Huskers garner No. 4 seed for NCAA tourney tipping Thursday

The Nebraska men’s basketball team’s quest for its first-ever NCAA tournament win will start Thursday in Oklahoma City.

The Huskers received a No. 4 seed Sunday and will play No. 13-seeded Troy in the Southeast Region.

NU coach Fred Hoiberg said he's happy the team will be going somewhere fairly close to Lincoln.

"It's huge. And, you know, obviously the fans showed up in a big way in our game a couple years ago in Memphis, and I know they're going to be there again," Hoiberg said during a Zoom with media after the announcement. "And I think this is the location that everybody wanted us to be playing in because of the proximity, and, you know, it's going to be a nice drive. But as we all know, you know, Nebraska fans travel unlike any anybody else. So you know, we're excited about opportunity to play in front of our fans. Continue to have that and hopefully, hopefully go on a run."

It will be Nebraska’s ninth appearance in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament as it seeks to shed its hard-won reputation as the only power conference team to never win a game in the tournament. Only once, in 1991, has the team been seeded higher than fourth.

As for the pressure of trying to keep that monkey off their back, Hoiberg said he will continue to have the team prepare just like they would for any other game.

"For us, it's, it's all about the film session that we'll have tomorrow morning, and then it's about the practice that we'll have after that and just being ready and going out and doing the best we can to prepare for a really good basketball team," he said.

The Huskers are in the midst of a historic season, having gone 26-6, tying the school record for most wins in a season, and winning 15 conference games, the most ever, on its way to finishing second in the Big Ten.

However, it’s been a tale of two seasons. After starting off 20-0 and 9-0 in the conference, the team went 6-6 down the stretch, including a quarterfinal loss Friday to a Purdue team that went on to win the Big Ten Tournament. The Huskers had been projected as a 3 seed for the past several weeks.

Troy, the Big Red's first-round opponent, went 22-11 and won both the regular season and tournament championship in the Sun Belt Conference. The Trojans did not play any teams that made the NCAA Tournament, but they did play USC, a fellow Big Ten Conference team, and lost by one point, 107-106.

Like Nebraska, Troy has never won a game in its three tournament appearances.

If Nebraska does manage to win Thursday, it would play in the second round Saturday against the winner of Vanderbilt and McNeese State.