
Nebraska basketball fans react to winning postseason tournament
Nebraska basketball fans react to winning postseason tournament
The Nebraska men's basketball team ended the season on a high note on Sunday afternoon. The Huskers defeated the UCF Knights 77-66 to win the inaugural College Basketball Crown. Nebraska finished the season with a record of 21-14, while the Knights ended the 2024-25 campaign at 20-17.
The victory is Nebraska's first postseason championship since the Cornhuskers won the 1996 NIT. This is only the third time in school history that Nebraska has had back-to-back 20-win seasons. The win also secures $300,000 in Name Image and Likeness for the Cornhuskers. UCF will leave Las Vegas with $100,000.
Senior Juwan Gary scored 20 points and eight rebounds and was named King of the Crown (Tournament MVP). Brice Williams and Connor Essegian led Nebraska with 21 points each. Williams passed James Palmer Jr. for the single-season scoring record (713 points). Gary and Williams were also both named to the all-tournament team.
Find social media reactions to the victory below.
The kings
Crown 'em
Final
Crowned
A Big Ten Champion
Never forget
Rollercoaster season
Lift the Crown
Photo bomb
MVP
Radio Network Call
Victory
Go Big Red
NIL
Locker room
Contact/Follow us @CornhuskersWire on X, and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Nebraska news, notes, and opinions.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
36 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Pacers vs. Thunder NBA Finals: Yep, this is the OKC team that is trying to put a bow on a historic season
OKLAHOMA CITY — After blowing a fourth-quarter lead in Game 1 of the NBA Finals, the Oklahoma City Thunder spent every waking hour since Thursday night hearing about it. About how they galaxy-brained themselves with their starting lineup switch. About how blinking first and going away from playing two-big lineups cost them not just a game, but home-court advantage. About the myriad tactical adjustments they desperately needed to make to stem the tide of the rampaging, team-of-destiny Indiana Pacers. About everything. Advertisement So Thunder head coach Mark Daigneault got in the lab, pored over the film and came up with the most brilliant adjustment that any coach can make: Hey, everyone: play better. 'I think we were just a little bit better in a lot of different areas — of execution, of pace, organization, decision-making in the paint, aggressiveness at the basket, gathering the ball,' Daigneault said Sunday, after Oklahoma City returned serve in a dominant 123-107 win to level the 2025 NBA Finals at one game apiece. 'We just were a tick forward in all those areas … I thought everyone played better individually, and I thought we played better collectively.' Masterful gambit, Coach. Oklahoma City Thunder guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was tough to stop in Game 2 of the NBA Finals on Sunday, June 8, 2025, in Oklahoma City. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez) (ASSOCIATED PRESS) The Thunder did on Sunday what they've done after losses all season: punch back. Hard. They're now 17-2 after a defeat this season, including 5-0 in the playoffs, with those five wins coming by an average of 19.6 points — right in line with their 20.5-point average margin of victory following a regular-season L. Advertisement 'I think tonight was a better representation of how we play,' said Thunder reserve Alex Caruso, who scored 20 points on 6-of-11 shooting in 27 characteristically hyperactive minutes off the bench. It was, in virtually every capacity. After combining for 23 points on 28 shots in Game 1, Jalen Williams and Chet Holmgren combined for 34 on 25 in Game 2. Holmgren also provided strong rim protection and held his own on multiple possessions when switched out onto the perimeter, while Williams drew praise from Daigneault for an attacking approach that saw him draw seven fouls and dish five assists. 'He didn't get off to a great start in his first stint, but he really settled into the game,' Daigneault said of Williams. 'He's huge for us. All the things he brings to the game — defensively, size, versatility, physicality, offensive, on-ball, off-ball … that floor is really high. We really need him every single night.' Advertisement The uptick from Williams and Holmgren was emblematic of the overall bounce-back for Oklahoma City, which scored a scorching 128.1 points per 100 possessions against an overwhelmed Pacers defense. After going just 28-for-68 (41.2%) inside the 3-point arc in Game 1, Oklahoma City shot 26-for-46 (56.5%) on 2-pointers in Game 2, a dramatic improvement finishing on the interior. After notching a season-low 13 assists in Game 1, the Thunder nearly doubled their dimes, dishing 25 against 13 turnovers. They got to the line more often: 20-for-24 in Game 1, 29-for-33 in Game 2. They created and made more 3-pointers: 11-for-30 in Game 1, 14-for-36 in Game 2. After decisively losing the rebounding battle in Game 1 — though, as both Daigneault and Pacers head coach Rick Carlisle noted, that was partly a function of there being fewer defensive rebounds for OKC to get, considering