HONOLULU — When it comes to people traveling to a tropical well-known vacation spot, cold conditions are not usually on the agenda. Unfortunately, for Murray State’s men’s basketball team, the first half of Sunday night’s opener in the Hawaiian Airlines Diamond Head Classic against a good Nebraska team from the Big 10 Conference had to seem like an unwanted trip to an ice box. Simply, the ball would not go through the basket to the tune of a frigid 4-for-28 performance from the field (14.
3%), as the Cornhuskers built a 20-point halftime lead. That was going to be too much to overcome for the Racers, who did experience a gratuitous thaw in the final 20 minutes (13-for-27 for 48.1%) but still suffered their third straight loss, 66-49.
The Racers are now 6-5 on the season, while the Huskers improved to 8-2. “Man! We just couldn’t score,” said Murray State Head Coach Steve Prohm said in a postgame interview on FROGGY 103.7.
His team was getting open shots, more often than not, in the first half, but was watching the ball bound off the rim with great frequency. “At first media (timeout with 16:25 left in the first half), it’s 4-0 (Nebraska with the lead) and I was like, ‘I really feel good. We’re playing hard.
’ First play, they lob it and we lock it up and they turn it over, so I felt like we were in a good place. Now, I wish it would’ve been 6-4 instead of 4-0 (as the Racers missed several in-close shots that, if successful, almost certainly would have h.
