Don’t count out the Fighting Freds

One word came to mind for Nebraska coach Fred Hoiberg.

In the moment, Hoiberg stood near the scorer’s table with his hands on his hips as he watched not one, not two, not three, but four shots after offensive rebounds clank off the rim on a crucial possession late in the second half against No. 4 Purdue.

“I can’t say the word that I’d like to say, but that was the word that came up,” Hoiberg said. “But it just, that’s the effort that these guys play with to continue to give a chance to put it in the basket and unfortunately it just didn’t go down. They had good, solid looks, all four of them.”

But with eight seconds remaining, Keisei Tominaga had the Midas Touch — draining a contested three-pointer right in front of Nebraska’s bench to tie it up to force overtime. In the end, though, the Huskers fell short against the Boilermakers, 65-62.

While Saturday’s game goes into the official ledger as a loss, it should serve as a warning shot for the rest of the Big Ten: Don’t count out the Fighting Freds.

“They’re beating some people,” Purdue coach Matt Painter said. “They’re not just beating some people here, they’re gonna beat people on the road, too. They got a good club.”

Imagine this sentence in early October: In a six-day stretch, Nebraska handily beat No. 7 Creighton in Omaha, played No. 14 Indiana relatively close at points without Sam Griesel while in Bloomington, and nearly knocked off No. 4 Purdue in overtime.

Yes, the team that was picked to finish dead last in the Big Ten held its own against three top teams: beating one, not giving up against one, taking the last one to overtime. Talk about showing signs of life — even when they weren’t playing their best.

“Honestly, I felt like we should have won that one,” said Derrick Walker, who had 14 points and 10 rebounds in the loss. “That’s a tough one. Playing the No. 4 team in the country and to go into overtime with them and have such a close game? I just felt like we should have come out on top.”

The Huskers were absolutely in a position to. Multiple times.

If any of those shots from that lengthy and unfruitful possession went in, Nebraska would have taken a one- or two-point lead with anywhere from 70 seconds to 33 seconds remaining. That’s a “What If” that has the potential to haunt some nightmares.

But it wasn’t just that possession.

Nebraska went cold offensively in crunch time.

Starting with Griesel’s missed three-pointer with 4:20 to play in regulation, Nebraska missed 16 of their last 20 shots. That’s a clip of 20%. For the game, NU shot 31.9% — their second-worst outing of the season in that metric. The worst? That 20-point loss to St. John’s.

“When the ball doesn’t go into the hoop a lot of times it’s hard and demoralizing to stay in the game. But our guys, we shot 32 percent and still had a chance to win the game,” Hoiberg said. “… Unfortunately, we didn’t shoot it very well today but we kept fighting and battling.”

The poor officiating didn’t help, either. For example, that “foul” on C.J. Wilcher that effectively ended the game was egregiously bad.

Twelve seconds remained in overtime. Tominaga had just made a reverse layup to cut Purdue’s lead to 1, and Purdue’s Braden Smith was bringing the ball up the floor before he lost possession of the basketball. As the ball was bouncing away from Smith near half-court, Wilcher was flying in to guard him. Then, a whistle — from the baseline! — even though Smith didn’t have possession of the ball.

Like, that’s bad enough that the Big Ten should probably apologize (they won’t, but they should) — just as the league had to do Friday after yet another game-altering officiating error in Ohio State-Rutgers.

In the seconds after the whistle, Hoiberg was as animated as you’ll ever see him. Nearly everyone in Pinnacle Bank Arena booed. Former NCAA officiating coordinator John W. Adams tweeted, “That’s not a foul,” after the play. On the Big Ten Network broadcast, both the play-by-play announcer and the color commentator also thought the call was a bunch of baloney.

While Hoiberg said he didn’t get an explanation from the officials on the Wilcher call and left his comments at that, Purdue coach Matt Painter offered a few thoughts.

“We also thought we had a call go against us in regulation when we were just trying to get open, then I think they got a call go against them when we were dribbling the ball up the court,” Painter said. “It was one of those crucial plays and in that moment, that really helped us, being able to get those two free throws.”

But we won’t linger on that. That’s a column for another day.

What did go right for the Huskers? Their defense. Again. After a Blackshirt-worthy performance against Creighton, Nebraska doubled down against Purdue.

Coming into Saturday’s game, Purdue had scored at least 70 points in all but one of their previous nine contests. In their last eight games, Purdue had shot at least 45% from the field. And 7-foot-4 center Zach Edey had scored at least 20 points in the previous eight games.

Those trends stopped dead in their tracks at the Vault.

Purdue made just 39.7% of their shots Saturday — the Boilermakers’ second-worst outing of the season. They scored 56 points in regulation — a season-low. And Edey, who was swarmed by Derrick Walker and Co., scored a mere 11 points. The last time Edey scored that few was in the tournament last season.

Those efforts, even in a loss, impressed Painter.

“Nebraska deserved to win the game just as much as we did,” he said.

The Huskers take no solace in the fact they lost a close game to a top-five team. There’s no moral victories here. They were visibly dejected afterward. They wanted this one. And it would have been one of the biggest wins in program history.

With that in mind, though, the rest of the league should be put on notice. Nebraska isn’t the chump team many thought the Huskers would be this year. If the Huskers weren’t a guaranteed win for the No. 4 Boilermakers, then they shouldn’t be for anyone.

“The way they went out and battled, if we do that every night,” Hoiberg said, “we’re going to have a chance to have a heck of a year.”