how often they turned Indiana over in the first half — the Thunder earned a 43-35 edge on the glass. After giving up 12 buckets at the rim in Game 1, they allowed just five in Game 2, doing a better job of forcing the Pacers into contested midrange looks. While they allowed 40 3-point attempts, those looks more often felt harried and off-rhythm, launched over crisp and hellacious Thunder closeouts. Advertisement They smothered Tyrese Haliburton, holding him to just five points on seven shots with four assists against three turnovers through three quarters. They better matched the physicality of Pascal Siakam, Myles Turner, Andrew Nembhard and Aaron Nesmith, refusing to concede space and clean shots to the Pacers' other starters, short-circuiting Indiana's offensive ecosystem in the process. 'I thought the guys did a really good job of keeping the foot on the gas, especially defensively,' Daigneault said after Oklahoma City held Indiana to just 104.4 points per 100 possessions — a worst-in-the-league-caliber offensive performance — through the four-minute mark of the fourth quarter, when Carlisle waved the white flag and pulled his starters. 'I thought we really amped it up on that end of the floor.' The Thunder rolled on the offensive end, too, with the NBA's Most Valuable Player continuing his assault on both the Pacers defense and the record books. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander scored a game-high 34 points in Game 2, giving him a total of 72 in the series — a new high-water mark for any player in his first two career NBA Finals games, surpassing the 71 that Allen Iverson poured in back in 2001. But unlike in Game 1, where the Pacers were able to (somewhat) limit the MVP's damage to tough self-created buckets, Gilgeous-Alexander needed just 21 field-goal attempts to crack 30 on Sunday — and also added eight assists to six different teammates, breaking down the defense and drawing help before kicking it out to create 22 more Thunder points through his passing. Advertisement 'The way I see it, I have no choice,' Gilgeous-Alexander said of relying on his teammates. 'No one-man show achieves what I'm trying to achieve with this game. All the stats and the numbers, they're fun. I don't play in space as much as I do without having them out there. I don't get open as much as I do without having the screeners out there … those guys are the reason why we're as good of a team as we are. I just add to it.' The Thunder are hard enough to beat when Gilgeous-Alexander's going off by himself. But when he's got help — to the tune of four other Thunderers scoring 15 or more points, the first time five teammates have done that in a Finals game since the Raptors did it against the Warriors in 2019 — they're damn near impossible to deal with. Caruso drilled four 3-pointers off the bench. Aaron Wiggins, relegated to just nine minutes in Game 1, came out firing in the second quarter, scoring eight points in eight minutes as part of a trademark 19-2 Thunder run that turned a two-possession game into a 23-point boatrace. (Indiana promptly ripped off 10 points, if only to remind Oklahoma City that, as Jalen Williams said before Game 1, 'They're never too far behind, and we've always got to keep that in the back of our mind.') Advertisement 'I think we just kind of found a rhythm on both ends of the court,' said Wiggins, who finished with 18 points on 6-for-11 shooting, including a 5-for-8 mark from long range, in 21 minutes. 'We were able to get stops, get out in transition, hit a couple shots. Once we kind of got going, you could kind of just feel the energy playing a factor in that.' And, crucially, that energy never really waned. When the Pacers started drawing fouls early in the third quarter, getting into the bonus early and giving themselves a chance to march to the free-throw line to get their offense unstuck, the Thunder remained poised, took care of the ball and continued to generate good looks for themselves, scoring 34 points on just 23 possessions in the frame to keep them at bay. When Indiana had a shot to cut the deficit to 16 in the closing seconds of the third — an opportunity to maybe grab a sliver of momentum, some steady footing from which to mount one last furious charge — Cason Wallace swatted the hell out of it: The Thunder never eased up. Not when they once again started small, with Wallace in place of Isaiah Hartenstein. Not when Hartenstein checked in for Holmgren midway through the first quarter — or when Holmgren checked back in for Luguentz Dort with 3:51 to go in the first, as Daigneault went double-big against Indiana's reserve frontcourt of Obi Toppin and Thomas Bryant, kicking off a 9-0 Thunder run to end the quarter. Not when they turned to Wiggins and rock-solid small-ball 4 (and sometimes 5) Kenrich Williams to better match Indiana's size on the perimeter. ('I don't know if there was any lineup that they used that wasn't impactful for them,' Carlisle said.) Advertisement Not when the Pacers made a couple of runs to cut the deficit to 13 — the moments where things got wobbly in Game 1. The Thunder never wobbled on Sunday. They stood tall, firm, sovereign. The 68-win juggernaut we watched all season showed up in Game 2, giving the Pacers plenty to think about as they board the plane to head back home. 