Monday night’s game between Nebraska and No. 15 Michigan inside Pinnacle Bank Arena in Lincoln was not what you would call a pretty basketball game.

Michigan won 49-46 — yeah, it was that kind of rock fight — after a 3-pointer at the final buzzer from Berke Büyüktuncel didn’t fall. That’ll go down as a Quad 1 loss for the Huskers, who have five of those all-important Quad 1 wins on its résumé.

Both teams were ice cold all night and had a hard time putting the ball in the hoop. Michigan shot 30% from the field and 19% (5-of-27) from 3-point range. Nebraska was worse — 26% overall and 21% (6-of-28) from 3.

Brice Williams led all scorers with 26 points and became the third player in school history to reach the 1,000-point mark in just two seasons, joining Terran Pettway and James Palmer Jr.

While Williams is having a first-team All-Big Ten-type season, the 6-foot-7 guard is not Superman. He scored 18 of Nebraska’s 21 first-half points but was held to eight points on 2-of-8 shooting in the second.

“For the most part, we tried to deny his catches and push him off his spots more,” Michigan head coach Dusty May said of the second-half game plan against Williams.

Williams had zero help on Monday. He outscored the combined efforts of his teammates, who mustered just 20 points and went an ugly 7-of-41 from the field.

While he was his usual stellar self defensively, Juwan Gary scored five points on 2-of-13 shooting and missed all five of his 3s. Büyüktuncel, playing in his first game since spraining his left ankle against Ohio State on Feb. 9, was clearly rusty, missing all 10 of his shots, which included six 3s. Connor Essegian, the top scoring threat off the bench, went 1-of-5, missed all four of his 3s and scored two points.

Ugly offense, for sure.

“It happens. Some guys just have off nights. Just sucks it all happened at once,” Williams said.

But yet, Nebraska was in the game until the end. The Wolverines, the second-place team in the Big Ten, did not run away with the win. After the game, Nebraska head coach Fred Hoiberg chose to focus on that instead of the wickedly-bad shooting, which he believes was so bad it won’t happen again.

The defense and the edge it takes to beat a superior team was there for the Huskers.

“I’m proud of the guys for going out there and giving ourselves a chance when you had about as poor an offensive night as you could possibly have,” Hoiberg said. “When the ball doesn’t go in the basket it’s not easy to continue to go out there and have a spirit defensively, but our guys fought like hell all game long to keep us in the game and to give ourselves a chance where we get a great look on a possession where there’s under 20 seconds.”

Michigan improved to 21-6 overall and 13-3 against Big Ten competition while Nebraska drops to 17-11, 7-10.

Michigan came into the game averaging over 77 points against Big Ten competition. Nebraska held it to 49 points, a season-low. The Wolverines’ previous season-low scoring was 62 points against Michigan State on Feb. 12. Michigan’s 29.5% shooting was a season-low, too.

But at the end of the day, scoring points is what wins games. Nebraska didn’t do enough of it.

And it was the easy ones Nebraska didn’t convert that hurt the most offensively. The Huskers went 1-of-7 on layups as Michigan’s twin 7-footers, Vladislav Goldin and Danny Wolf, defended the rim well. Both altered shots and finished with 10 rebounds — Goldin also had two blocks while Wolf had one.

With the Huskers not having anyone outside of Williams able to make shots, Goldin anchored down in the paint and wasn’t worried about perimeter defense. That’s where a stretch big like Rienk Mast can be so effective.

“Their big was sitting in the middle. When you got a 7-1 guy in there that’s huge, that protects the paint,” Hoiberg said. “When the ball wasn’t going in, that floor just shrunk.”

Monday night was Büyüktuncel’s first game back from a sprained left ankle that kept him out the past three games. Clearly, there was rust the 6-10 UCLA transfer needs to shake off after going 0-of-10 from the floor and 0-of-6 from behind the arc.

Hoiberg said after there game Büyüktuncel had just one practice with contact before he played on Monday.

But while his offense wasn’t there, Büyüktuncel’s energy and defense was, Hoiberg said.

“Berke being on the floor is a huge part of that,” Hoiberg said of Nebraska’s defense. “You see how important he is to us, being able to guard multiple positions, get deflections. From an analytic standpoint, it’s really not even close — he is our most important guy on the defensive end of the floor. So whether he’s making baskets or not, he plays a huge role and is a very important part to this team.”

Nebraska is off until Saturday when it hosts the Minnesota Gophers (14-13, 6-10) at 1 p.m.

Ben Johnson’s Gophers are coming off a 69-60 loss to Penn State and will host Northwestern on Tuesday.

Minnesota has one of the best players in the conference in Dawson Garcia, a 6-11, 234-pounder who’s averaging 19.8 points per game against Big Ten competition.

“I told them, I don’t want to see anybody hanging their head for the effort, the energy you guys played with,” Hoiberg said of what he told the players in the locker room. “I want everybody to walk out of here with your head held high. We’re going to get it right, and we’re going to go out and fight like hell on Saturday.”

>> Saturday vs. Minnesota (NET rating 92, Quad 3)

>> Tuesday at Ohio State (34, Quad 1)

>> Sunday, March 9 vs. Iowa (64, Quad 2)

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