Hawaii basketball team falls 69-55 to Nebraska in Diamond Head Classic
Nebraska guard Brice Williams’ comfort zone was 94 by 50 feet of hardwood.
At ease with drives and deep shots, Williams produced 32 points — 21 after the intermission — to lead the Cornhuskers to a 69-55 victory over Hawaii and into Wednesday’s championship game of the Hawaiian Airlines Diamond Head Classic at SimpliFi Arena in Stan Sheriff Center. The turnstile count was announced as 2,700.
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“None of us stepped on that plane to not come back with a title, to not come back with a championship,” Williams said of the 3,775-mile journey from Lincoln, Neb. “It will mean everything” to win it.
Nebraska and Oregon State will play for the title in the eight-team tournament’s final holiday-season period. Officials announced the 2025 Classic will be played on Thanksgiving week. The ’Bows will play Oakland in Wednesday’s 1:30 p.m. third-place game.
The ’Bows scored 12 of the first 17 points. But the 6-foot-7 Williams found his rhythm on deep shots, jumpers off spin and step-back moves, and drives to the rim.
“Everything just opened up,” said Williams, who transferred from Charlotte in 2023. “Everybody was able to be aggressive.”
UH wing Ryan Rapp said Williams “is an NBA-caliber player. We knew that coming into the game. We let him get too comfortable early. Once you see a couple go through, you can play as good a defense as you want, but once you feel comfortable you don’t really think about the defender or feel it. He got really comfortable early and he didn’t really slow down from then.”
Williams used his long reach and mobility to disrupt the ’Bows’ attempts at an offensive flow.
“Brice was unbelievable tonight on both ends,” Nebraska coach Fred Hoiberg said. “I thought he was the one who got us going defensively. I thought his hand activity was great, getting deflections. He was the one guy offensively, especially in that first half, that had any kind of rhythm. And then he carried that over to the second half. We ran a lot of actions to put him in ball screens. He made the right decisions. He got into the paint. He played under control and had some really nice finishes.”
The Cornhuskers used a 15-0 run to take a 29-22 lead with 1:06 left in the first half. UH reserve post Harry Rouhliadeff scored on a putback and Marcus Greene hit a 3 as the horn sounded to close the ’Bows to 29-27 at the intermission.
When the ’Bows cut their deficit to 45-41, Williams scored five points in a 7-0 run. When Akira Jacobs drained a 3 to close the ’Bows to 56-50 with 6:20 to play, the Cornhuskers scored six of the next seven points.
Nebraska used ball screens to clear access into the lane. The Cornhuskers scored 38 paint points, including 28 in the second half. Williams drew six fouls that he parlayed into 8-for-8 free-throw shooting.
“We didn’t want to settle for jump shots,” Williams said. “We wanted to meet them with physicality. It was a physical game. So going to the rim and attacking the basket helped us open everything else, and the shots started to fall for our team.”
After hitting 35.7% of their shots in the first half, the Cornhuskers made 59.3% after that.
The ’Bows had difficulty eluding the Cornhuskers’ defensive web. Hounded by Juwan Gary and Berke Buyuktuncel, UH forward Gytis Nemeiksa missed all five shots, including four from 3-point range. A night earlier, Nemeiksa scored 24 points. Center Tanner Christensen, who faced double teams, missed his only field-goal attempt in 22 minutes of play.
“We just let our defense do the work,” Williams said. “Our offense just flowed from there. In the first half, they had their run and started off good because we weren’t playing defense. We were letting the offense control and dictate everything. In the second half, we just really locked in on defense, and our defense just led to easy offense.”
For the second time this season, the ’Bows were out-rebounded, this time 28-27. Of their 16 turnovers, 13 came in the second half. During a 3:42 stretch, they committed four turnovers.