'Another bad first half,' Carlisle said. 'Obviously, it was a big problem, and we just played poorly. A little bit better in the second half, but you can't be a team that's reactive and expect to be successful or have consistency. So we're going to have to be a lot better on Wednesday.' Advertisement As will Oklahoma City. Daigneault said that the Thunder try to use the early games of a series 'to learn what our options are, and what our trade-offs are, and … just get a little bit more information.' 'Now we have it,' he said. 'We'll apply that as we move forward in the series.' Gilgeous-Alexander highlighted one specific thing they learned the hard way in Game 1 and applied in Game 2 — and, in the process, looked a hell of a lot more like the Thunder team that dominated the league this season. 'You can't just throw the first punch,' he said. 'You've got to try to throw all the punches, all night. Yeah, that's what we did: We threw enough punches tonight to go get a W.'

Yahoo
8 hours ago
- Yahoo
After a 12-year wait, UCLA is back in the Men's College World Series
Since coming to Westwood, Roch Cholowsky has had Omaha on his mind. The Big Ten Player of the Year — a projected No. 1 overall pick in the 2026 MLB draft by some analysts — turned Charles Schwab Field in Omaha into a playground during the Big Ten tournament, winning player of the tournament despite UCLA not claiming the championship. Advertisement So far, in the NCAA tournament, Cholowsky had been uncharacteristically quiet for his standards. He still made hard plays look easy as a 'premium shortstop' — as UCLA coach John Savage glowed about his defensive skills — but his bat wasn't making its usual noise. Lagging behind for Cholowsky isn't the same for the rest of Division I baseball. The Arizona-raised team captain was still hitting .333 through the regionals and super regionals entering Sunday. A big swing, however, had yet to come — Cholowsky flying out to the deep outfield on numerous occasions across the last two weeks. 'He's just trying to do too much, probably,' Savage reasoned after Game 1 of the Los Angeles Super Regional on Saturday. 'All he cares about is winning. That's all what these guys all care about. We like an average Roch. Average Roch is pretty good.' Cholowsky finally had his moment Sunday. He did a little too much, as Savage said, trying to catch Texas San Antonio's defense sleeping and got picked off at third base in the fifth. But his big swing finally arrived — a swing that helped deliver the Bruins to Omaha. Advertisement Cholowsky's RBI single in the fifth, a part of his 2-for-5 day, clinched UCLA's spot in the Men's College World Series with a 7-0 victory over UTSA. The two-game Los Angeles Super Regional sweep of the Roadrunners makes for the Bruins' sixth berth to Omaha and first since 2013, when they won it all. Cholowsky, whose trip to Omaha as a high-school senior convinced him of going to UCLA rather than becoming a likely first-round MLB draft selection, will now get his wish. The shortstop fell to the ground as Phoenix Call caught the final out in shallow right field, holding his head to the dirt. Cholowsky leapt up from the ground, his teammates already celebrating at the center of the diamond. He joined them, jumping in glee. His dreams, realized. Whereas Cholowsky may be one of the most well-known Bruins baseball players in recent memory, it was a little-playing junior who broke a scoreless game. Outfielder Toussaint Bythewood, a Harvard-Westlake alumnus, dunk a soft line drive into right field for a two-out RBI single against UTSA starting pitcher Conor Myles. Bythewood, who had started twice all season and taken just 12 at bats entering the game, provided the Bruins with their winning swing. UCLA added two insurance runs in the eighth and three in the ninth to build enough distance for its arms to pitch a little more comfortably as the Roadrunners ran out of outs. Advertisement A UTSA offense that was dominant in an Austin Regional sweep a week ago, exited with a whimper, rallying just four hits against UCLA's pitching staff. Starting pitcher Landon Stump couldn't get through the fifth, but the Bruins' relief pitchers carried the brunt of the battle to shut out the Roadrunners. Left-hander Chris Grothues tied a career high with 2 ⅔ scoreless innings, striking out two and making a nifty play to catch a popped-up bunt to end the sixth. Righties Cal Randall and August Souza bridged the gap to the ninth, where freshman closer Easton Hawk shut the door. Savage, who is in the 12th and final year of the contract extension UCLA rewarded him with after winning the 2013 national championship, will get his long-awaited chance to revisit old memories and create new ones as the Bruins attempt to win their second national championship beginning later this week in Omaha. Advertisement Get the best, most interesting and strangest stories of the day from the L.A. sports scene and beyond from our newsletter The Sports Report. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.


