Watch. Dream. Float.

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From the Editor: Chris Basnett was the Nebraska basketball beat writer for the Lincoln Journal Star from 2016-2022. He joined the Harvest Sports teams in October after his position was eliminated at the newspaper. Last week, he attended the NCAA Regional in Oklahoma City where Nebraska — somehow, someway — advanced to tonight’s Sweet 16 matchup with Iowa. The words that follow speak to the heart of this Nebraska team and its fans in a perspective that few could experience. But, we are thankful Baz — a lifelong Nebrasketball fan — has this perspective.

Enjoy!! — Tony Chapman 

Are your emotions ready for another one?

Are you sure?

Thing is, it’s OK if they’re not. 

We’ve all spent the past few days trying to unravel what the Nebraska men’s basketball team did in Oklahoma City. The truth? We might never completely wrap our heads around it.

Now we prepare for Thursday night’s Sweet 16 (SWEET 16!!!) game. Of course it had to come against Iowa. Does it remind you, even just a little bit, of the NU football team having to beat Miami in 1994 to win that national title? 

Your heart sank when you saw the Hawkeyes beat Florida. You can’t stomach a loss to that program, on that stage. They’ve punched you in the gut too many times.

But your head knows Nebraska is the better team. Your head also knows that no matter what happens Thursday, this has been the greatest basketball season Nebraska has ever had. You only get one of those.

You should also know this:

Demons are there to be slayed.

Nebraska has already knocked down so many walls (and Busch Lights).

A first-round win by 29 points? You would have been less surprised had NU won by two. Even as the lead grew to 15, then 20, then 25, it still didn’t feel safe; history playing tricks against what your own eyes were showing you to be true. But with six or seven minutes left, you could finally let your guard down and celebrate that first tournament win.

And then you back it up by winning the best game of the tournament so far, with an environment and an ending so ludicrous Hollywood would think it was too much — a Lincoln kid hits the winning shot on the birthday of the team’s most popular player and coach’s son, and the other guy’s half court shot rattles so deep in the cylinder there’s no way it should have come out. But it did.

This is life now as a Husker hoops fan. Let that roll around in your mind for a minute.

All of the bad breaks and B.S. of the last 130 years of Nebrasketball made Saturday night possible. We can't forget that. 

That crowd, that moment, that release after the brilliant Tyler Tanner’s 60-foot heave rattled in and out? None of that happens without the failures of the past.

We can’t and shouldn’t forget that disappointment. We aren’t here, right now, without it.

But now all of it is dead. Forever.

I will remember three things over everything else from those three days in Oklahoma City.

— First, what we already talked about: the collective holding of breath from 15,000 as Tanner’s last, desperate shot sailed through the Paycom Center air. My wife and I were fortunate (or not) to have seats almost directly behind where Tanner let it fly. It looked good from the second it left his fingertips. And with the history of Nebraska basketball, why would you think anything else? 

You often hear the phrase, “it took my breath away”. In a world of hyperbole, that phrase has lost meaning. But if you were there in person Saturday night, you understand it to be true.

How many times have you watched it? How many times have you looked at the ball leaving Tyler Tanner’s hand, convinced this was the time it was going through?

And how many times have you finished watching, only to realize you hadn’t been breathing, again?

— Second, the joy Thursday in Section 112 as the final seconds ticked off Nebraska’s 76-47 win over Troy. The three guys right in front of us who spent the whole game hollering, then stood silently, arms around each other’s shoulders, drinking it in. 

The tears, from grown men (this one included) that had seen a lifetime of other teams getting that moment. The blowout allowed the time for those emotions to slowly build. I wonder how many thought about how they would react in that moment, and how different it was when that moment arrived. 

If Saturday was raw, unfiltered pandemonium, this was something different — excitement, yes, but something more. A richness of feeling that only comes in those most special of life’s moments. Nebraska could win the national championship in a couple weeks, and the feeling of seeing that might match what we felt on Thursday. But it wouldn’t surpass it.

— And third, seeing my wife’s happiness while Nebraska made history.

Megan sacrificed for me, becoming a basketball widow in the winters when I covered the Huskers for the Lincoln Journal Star from 2016-2022. It was a lot of cold nights home alone while her husband was out watching some of the most disappointing basketball this program has ever put on display.

Were there a few highlights? Sure. There was also Christmas Day in 2020, the middle of COVID, when I sat in a mostly empty Pinnacle Bank Arena watching what would end up being a 7-20 Nebraska team lose to Michigan while Megan, nine months pregnant, sat home alone on the holiday.

Our son was born three days after that game. 

One of the people who texted me congratulations while we were still in the hospital? Fred Hoiberg. 

You don’t forget gestures like that. And as the years have gone by, Megan’s fandom has grown along with Hoiberg’s teams. We feel a connection to that program that not many others can. Our son, now past his fifth birthday, talks about “Sammy my boy” when Nebrasketball is on the TV. Our own boy watching Fred’s boy play and trying to mimic that reckless abandon.

So no, we were not going to miss this. 

And in the delirium of Saturday’s win, Megan’s joy radiated. We hugged each other. We hugged others. She took pictures of fathers and sons who were at that game together. She threw her arms around me for photos those fathers and sons took of us. She took video after video, capturing the experience while I was too dazed to do much of anything.

Soon enough we were in the mass of people outside the arena, wandering aimlessly — at the same time stunned, delirious, and overjoyed — unsure where to go but certain we needed to give another hug, hand out another high-five, take another picture, make another memory.

My phone told me I walked more than 10,000 steps Saturday night and into the wee hours of Sunday morning, but that can’t be an accurate measure of how far I traveled.

How can it tell when you float?