Hoiberg preaches finishing as Huskers head to No. 20 Purdue

After blowing a 15-point lead at the 14:54-mark of the second half at Iowa and losing 97-87 in overtime on Tuesday, Nebraska (12-3 overall, 2-2 in Big Ten) is looking for a response this Sunday at No. 20 Purdue (12-4, 4-1).

Tip is slated for 11 a.m. with the game being shown on BTN with Brandon Gaudin and Stephen Bardo on the call.

The Boilermakers, while not as strong as in recent seasons, are playing well in a post-Zach Edey world. They’ll enter the game riding a four-game win streak. The last three wins have come against Big Ten opponents Minnesota (81-61) and Rutgers (68-50) on the road and Northwestern at home (79-61).

Mackey Arena has been good to Matt Painter’s team, which is 8-0 when playing inside it this season. Purdue has actually won 25 straight home games heading into Sunday, which is the sixth-longest nationally.

“It’s going to be incredibly important to stay mentally tough this entire game,” Nebraska head coach Fred Hoiberg said on Friday before his team departed for West Lafayette. “And this is the loudest arena that we’re going to play in all year, and it’s going to be start to finish. There’s no lulls in Mackey. It’s one of the true great environments in college basketball.”

Moving on mentally from the collapse in Iowa will be important for Nebraska. It was a loss that stung deep. There were aspects of the game that were uncharacteristic for the Huskers, like their ability to connect in the paint and hit free throws.

Nebraska made just 15 of its 27 layup attempts at Iowa. The Huskers grabbed 14 offensive rebounds — eight more than Iowa — but had only a 12-11 edge in second-chance points.

Players like Juwan Gary were just off with the ball in their hands. Gary, a sixth-year veteran, had a double-double of 13 points and 13 rebounds, but struggled mightily with putbacks and finished 5-of-21 from the field. Gary wasn’t the only one.

“We got 40 attempts at the rim, we missed 18 of them. You make five more of those, you make a couple free throws, we’re not feeling as bad as we are, or were, after that game,” Hoiberg said.

Hoiberg felt that, for the first time this season, the poor play on the offensive end of the court impacted the play on the other end. Payton Sandfort was taking and making open 3s and scored 30 points in the second half. Josh Dix scored 31 points and made seven 3s.

After missed bunnies in the paint, the transition defense suffered. Last season, there were offensive-minded players like Keisei Tominaga, CJ Wilcher and Rienk Mast who could get hot at a moment’s notice and help erase those sorts of problems if they popped up. But that’s not how this season’s roster is built.

“This year I love being built as a tough, defensive-minded group. If you’re going to say, what are you going to be good at, one or the other, yeah, it’s fun to be offense. It’s fun. But, man, if you want to win and have a chance when that thing’s not going in the hoop, you’d rather have a gritty, tough-minded team,” Hoiberg said. “And I think that’s what we are. So we got to get over that. We can’t let our inability, either finishing plays or missing shots, affect the other end. And again, that was the first time all year I saw a little bit of that. We played hard. Sometimes it’s effort, it wasn’t effort the other night, we still played hard. Unfortunately, they got really hot. There’s a few things that happened out of our control. You just got to find a way to finish those games.”

Not letting the defeat hang around in the memory will be crucial for Sunday. It’s early in the conference slate of course, but Nebraska doesn’t want to wait as long as it did last season to pick up its first Big Ten road win, which was Feb. 21 at Indiana.

“Got to learn from it. You got to put it behind you,” Hoiberg said. “If you let it linger, the game is going to get out of hand in a hurry on Sunday. But our guys have bounced back, as I’m confident they would. Got to make sure the coach bounces back as well. That was a tough one.”

When Hoiberg was a player, he found it always took him a day, or a practice, to get over the tough losses that tend to stick around longer than they should.

Now as a coach, Hoiberg wants to find the right buttons to push.

“It’s a long couple nights staring at the ceiling and thinking a lot about how you’re going to dress the team,” Hoiberg said. “What are you going to say in the film session? How hard are we going to go at them. What are we going to do to learn and get better? Those are all the things that enter your mind as you prepare and as you grow into the next step.”

Hoiberg said he’s seen a Purdue team that’s playing a different brand of basketball than last season when it had the 7-foot-4 star in Edey. The biggest change is more pick-and-roll with guard Braden Smith.

Smith is the constant at Purdue, Hoiberg said. The 6-foot guard is filling it up this season as he’s averaging 15.4 points, 4.7 rebounds, 8.9 assists and 2.1 steals per game. He’s shooting 42.2% on 6.4 3-point attempts per game.

“It’s going to be in Braden Smith’s hands. We have to do the best job we can to try to protect the pocket. He’s one of the best I’ve ever seen at getting that thing in the teeth of your defense,” Hoiberg said.

As a team, Purdue is making 3s at a 38.1% clip, which ranks second in the Big Ten behind Iowa’s 39.1%. Fletcher Loyer, a 6-5 guard, is shooting 45.5% on an average of 4.1 3s per game. Freshman guard CJ Cox is hitting 38.9% on 2.3 3-point attempts per game.

“You can’t give them easy ones in transition. They will run more at home,” Hoiberg said. “But this is the best-executing team in the country, in my opinion.”

The 3-point shot is an important part of Purdue’s offense, which will throw a lot at Nebraska’s defense, which likes to protect the paint, double the post and force opponents to make long shots.

“The biggest thing with this game is, Purdue, if they have 35 possessions in the first half, they’re gonna run 30 different sets,” Hoiberg said. “So it’s not a game you can go through every play.”

Nebraska’s transition defense will need to be much tighter at Purdue than it was at Iowa. And when the Boilermakers make their shots — and they will — the Huskers can’t get down on themselves and show poor body language. That happened in Iowa City. Can’t happen again.

“You have to contest shots knowing they’re going to hit some tough ones, and you can’t get deflated. Can’t get deflated,” Hoiberg said. “If you drop your head, if you pout and they smell blood, it’s going to get real ugly.”