This will sound funny if you simply look at the stat sheet, but Oral Roberts couldn’t keep up with Nebraska’s pace of play in a dominating 103-58 Husker win Wednesday night.

It’s funny, because Nebraska scored only eight fast break points per the stat sheet, and the reason only eight of the 103 points went down that way was due to Oral Roberts showing something they hadn’t shown all year.

“Oral Roberts came out with a little soft 2-2-1 zone press back into zone – a little bit of a respect sign for the pace that we play at and trying to slow us down,” Nebraska coach Amy Williams said in her postgame press conference. “To be able to put up 55 points in that first half against something that we really hadn’t seen out of them and hadn’t really practiced a bunch heading into this game, it was a great start.”

Nebraska’s convincing win over the Golden Eagles came on a “golden” night for sophomore Britt Prince, who poured in a career-high 30 points. Her dominance on the court showed early and often, but most importantly, out of the halftime break.

Nebraska already had the game well in hand, leading 29-7 after one and 55-23 at the half, but Prince came out on fire in the second half to put the game away en route to her historical night in Lincoln.

“It’s super cool,” Prince said of her record performance in her postgame interview. “I think my teammates were just getting me the ball in the right places, trusting me. I think overall it was just a great game for us to be able to go out there and play more of four complete quarters. I think we played with great pace today.”

And there it is again – pace.

The reason the Huskers outran, and in this case outpaced, Oral Roberts is due to the team’s dominance on the boards. Nebraska nearly doubled up the Golden Eagles in rebounds, winning the battle on the boards 49-27.

As many know, Alexis Markowski was the standard over the past two years when it came to rebounds for Nebraska. She led the team in the 2023-24 season, averaging more than 10 rebounds a game and followed that up with an average of eight rebounds per game in her senior year last season.

So far through five games, it appears NU has been able to fill the void.

“The biggest question mark everybody wants to ask me about is you lose the best rebounder in your program’s history, and where are those boards going to come from?” Williams said. “So everybody’s kind of buying in and finding ways to contribute.”

For those keeping track, sophomore Petra Bozan led the Huskers with ten rebounds in the win Wednesday night, and it was her ability to get the ball out quickly for Nebraska to get in transition that led to NU surpassing the century mark.

Ultimately, it was a message instilled into the team not only before the game, but also at halftime. There’s no reason to mess around.

“We play with a lot of pace, so we saw a press today that we didn’t expect because I think they had to take away that pace that we play with,” junior Jessica Petrie said. “We were faced with a couple of adversity challenges, but we just knew they were going to switch our ball screen. I think we were just ready for it, and we exploited that today in the paint.”

“We talked about that at halftime, just coming out strong,” Prince echoed. “Claire told us a stat – our third quarter hasn’t been the best scoring-wise, so we tried to come out punching, and I think we did that.”

The hot start to the year can also be attributed to some pretty stout defense coming from the Big Red so far. Nebraska has held its first five opponents to an average of 54 points. That’s in comparison to the Huskers averaging 90 points per game.

“We want to be able to make things as difficult as we can, and we feel like we have a little more in us defensively than maybe what we showed here (Wednesday night), but certainly had some great flashes where we did some awesome things and made some tough shots,” Williams said of her team’s effort.

“I think our communication has been a big focus for this entire season,” Petrie added about the defensive philosophy. “We knew that Oral Roberts wanted to get downhill and a lot of dribble-drive stuff. Just talking the switches and ball screens was a massive focus for us.”

Obviously, the competition hasn’t been what the team will see later in the year, but they’re doing what they’re supposed to do against lesser competition to start the year.

Next up for Nebraska will be a trip to Florida for the Emerald Coast Classic, where they’ll take on Purdue-Fort Wayne on Monday, November 24. Depending on the result of that game, the Huskers will then take on either Virginia or Northwestern State the following day on Tuesday, November 25.

It will be the first time this season that NU will deal with games on back-to-back days, which both players and coaches are viewing as a new and exciting challenge to the early part of the year.

“I think it’s just important to keep our momentum rolling,” Petrie said. “We’re undefeated so far, so just for this momentum to keep us rolling into an experience we haven’t faced yet. Two back-to-back games in a row and just trying to keep kind of what Britt said, these four complete quarters and what we learned from today and the past week into next week.”

When the Huskers take the floor again, they’ll be coming off a career night from Prince, who admits that 30-point nights are more of a product of the team’s culture than her individual play.

“We just play with a lot of joy,” Prince said. “We love playing with each other, love to get up and down, and we love when we play with pace. Good things happen when we’re getting stops, getting rebounds (and) pushing the pace down the court. I just think our team loves each other, and we play with a lot of joy.”

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