NU men hope they have lots of life left
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By BRIAN ROSENTHAL / Lincoln Journal Star
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Doc Sadler and Aleks Maric, waiting their turn for Wednesday’s Big 12 Tournament news conference, were sitting behind a big, black curtain.
The news conference moderator referred to it as a holding area.
“I’ve been to sale barns before,” said Sadler, the Nebraska men’s basketball coach, “and that’s kind of the way they do the cows … before they kill ’em.”
The Huskers, of course, have aspirations of staying alive a little longer at the Sprint Center.
No. 7 seed Nebraska (18-11, 7-9) faces No. 10 seed Missouri (16-15, 6-10) in today’s first round at 6 p.m. The winner faces No. 2 seed Kansas on Friday night.
That’s when many people would probably leave the Huskers for dead, should they make it out of the chute against Missouri.
Nebraska had two lopsided losses to Kansas in January en route to an 0-4 start to the Big 12 season.
“At that particular moment,” Sadler said, “a lot of people were concerned with particular questions about where our team would go from there.”
Maric, the team’s lone senior, wasn’t one of those people.
“I never had any doubts at all,” Maric said. “I knew we were a very strong team mentally. We weren’t going to pack our bags up that early.”
Sure enough, the Huskers, behind leadership from Sadler and Maric, regrouped. They finished league play 7-5, a turnaround that started with a strange game against tonight’s opponent, Missouri.
As if an 0-4 start wasn’t pressure enough, the Huskers were facing a Missouri team without five suspended players. The game was on the road.
“Everybody just assumes that you’re going to go over to Missouri and win,” Sadler said. “I think there was more pressure that way than us being 0-4, because so many times, in situations like that, teams (like Missouri) rally around each other and give their best effort.”
That indeed happened — Sadler said Missouri played better that night than it did in a victory against Nebraska two weeks later in Lincoln — but the Huskers prevailed, 66-62.
“It would’ve just looked real bad had we lost to them,” Nebraska’s Ade Dagunduro said, admitting the pressure the Huskers felt in playing a team missing five players. “It would’ve just shown that we were tremendously unprepared.”
Nebraska’s first game against Missouri ended a down cycle. The second meeting started one.
The Huskers lost at home by eight points — a game in which Maric had 32 points, yet didn’t attempt a shot in overtime — then lost the following week at Iowa State after leading 24-11 at halftime.
“Now you’re going back down in that valley again,” Sadler said, “and you’re looking up at Michael Beasley coming in the next ball game.”
Nebraska regrouped by winning three straight, including back-to-back games against ranked teams Kansas State and Texas A&M. That stretch virtually assured the Huskers of postseason play.
Not bad, considering the 0-4 start.
“I must admit, I was getting a little worried,” Dagunduro said. “But I didn’t panic, because I knew we were a good team.”
Briefly
* Sadler didn’t directly answer a question about whether freshman point guard Cookie Miller would start tonight. Miller, who missed three games with a shoulder sprain, came off the bench Sunday against Colorado and played 19 minutes.
* Greg Sharpe, Nebraska’s new play-by-play voice for football and baseball, will broadcast all four games today and Friday on XM Satellite Radio. He’s teamed with color commentator Jon Sunvold.
* Two players from last week’s boys state high school tournament in Lincoln have received Nebraska scholarship offers — Elliot Eliason, a 6-foot-11 sophomore center from Chadron, and Jarrell Crayton, a 6-6 junior from Bellevue East.
Reach Brian Rosenthal at 473-7436 or brosenthal@journalstar.com.
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