Nebraska Hoops in Big Ten Too
All the talk has been about Nebraska football joining the Big Ten. The basketball team is going to the Big Ten too you know. Certainly the football landscape changed a lot more with the addition of Nebraska. The Cornhuskers have one of the richest and deepest football programs in the nation. They will contend for Big Ten titles on a yearly basis. And it gives the conference a dozen teams so they can get in on the lucrative championship game action.
The basketball team will not change the Big Ten as much. But what lies in store for the hardcourt Huskers? This is a team that has been to the NIT three out of the last four years and is certainly on an upswing under Coach Doc Sadler. Will having to play Ohio State, Wisconsin, Purdue and Michigan State every year stop their recent success? For the short term, the answer may be yes. The Big 12 was not an easy conference to play in and Nebraska pulled off their fair share of upsets. They will do the same thing in the Big Ten. However, for now, the Cornhuskers have to game plan for a lot of unfamiliar teams. It works both ways and Nebraska might surprise some Big Ten teams, but twice a week the coaching staff will have a new opponent and a new coach to go up against. That will catch up with them sooner or later.
Sadler is a great coach and has plenty of talented assistants by his side, but it is tougher to play somebody you know less about and Nebraska has a schedule full of teams they have not played in decades. While the 2011-2012 Cornhuskers are a talented team that will pull off some upsets in Lincoln, this season could be a long and tough one.
Eventually Nebraska will fit right in just as Penn State has done. The Nittany Lions have made plenty of NCAA Tournament appearances since joining the conference and eventually Nebraska will too. They have the infrastructure to be a successful basketball program. The comparisons to Penn State are very apt in this case…a football school that joined the Big Ten for football, but had a solid basketball program too. Penn State had four straight 20 win seasons prior to joining the Big Ten. Their first two years in the Big Ten they went 2-15 and 5-11 in conference play. But Penn State has had success…it just took a while to get there and it will take Nebraska a while too.
Read the in-depth men’s basketball preview for this team
