Nebraska, finally, experiences NCAA Tournament success: ‘It’s what I dreamed of’

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The trio of old-time ball knowers gathered twice to observe Nebraska at practice last summer. It was late in the eight weeks allotted by the NCAA for men’s basketball teams to conduct offseason teamwork.

Kent Pavelka, Chuck Johnston and Bruce Chubick believed that, after those viewing sessions, they had seen something different. Something special.

“This may be the team,” Chubick told the others. “It may be the team that gets the first win.”

More than seven months later, it is that team.

Finally, four decades after Nebraska’s first appearance in the NCAA Tournament and nine years after it was left alone as the only major-conference program without a victory in this event, Fred Hoiberg’s squad raced to an 18-point first-half lead and beat Troy 76-47 Thursday to remove the albatross that hung from the Huskers’ figurative neck.

SOME DAY IS TODAY. pic.twitter.com/8CSM8GtH66

— Nebraska Men’s Basketball (@HuskerMBB) March 19, 2026

“A lot of emotions,” Hoiberg said in the aftermath on TruTV while surrounded by his players. “It’s been a special group since the beginning.”

The win, a school-record 27th in this historic season, resonated from Oklahoma City, where some 15,000 fans clad in red turned Paycom Center into a home away from home for Nebraska, to every corner of the Cornhusker State.

By well before the 11:40 a.m. tip, Nebraska fans had taken over the 18,203-seat arena. Other than some empty seats set aside as allotments for the other three teams in the early session, it was all red. The noise was earsplitting as the Huskers took the court for pre-game warmups.

“This is a reflection on everybody, all time, every coach, every player, every staff member,” said Pavelka, the Huskers’ longtime radio announcer, “everybody that’s been around Nebraska basketball.”

On Thursday, they took a moment to rejoice. The wait is over. Nebraska’s lack of a single win in the NCAA Tournament had come to define the program.

A win this week became the sole focus, an obsession for some Huskers and their followers.

“If there’s vindication, it’s probably for all of us old guys who were part of the losses,” said Chubick, a two-year starting forward for coach Danny Nee and contributor to four NCAA Tournament teams from 1991 to 1994.

“Hearing about how Nebraska hasn’t won a game, it’s been a pain in the ass.”

Chubick’s practice-watching cohorts, Pavelka and Johnston, experienced even more of the misery.

Pavelka is an icon to Nebraska fans. The former football play-by-play man has called more than 1,200 basketball games since 1974. Mixed with his colorful calls this season, Pavelka shared his emotions on air as Nebraska collected a dramatic victory at Illinois and wins at home against rivals Creighton, Wisconsin and Iowa.

“Three seconds, two seconds, one second left to go,” Pavelka exclaimed on his courtside broadcast Thursday. “There’s the game. There’s the horn. And history. It’s all over. All the years. The ache in the pit of your stomach. All that’s history now.”

The Huskers led by 16 at the half, by 20 on a Rienk Mast layup with 14:02 to play and by 30 on a Berke Buyuktuncel putback with 6:50 left.

Really, it was never in doubt after a 20-4 run in the first half that featured four 3s by Sandfort, the Huskers’ All-Big Ten guard who finished with a game-high 23 points.

Yes, the party started early.

“It’s what I dreamed of, back when we lost 12 conference games in a row,” senior Sam Hoiberg said. “I used it as motivation. I never thought it would happen.”

Kurt Maly was in Oklahoma City on Thursday to savor the euphoria.

Throughout this season, said Maly, a longtime fan and season-ticket holder from Wahoo, Neb., “I felt like I had to pinch myself many times.”

Maly, sitting in the front row at the Pentagon in Sioux Falls, S.D., on Nov. 15, was thrown out by an official in a controversial fashion for returning a stray ball too aggressively. His ejection became a flashpoint early in the season as the Huskers rallied on that day from a 16-point deficit to beat Oklahoma in overtime.

He traveled to Memphis in 2024 to watch the Huskers’ first NCAA Tournament game in 10 years. When they lost to Texas A&M, it felt “like someone died,” Maly said.

“All of it means way more than makes sense to people who aren’t a part of it,” Pavelka said. “In our little slice of the universe, it means everything.”

For most of his career, Pavelka said he doubted that he would see this moment. Nebraska made eight appearances in the NCAA Tournament from 1986 to 2024, four times as the higher seed. Only once did it lose by fewer than eight points.

The stretch included a 15-year drought under four coaches and a quarter-century during which the Huskers advanced to the tournament just once.

“I always thought they had a talent problem,” Pavelka said. “That and the combination of not having great success, it kind of feeds on itself. They’ve been a tough out. But they haven’t been good enough. Why would I suddenly think differently?

“Until now.”

Until this season, when Pavelka allowed himself to believe as the wins piled up. Nebraska started 20-0, a school record.

“They’re a classic example of the whole being better than the sum of its parts,” he said. “When you watch them play, you know that they care about each other. There aren’t any groups. It’s a reflection of the coaches. And I would not have said that a few years ago.”

Late in the regular-season finale on March 8, as Pavelka sat courtside at Pinnacle Bank Arena to call the Huskers’ overtime win against Iowa, he received a text message from Jerry Fort, an All-Big Eight guard at Nebraska in the mid-1970s.

Pavelka does not often hear from Fort, but he wanted to let the broadcaster know that he was watching. And that he was pulling for the Huskers.

“I have not talked to one alum,” said Pavelka’s broadcast partner, Jeff Smith, an assistant coach on four NCAA teams from the early 1990s, “who was not absolutely 100 percent behind the program and this team to do what we could not do.”

It was Fort whose wizardry on the court in 1975 awed Johnston, a college freshman at Nebraska in 1975. A transplant from South Carolina, Johnston went on to coach, teach and work as a high school administrator in Nebraska.

When Johnston traded notes with Pavelka and Chubick after their summer preview, they came to one joint conclusion.

“As a team,” Johnston said, “you could tell they had bought in.”

Credit Hoiberg. His first three teams at Nebraska combined to win 24 games. After a culture-changing .500 finish in 2022-23, the Huskers have won 71 games in three seasons. Three consecutive 20-win seasons are a first.

“They created a system that is about ‘we’ and ‘us’ all the time,” said Chubick, now the head coach at Omaha’s Central High School. “That’s just who they are. It’s what I saw on that (summer) day. These guys are connected.

“If we played five games of one-on-one, we may not win one. But that’s not what this is. It’s one game of five on five.”

And so Nebraska, fourth-seeded in the South Region, moves on to the Round of 32, beyond a hurdle it has never before cleared.

These Huskers stand after Thursday as the best team in program history.

“This team is very deserving,” Chubick said, “to carry that alone.”

Joe Rexrode contributed to this story.