Column: Ex-Bulls coach Fred Hoiberg shows what makes him special as he hunts for history at Nebraska

Will it be The White Board game? Perhaps the Immaculate Hand Game? There have to be a few ways to refer to the 20-point comeback Nebraska staged in its rally to steal a game against Northwestern on Sunday.

Whatever Nebraska fans want to call it, Huskers head coach Fred Hoiberg downplayed it. To him, it was just "a little incident with the whiteboard."

"I'm on a blood thinner with my heart stuff, I hit it, I cut it and this thing won't stop bleeding for a while," Hoiberg said. "It was stupid on my part."

That incident was Hoiberg trying to snap his whiteboard in the first half of Sunday. Nebraska, to put it lightly, was not playing well. When Hoiberg walked into the Huskers' locker room at halftime and when he came back out, his hand was wrapped.

That half-time reset was all Nebraska needed. Hoiberg's team came out and stole a win in Evanston, which further solidified the Huskers as a tournament team for the second straight season.

The game was a microcosm of Hoiberg’s coaching career as he grew out of any remaining shadow from his Chicago Bulls' tenure, to a coach who's earned the right to chase Nebraska basketball history.

"Listen," he said, "in this business, you've got to play through a little pain."

Chicagoans remember Hoiberg for his tenure as the Bulls’ head coach, which followed a successful five years leading Iowa State’s program. The Bulls certainly caused some of that pain.

Hoiberg was tasked with following Tom Thibodeau. That was tough enough, but the Bulls made it even tougher when they traded away Derrick Rose and Jimmy Butler by his third season and decided (incorrectly) the team would be better off with Jim Bolyen as its head coach.

After Hoiberg was hired at Nebraska a few months later, the Huskers gave The Mayor the patience the Bulls never did. He went from seven wins in his first two seasons, to 10 in Year 3 and 16 in Year 4 before breaking through with 23 wins in Year 5 and Nebraska’s first NCAA Tournament appearance in a decade.

Sitting at 17 wins and a chance to make another NCAA Tournament in Lincoln, Hoiberg can make Husker basketball history if he can win an NCAA Tournament game. Nebraska has never won a game in the NCAA Tournament; Hoiberg has won four NCAA Tournament games in his coaching career.

Playing through pain isn’t new to him. Hoiberg was born with an abnormal aortic valve. He had corrective surgeries in 2005 and 2015, with another procedure announced in September 2024 to replace his pacemaker.

Playing through coaching pain has to be different, especially with how his NBA tenure ended. It’s why I sought out Hoiberg at the 2024 Big Ten Media Days to ask how he’s grown as a coach since leaving the NBA and finding success at Nebraska.

The short answer is that he’s set a goal to grow every year he’s been a coach, from Ames, to Chicago and, now, to Lincoln. Hoiberg said then he credits his network of coaching colleagues at different levels. He picked their brains and stole some ideas, but it’s all in the name of growth.

That growth stems from Hoiberg to his players.

"Our overall job is to figure out the skillset of your guys and try to put them in a position to succeed based on that," Hoiberg said at Big Ten Media Day in Rosemont in October 2024. "We've run different systems with pretty much every team I've had. We've had different wrinkles. We certainly have our absolutes and our things that we do with every team. But, it's all based on the talent of our roster and what you can do, again, to put those guys in a position of success."

EUGENE, OREGON - FEBRUARY 02: Head coach Fred Hoiberg of the Nebraska Cornhuskers watches from the sideline during the first half against the Oregon Ducks at Matthew Knight Arena on February 02, 2025 in Eugene, Oregon. (Photo by Soobum Im/Getty Image

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Hoiberg stoked that growth in the win over Northwestern.

Brice Williams may have understandably been behind the likes of Keisei Tominaga and Josiah Allick last season, but he’s risen to the top of this Huskers team. Hoiberg gave him the chance to grow into a star and he did.

"Brice Williams wasn't this guy last year as a junior here for Nebraska," Northwestern head coach Chris Collins said. "Now, he's been a star."

The same goes for fellow Husker Juwan Gary, who also needed a reset at the start of the second half. Hoiberg trusts his upperclassmen but knows there are times when they need to be corrected.

"Got him out, talked to him, got his spirit back up and he was phenomenal those last 15 minutes," Hoiberg said.

Williams and Gary combined for 28 of their 38 points in the second half after a first half where they were getting run out of the building, nearly a year after the Huskers actually did get run out of the building.

Last year, Northwestern beat Nebraska 80-68 in a game where the Wildcats led the Huskers by 21 points in the second half at Welsh-Ryan Arena. These are two completely different teams, of course. But Hoiberg didn’t let that 20-point deficit, or his hand, phase him.

"Once you stop growing, you should get out of the business," Hoiberg said last October.

It’s hard not to root for Hoiberg, especially considering how the Bulls saddled him with a dismal roster and expected him to make a competitive team out of it.

Those days are behind Hoiberg, now.

He’s grown out of that shadow, learned how to compete in the Big Ten and grow his stars. It’s hard to think he won’t be the first Nebraska head coach to win an NCAA Tournament game.

If there’s any coach that deserves a redemption arc, it’s Hoiberg.

He went out and made it happen himself. 

"I think just every year, you try to get better, you try to improve," Hoiberg said at Big Ten Media Day. "Obviously, I have some great teams at Iowa State that I love, but still, you try to grow from every experience that you have."