Men’s Basketball

The game was already out of hand when the best player on Nebraska gave Northwestern a literal smack across the face.

Down ten points with 25 seconds to play, junior forward Aaron Falzon drove to the basket, where the Cornhuskers’ Isaiah Roby was setting his feet and winding up his arm. He blocked Falzon’s shot into the face of junior forward A.J. Turner.

Doink.

And in primetime on a rainy night in Lincoln, Nebraska, NU (12-13, 3-11 Big Ten) lost its sixth straight in conference play, as Roby led Nebraska (15-11, 5-10), the fourth-worst team in the conference, to a 59-50 victory.

Double doink.

With an offense that again struggled to surpass 60 points and a star player, senior forward Vic Law, that was held in check by a guard seven inches shorter than him, the Wildcats had another long night. Law led the team with 15 points on 6-for-15 shooting, and only two other players cracked more than five points.

“We’re having a hard time scoring,” coach Chris Collins said after the game. “That’s been the script with us for most of the year … Our defense wasn’t the reason we lost. The reason we lost is we really struggled to score the ball, and that little stretch of turnovers against the zone was really killer for us.”

On the other side, the Cornhuskers were led by Roby, the most talented and the most athletic player on the floor. Facing a highly-regarded NBA prospect who could crack the first round in this year’s draft, Collins toggled through several of his frontcourt options to try to keep him in check.

But Roby was much more aggressive than he has been in recent games, said Nebraska coach Tim Miles, and Roby finished with 19 points, 16 rebounds, five blocks and two steals.

“I got challenged by my teammates a lot just to be more aggressive on both ends,” Roby said. “I would say that’s what was working for me … Everybody (challenged me). Those are my brothers, so I expect them to keep it real with me. I appreciated that.”

While the Cats couldn’t do much to stop Roby, Glynn Watson, the Cornhuskers’ 6-foot point guard, guarded Law for most of the game, tracking him around the perimeter and contesting his shots in the paint. With Watson limiting NU’s leading scorer by himself, Nebraska was able to key the rest of its defense on stopping senior center Dererk Pardon, who had 13 points on 12 shots and against a number of double-teams.

Before Saturday, Pardon averaged 16.6 points and 11.4 rebounds in games against Nebraska, including a career-high 28-point performance in his first matchup against them in 2015. Despite Pardon’s significant size advantage over Roby and the Cornhuskers’ front line this year, he missed seven shots Saturday.

With the loss, NU falls to 13th place in the 14-team Big Ten, having missed an opportunity to leap Nebraska in the conference standings. After the game, Miles said he thanked Pardon for sparing him from another monster performance and helping the Cornhuskers rise from the bottom of the Big Ten.

“I told him, ‘Tonight might be the first night you didn’t get 30 (points) and 20 (rebounds),’” he said. “I was joking, but it’s true.”

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Twitter: @2021_charlie