The 2025-’26 ‘BTPowerhouse Season Preview’ series will take an in-depth look at all 18 teams in the Big Ten heading into the 2025-’26 season with analysis on each program’s previous season, roster overhaul, and top storylines. Each post will also include predictions on each team’s postseason potential.
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Last season was a modest disappointment for the Nebraska Cornhuskers. After making the 2024 NCAA Tournament, Nebraska narrowly missed the cut last spring. However, the group bounced back by winning
the inaugural Crown Tournament, with four quality wins. Now, the question is whether Fred Hoiberg and company can get back to the Big Dance.
Let’s take a look.
1. Last Season.
The 2024-’25 season was a modestly disappointing one. While the Huskers had a respectable enough overall record and narrowly missed the NCAA Tournament, it felt like a serious step back from 2024, when Nebraska made the Big Dance and finished 23-11 overall. The analytics also show this, where Nebraska slid 16 spots from its finish a year before. The Huskers went from a top 30 unit to one barely in the top 50.
Much of the team’s struggles came down to offensive lulls and a frustrating run in early January, when Nebraska lost six straight to open the heart of conference play. And while most of the losses were explainable in a vacuum, the home losses to Rutgers and USC really stung. The Huskers also went through a similar stretch to close the regular season, dropping six of the team’s final seven games, including four at home. The 7-13 finish in Big Ten play was also rough enough to cost Nebraska a trip to the Big Ten Tournament.
However, the team also had some bright spots. To start, Nebraska beat a number of quality teams during the season, including Creighton, Illinois, Oregon, and UCLA. The win over the Ducks also came on the road. Additionally, the Huskers won the first ever Crown Tournament after beating UCF in early April. That’s a worthy accomplishment, even if making the Big Dance is the real goal.
2. Roster Overlook.
Nebraska will be undergoing a fair amount of roster changeover this offseason. The Huskers will be losing nine players in Juwan Gary, Jeffrey Grace, Gavin Griffiths, Nick Janowski, Braxton Meah, Andrew Morgan, Ahron Ulis, Brice Williams, and Rollie Worster. Williams and Gary led the team in minutes last season, with Worster finishing narrowly behind them at fourth. All told, the team will be losing six of its top nine in total minutes.
The loss of Williams is particularly significant. He was easily Nebraska’s best player last season and contributed in a multitude of ways. He led the team offensively, played a ton, and could do things inside the paint and outside the arc. It was an impressive performance for the forward. Gary also did quite a lot, especially on the boards, and carried the flag for the Huskers during the Crown run.
The good news is Nebraska adds plenty of new pieces as well. The Huskers will be adding two new recruits in Leo Curtis and Quentin Rhymes and six transfers in Kendall Blue (St. Thomas), Will Cooper (Air Force), Jared Garcia (Tulsa), Ugnius Jarusevicius (Central Michigan), Jamarques Lawrence (Rhode Island), and Pryce Sandfort (Iowa). Curtis and Sandfort are rated as four-star prospects by 247Sports. Everyone else was a three-star.
As noted above, the two players receiving the most hype are Curtis and Sandfort. Big Ten fans will know Sandfort well from his time at Iowa, where he led one of the better offensive units in the league. Meanwhile, Curtis arrives just outside the top 150 in the 2025 class and with seven-foot stature. Expect him to fill in for many of the minutes left open by Meah and Morgan’s departures.
3. The Schedule.
-Non-Conference Schedule:
- 9/19 – Opening Night
- 10/28 – BYU (Exh.)
- 10/27 – Midland University (Exh.)
- 11/3 – West Georgia
- 11/8 – FIU
- 11/11 – Maryland-Eastern Shore
- 11/15 – Oklahoma (Sioux Falls, SD)
- 11/20 – New Mexico (Kansas City, MO)
- 11/21 – Kansas State or Mississippi State (Kansas City, MO)
- 11/25 – Winthrop
- 11/29 – USC Upstate
- 12/7 – Creighton
- 12/21 – North Dakota
- 12/30 – New Hampshire
-Conference Schedule:
- 12/10 – Wisconsin
- 12/13 – at Illinois
- 1/2 – Michigan State
- 1/5 – at Ohio State
- 1/10 – at Indiana
- 1/13 – Oregon
- 1/17 – at Northwestern
- 1/21 – Washington
- 1/24 – at Minnesota
- 1/27 – at Michigan
- 2/1 – Illinois
- 2/7 – at Rutgers
- 2/10 – Purdue
- 2/14 – Northwestern
- 2/17 – at Iowa
- 2/21 – Penn State
- 2/25 – Maryland
- 2/28 – at USC
- 3/3 – at UCLA
- 3/8 – Iowa
-Postseason Schedule:
- March, 2026 – Big Ten Tournament (Chicago, IL)
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This is a sneaky good slate for Nebraska. While the Huskers don’t have a ton of “name” programs on the slate, there are a lot of quality opportunities for the team to earn its way back into the postseason. And they come at home, on the road, and in neutral environments. Nearly every game has a fair bit of intrigue.
The highlights of the non-con schedule will focus on the matchup against Creighton in early December and the neutral site games, including a rivalry game with Oklahoma before Thanksgiving. Notably, all of these games look winnable, at least based on the preseason projections. If Nebraska can hit the ground running, it has a chance to compile a pretty impressive resume.
Of course, Big Ten play will present its own challenges. And they start early, with games against Wisconsin and Illinois in December. In fact, KenPom currently projects Nebraska as an underdog in its first five Big Ten games. It isn’t until January 13th against Oregon until the Huskers project to be favored. As such, the key here is going to be avoiding getting in too big of a hole out of the gate. If Nebraska can hold on things look pretty manageable, especially in late February and March. The question is whether the team does enough for those games to matter.
4. Biggest Obstacle.
Nebraska’s biggest challenge this season will be finding someone to initiate the team’s offense. The Huskers are losing four of the team’s top five in field goal attempts last season, including the top two in Williams and Gary. In fact, Williams and Gary accounted for 42.9% of the team’s total, by themselves. That won’t be easy to replicate, even with some new faces on campus.
In many ways, expect the Huskers to lean into the frontcourt (where the team seems the strongest) this season to try and alleviate those offensive issues. Rienk Mast is expected back after missing a year from injury, Curtis arrives as a major prospect, and the team also adds Garcia and Jarusevicius. Moreover, Nebraska already had a quality player in Berke Buyuktuncel at the five spot. That’s more than enough depth to make some noise. The key will be getting at least one of that group to take the next step into star level. The only other potential wildcard here is Sandfort, who has shown plenty of promise at Iowa.
5. Realistic Expectations.
There’s no debating Nebraska took a step back last season. The Huskers missed the NCAA Tournament and suffered through an awful run down the stretch. But for the Crown Tournament victory, fans would probably view last season pretty negatively. Still, all the games count and fans are hoping Nebraska can build off that strong finish and carry it forward.
Unfortunately, the reality is that a carryover is unlikely, largely because of Nebraska’s substantial roster turnover. Williams and Gary are gone, and so are plenty of depth pieces as well. It’s hard for players to “keep something going” when they’re no longer in town. More realistically, the Huskers are going to have to rely on a solid frontcourt unit and hope Connor Essegian can carry things offensively in the backcourt.
All told, Nebraska should be a decent team capable of upsetting most. However, unless some of the newcomers outperform expectations, the team is probably going to be in the lower half of the league. There’s just a lot to replace and few known quantities arriving.
