Major college basketball’s longest winning streak in more than a decade ended in 24 games Tuesday night with No. 5 Nebraska 75-72 defeat At No. 3 Michigan.
“To beat Michigan, you have to play almost perfect, and in the end we missed,” Cornhuskers guard Sam Hoiberg Said.
Nebraska did not score over the final 3:20, missing its last five shots after leading for most of the game despite two key players being out of the lineup.
Coach Fred Hoiberg said, “It proved, hopefully to everybody, most importantly to the guys in the locker room, that we can compete with anybody.”
Rienk Mast Missed games due to illness and double-digit scorers Braden Frager Missed his second consecutive game due to an ankle injury.
Fred Hoiberg said, “It’s unfortunate, but I give our players a lot of credit for the fight they showed from start to finish in the game.”
The 24-game winning streak was an improbable run for a school with little history in men’s basketball. Nebraska emerged as the feel-good story of the season before hitting the road at the Crisler Center in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
The Cornhuskers’ previous loss was 83–68 to Iowa on March 9 in last year’s final regular season game. That streak began when they won four games to win the inaugural College Basketball Crown Tournament in Las Vegas last April.
“We haven’t had this feeling for a long time. It’s been almost a year,” Fred Hoiberg said. “They were hurt by it. We’re going to find out what we’re made of.”
Nebraska will have some time to regroup before hosting No. 9 Illinois on Sunday.
The Huskers’ 20–1 start remains the program’s best, and their No. 5 ranking in this week’s AP Top 25 poll is the highest in school history.
The 24-game streak was the longest in Division I since 2014–15, as the Kentucky team went 38–0 before losing to Wisconsin in the Final Four.
The winning streak captured the imaginations of college basketball fans as little was expected of Nebraska on hard courts.
With an 0–8 record in March Madness, the Huskers are the only power-conference program to have never won an NCAA Tournament game. Nebraska’s most recent regular-season conference championship was in 1950, and the school has posted conference winning records in only three of its first 14 seasons in the Big Ten.
The program has produced one unanimous All-American – Sam Carrier in 1912–13 – and only three NBA first-round draft picks, none since 1998.
The Huskers’ fast start was a success for Fred Hoiberg, who won 115 games in five seasons as the Iowa State coach and took the Cyclones to four NCAA Tournament appearances. Nebraska hired him in 2019, and in his first three seasons the Huskers were 24-67 overall and 9-50 in the Big Ten. Since then they are 80-41 overall and 37-32 in Big Ten play.
The Huskers had to erase double-digit deficits in five of their wins during the streak, including comebacks from 16 points down against Oklahoma on a neutral court in November and Indiana on the road.
The experienced team is led by seventh-year big man Mast, who returned from a major knee injury that caused him to miss the entire 2024–25 season.
price sandfort transferred from iowa, jamarques lawrence Returned after spending a season at Rhode Island Burke Büyüktunsel Teaming up with Mast in the frontcourt has raised his game. Sam Hoiberg, the coach’s son and former walk-on, is a nice guy who does his best.
One defeat doesn’t change the bigger picture.
Fred Hoiberg has often talked about how he believes this team has a chance to do something that has never been done before at Nebraska. The Huskers won 11 games against opponents outside the Big Ten to go undefeated in non-conference play for the first time since 1928–29. The 9–1 start in conference games was Nebraska’s best since 1965–66. A league title is still out there and, of course, a chance to end that tough NCAA Tournament drought.
