Merry Christmas: Nebraska wins Diamond Head Classic in Hawaii

For the first time since the San Juan Shootout in 2000, the Nebraska men’s basketball program has an in-season tournament championship.

Led by Brice Williams’ 25 points (6-of-6 at the free-throw line), seven rebounds, four assists and two steals, the Huskers picked up a 78-66 win over the Oregon State Beavers on Christmas Day.

NU (10-2, 1-1 in Big Ten) now gets to leave Honolulu with the 2024 Hawaiian Airlines Diamond Head Classic title.

“As we said to our guys, we just don’t get a whole lot of opportunities in your life to play for championships, and this was a big tournament for us,” head coach Fred Hoiberg told Huskers Radio Network after the game.

Notable perks to a tournament win like this includes picking up a true road win over host Hawaii and a Quad 1 victory (for now) on a neutral site over Oregon State, which came into the game with a NET rating of 43 (Nebraska’s was 52).

“Just really proud of the guys for finding a way to muster up the energy and play, I thought, our best stretch of basketball those last five minutes,” Hoiberg said.

That five minutes Hoiberg reference had a lot to do with strong defense and Williams.

NU’s defense held OSU to just 40% shooting overall for the game, and the Huskers out-rebounded OSU 31-24 to become only the second team to out-rebound the Beavers this season. But OSU did connect on nine 3s that helped them hang around. Four different OSU players each made two triples.

But from the 5:32 mark of the second half when nursing a 61-56 lead, Williams took over and showed everyone he was the best player on the court. The 6-7 guard scored 11 points in the stretch, including five game-sealing free throws. He outscored OSU 11-10.

Williams has scored 57 points the last two games, with tonight’s 25 and Monday’s 32. He averaged 22 points per game in three games and earned tournament MVP honors.

“I was just aggressive, I wanted to let my defense lead to offense,” Williams said after the game. “I came out hot and my team kind of took it from there.”

The game was a low-scoring, back-and-forth affair that featured scoring runs and scoring droughts for both sides. Neither team ever took control until Williams did his thing.

NU never trailed by more than four points in the first half and took a 34-32 lead into the break. There were 13 lead changes in the opening 10 minutes of the second half.

Multiple Huskers stepped up late to help NU take command. Sam Hoiberg made his third 3 of the season to put NU up 48-47. Andrew Morgan was another bench player who made an impact as his and-1 paint bucket extended the Husker lead to 51-49.

One player who had maybe his best night as a Husker was Berke Buyuktuncel. The 6-10 big who’s been playing through minor injuries showed off a variety of skill sets that made him one of the top international prospects coming out in his signing class.

Buyuktuncel finished with a career-high 16 points and made three 3s, also a new career mark. He played defense and rebounded too, collecting six with one offensive board which turned into an and-1 putback.

Buyuktuncel scored eight points in both the first and second half.

“Both ends. I thought two days ago, versus Hawaii, we finished off the game with him at the five, and he battles those fives as well as anybody on our team,” Hoiberg said of Buyuktuncel. “Him knocking down those shots in the first half, that’s a game changer for us. Hopefully he can get it going and it’ll give him confidence. When Berke can knock down threes, that’s just opens up a whole other new opportunities for us to run different plays to get him going.”

Buyuktuncel had success bullying his way into the paint and finishing. His and-1 where he grabbed an offensive board and sank the putback while being fouled pushed NU to a 54-51 lead. Not long after, he was running the court with Williams and hit a transition layup to put NU up by six points, 57-51.

Those plays helped a 10-2 run that extended the Husker lead to 61-53. But the Beavers never went away and NU’s offense went cold. During one stretch, it missed six of seven shots. That allowed OSU to cut its 8-point deficit in half.

But then Williams put the Beavers away. NU went on an 11-3 run to end the game.

Williams, along with Buyuktuncel, were named to the all-tournament team. Williams averaged 22 points on 56% shooting along with 3.7 rebounds and 3.0 assists in NU’s three games.

Hoiberg becomes the second head coach to win the Diamond Head Classic twice. His first win came while he was coaching Iowa State in 2013.

Nebraska has one non-conference game left before diving into Big Ten play the rest of the season. The Huskers host Southern on Monday night with a late tip of 8 p.m.

Southern is currently 5-7 and riding a three-game losing streak. Earlier this season, Southern led Texas A&M at halftime, 39-25, before losing 71-54.

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