Los Angeles Times
8 hours ago
- Los Angeles Times
After a 12-year wait, UCLA is back in the Men's College World Series
Since coming to Westwood, Roch Cholowsky has had Omaha on his mind. The Big Ten Player of the Year — a projected No. 1 overall pick in the 2026 MLB draft by some analysts — turned Charles Schwab Field in Omaha into a playground during the Big Ten tournament, winning player of the tournament despite UCLA not claiming the championship. So far, in the NCAA tournament, Cholowsky had been uncharacteristically quiet for his standards. He still made hard plays look easy as a 'premium shortstop' — as UCLA coach John Savage glowed about his defensive skills — but his bat wasn't making its usual noise. Lagging behind for Cholowsky isn't the same for the rest of Division I baseball. The Arizona-raised team captain was still hitting .333 through the regionals and super regionals entering Sunday. A big swing, however, had yet to come — Cholowsky flying out to the deep outfield on numerous occasions across the last two weeks. 'He's just trying to do too much, probably,' Savage reasoned after Game 1 of the Los Angeles Super Regional on Saturday. 'All he cares about is winning. That's all what these guys all care about. We like an average Roch. Average Roch is pretty good.' Cholowsky finally had his moment Sunday. He did a little too much, as Savage said, trying to catch Texas San Antonio's defense sleeping and got picked off at third base in the fifth. But his big swing finally arrived — a swing that helped deliver the Bruins to Omaha. Cholowsky's RBI single in the fifth, a part of his 2 for 5 day, clinched UCLA's spot in the Men's College World Series with a 7-0 victory over UTSA. The two-game Los Angeles Super Regional sweep of the Roadrunners makes for the Bruins' sixth berth to Omaha and first since 2013, when they won it all. Cholowsky, whose trip to Omaha as a high-school senior convinced him of going to UCLA rather than becoming a likely first-round MLB draft selection, will now get his wish. The shortstop fell to the ground as Phoenix Call caught the final out in shallow right field, holding his head to the dirt. Cholowsky leapt up from the ground, his teammates already celebrating at the center of the diamond. He joined them, jumping in glee. His dreams, realized. Whereas Cholowsky may be one of the most well-known Bruins baseball players in recent memory, it was a little-playing junior who broke a scoreless game. Outfielder Toussaint Bythewood, a Harvard-Westlake alumnus, dunk a soft line drive into right field for a two-out RBI single against UTSA starting pitcher Conor Myles. Bythewood, who had started twice all season and taken just 12 at bats entering the game, provided the Bruins with their winning swing. UCLA added two insurance runs in the eighth and three in the ninth to build enough distance for its arms to pitch a little more comfortably as the Roadrunners ran out of outs. A UTSA offense that was dominant in an Austin Regional sweep a week ago, exited with a whimper, rallying just four hits against UCLA's pitching staff. Starting pitcher Landon Stump couldn't get through the fifth, but the Bruins' relief pitchers carried the brunt of the battle to shut out the Roadrunners. Left-hander Chris Grothues tied a career high with 2 ⅔ scoreless innings, striking out two and making a nifty play to catch a popped-up bunt to end the sixth. Righties Cal Randall and August Souza bridged the gap to the ninth, where freshman closer Easton Hawk shut the door. Savage, who is in the 12th and final year of the contract extension UCLA rewarded him with after winning the 2013 national championship, will get his long-awaited chance to revisit old memories and create new ones as the Bruins attempt to win their second national championship beginning later this week in Omaha.