable. He was the star player, and he was the last guy off the bench.
Hoiberg said the key was accepting his role in each season and circumstance and doing everything he could to thrive in those opportunities. That’s been his message to his team all offseason, and it sounds like that mantra has already started to hit home.
The Huskers made “We > Me” their team motto for this season, based on putting the interest in team success above individual goals.
Junior guard Trey McGowens said that on the last day before the players went back home for a short break this summer, he called for a team meeting and reiterated that the focus for everyone was on winning and nothing else.
“We kind of came to an agreement that everyone just has to buy in,” McGowens said. “It might not be the role necessarily that the thought they were going to have, but everybody has to do their part. Since then, everybody’s bought in, and there really haven’t been any egos, honestly.”
Senior guard Alonzo Verge Jr. is a perfect example of NU’s “We > Me” mentality.
A graduate transfer from Arizona State who had numerous options this offseason, including a two-way contract offer from the NBA’s Charlotte Hornets, Verge chose Nebraska because he thought Hoiberg’s five-out spread offense would help take his game to the next level.
But his decision also had just as much to do with the opportunity he saw to accomplish an ever more important goal.
“I wanted to change the dynamic of Nebraska,” Verge said. “I know it’s kind of been rough these past few years, and with the pieces we had and adding me, we can make something special happen. The sky is the limit.”
While Hoiberg might feel comfortable with as many as 12 guys playing in games in some capacity, he said the rotation would likely get cut down to nine or 10 once the season got underway, and NU would “go from there.”
Some players who end up at the back end of that rotation, or even on the outside looking in, won’t be happy about their roles. But that’s where “We > Me” becomes the most important of all.
“This group is special,” McGowens said. “For a lot of us, this is our last year, and we’ve got a lot of big goals that we need each other to reach. Winning’s going to do it, and that was something that had to be understood.”
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