{"id":57947,"date":"2025-08-04T15:31:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-04T15:31:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/57947\/"},"modified":"2025-08-04T15:31:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-04T15:31:07","slug":"how-about-a-new-conference-for-nebraska-mens-basketball","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/57947\/","title":{"rendered":"How About a New Conference for Nebraska Men\u2019s Basketball?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nebraska men\u2019s basketball fans<\/a>, are you a little tired of the Big Ten? Had enough of Tom Izzo and Sparty dominating the league what seems like every year? <\/p>\n

Purdue, Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan and Iowa have you down? Even Ohio State won three of four B1G titles from 2010-13. The Huskers have never won the Big Ten since joining the league for the 2011-12 season.<\/p>\n

In the 14 seasons since they joined the Big Ten<\/a>, the Huskers have had five winning seasons. They have had three winning seasons in conference play<\/a>. Nebraska has had one winning conference season since 2018. The Huskers made the NCAA Tournament twice (2014, 2024), losing in the first round both times.<\/p>\n

Last season, the Huskers were 7-13 in Big Ten play and 21-14 overall. Nebraska finished the season with a flurry, winning the College Basketball Crown<\/a> in Las Vegas, 77-66, over Central Florida. The Huskers rallied to overcome a 14-point, second-half deficit. Before the final, Nebraska defeated Arizona State, Georgetown and Boise State. The Huskers\u2019 smallest margin of victory was eight points. <\/p>\n

Well, The Athletic has a hypothetical realignment<\/a> of all 364 Division I basketball programs. In writer Jim Root\u2019s mind, Nebraska is out of the Big Ten and into a new conference called the \u201cCentral,\u201d a more geographically friendly grouping that probably is more competitive on the court, too, for the Huskers.<\/p>\n

In his article, Root wrote about his \u201cnew,\u201d realigned Big Ten: \u201cThe Big Ten has 10 teams again and no longer touches either coast. That result alone is worth this reorganization.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 11-team Central, categorized as a \u201cPower-ish\u201d Conference by Root, would consist of:<\/p>\n

* Nebraska
* Butler
* Creighton
* Dayton
* DePaul
* Loyola Chicago
* Marquette
* Memphis
* Notre Dame
* Northwestern
* Saint Louis <\/p>\n

The Central has a true Midwestern feel. The Nebraska-Creighton rivalry, already terrific, could grow more intense with home-and-home games every season. And there are serious basketball programs in there.<\/p>\n

\"Feb<\/p>\n

Nebraska and Northwestern would continue to be conference rivals in The Athletic’s realignment. \/ David Banks-Imagn Images<\/p>\n

Butler made the Final Four in 2010 and 2011. The Bulldogs have become a true mid-major powerhouse. <\/p>\n

Creighton made the Elite Eight twice, the last time in 2023. Loyola Chicago went on a magical NCAA Tournament run in 2018, making the Final Four.<\/p>\n

Marquette won the national title in 1977 and made the Final Four in 2003 and 1974. Notre Dame made the Final Four in 1978.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Central makes a ton of sense in my mind: a Midwestern hotbed of programs that have been pulled toward the coasts in the current realignment world,\u201d Root wrote about Nebraska\u2019s \u201cnew\u201d conference. <\/p>\n

This is all fiction, of course, but we like the realignment. Immediately, the Huskers would be more competitive in the Central than they have been, for the most part, in the Big Ten.<\/p>\n

About the realignment, Root wrote: \u201cWhat would the college basketball landscape look like if the sport were self-sufficient? I set out to reconstruct the entire layout of Division I with that hypothetical as my guiding principle.\u201d <\/p>\n

We thought Root might return Nebraska to the Big 12, which mostly resembles the traditional Big 12.<\/p>\n

Root includes the Big Ten under a \u201cPower 5 conferences\u201d headline. <\/p>\n

Here is Root\u2019s new, 10-team B1G:<\/p>\n

* Illinois
* Indiana
* Iowa
* Michigan
* Michigan State
* Minnesota
* Ohio State
* Penn State
* Purdue
* Wisconsin<\/p>\n

From the old-school, traditional Big Ten, Northwestern is missing. The Wildcats, a founding member of the conference in 1896, are now with Nebraska in the Central. Penn State, which joined the Big Ten in 1991, replaced Northwestern. <\/p>\n

Root also used each conference\u2019s Net Rating for the past five seasons per KenPom. \u201cI used Net Ratings as a loose guide to ensure each league remained somewhat competitive as I swapped members,\u201d Root wrote.<\/p>\n

Root\u2019s new Big Ten has a Net Rating of 17.4, behind the Big 12\u2019s 19.0 and the SEC\u2019s 17.8. The Central has a 12.2 Net Rating.<\/p>\n

For real-life B1G teams, Root has Rutgers in the Big East. Oregon, Washington, UCLA and USC are in a new\/old Pac-12 (Bravo!), which is the old Pac-10 (without Colorado and Utah); and Maryland in the ACC, where the Terrapins were a member before joining the Big Ten. <\/p>\n

We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming and reading. Sometimes speculation is fun.<\/p>\n

Stay up to date on all things Huskers by bookmarking\u00a0Nebraska Cornhuskers On SI<\/a>,\u00a0subscribing to\u00a0HuskerMax on YouTube<\/a>, and visiting\u00a0HuskerMax.com<\/a>\u00a0daily. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nebraska men\u2019s basketball fans, are you a little tired of the Big Ten? Had enough of Tom Izzo…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":57948,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68],"tags":[402,398,400,401,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-57947","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-basketball","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-ncaa","10":"tag-ncaa-basketball","11":"tag-ncaabasketball","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57947"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57947\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}