Josiah Allick’s final Nebraska home game is ‘storybook’ end

The forward knows the job isn’t finished, that Nebraska hasn’t punched its ticket to the NCAA tournament just yet.

He knows he can’t get caught up in the moment when the Huskers face Rutgers on Sunday in the final home game of the season. NU still has business to take care of.

But he still wants to take it all in.

Sunday will ceremonially close the door on a college career that spanned five years and included stops at three schools. To do it in his hometown and potentially guide Nebraska into March Madness for the first time in a decade is an ending the Lincoln North Star graduate calls “storybook.”

It’s an ending he never expected to get. He still has high hopes for the epilogue.

“To have it unravel this way and to be playing the way we are, to be in the position we are is really something that seems almost kind of fake,” Allick said. “Like, it doesn’t seem like it’s real, like when you’re really thinking about it in its entirety.”

Allick initially brushed off Nebraska. He started his college career at Missouri-Kansas City and was in the transfer portal for the second time after a year with New Mexico when NU reached out. Allick wasn’t interested. It wasn’t the right fit. It wasn’t the right timing.

But Allick wanted to play in an NCAA Tournament — New Mexico ended the 2022-23 season in the NIT — and Fred Hoiberg was building a roster with the potential to make a run behind players like Allick: experienced, mature transfers who provide consistent energy and effort.

“When you talk about building a team and building a culture, it’s all guys like Josiah, hopefully for us moving forward” Hoiberg said.

Understanding what Hoiberg was building, the steps Nebraska had already taken, Allick began to buy into the idea that the Huskers could contend for an at-large bid, and the idea of being one of the players that helped them over the hump was enticing.

Playing in the Big Ten, a conference loaded with big, physical post players, was the kind of challenge he relished. It would force the relatively undersized Allick to consistently play the kind of gritty, physical style on which he thrives. In the Mountain West, there were particular matchups that stood out. By comparison, the Big Ten has been a merry-go-round of quality forwards.

“Just knowing that every night you gotta bring your ‘A’ game and you have to be in the right mindset and you’re gonna be put to the test is just what I’ve enjoyed more than anything else,” Allick said. “Kind of keeping myself in that zone of you gotta show up or you’re gonna get shut out. I’ve never ran from a challenge, and it’s part of why I took on the biggest challenge of my career in my last year, regardless of what I was supposed to have done or what maybe would have felt like the right decision. I knew that I wanted to face that fire head-on.”

Allick’s skill set was as advertised after he ultimately decided to return home. He’s been Nebraska’s dirty-work specialist, crashing the glass, diving on the floor for loose balls and making plays that don’t show up in the box score.

The energy is contagious. Before the season, Allick talked about how he was ultra-physical with freshman guard Eli Rice in practice to prepare him for the knock-down, drag-out style of college basketball. If a teammate is lethargic at practice, Allick is often the one to provide the necessary push.

It feeds into the priority that brought him back to Lincoln in the first place. All season, Allick hasn’t been bashful about bringing goals for NU that go beyond the next game: wins in the NCAA Tournament for the first time in program history.

Sunday’s game against Rutgers has the potential to be another step toward that goal. It will be a full-circle moment for the Lincoln native, but Allick didn’t come to Nebraska just to be a feel-good story.

“It’s not time to reflect and get too caught up in it and let the emotions come into it because at the end of the day we still have to win these next two games,” he said. “There’s no free games in the Big Ten regardless of the competition, and so it’s been a little difficult obviously being aware of the season coming to an end, but also knowing we haven’t done enough yet to take our foot off the gas. There’s no denying it’s been a really special experience.”