'Something that will be in my heart': Huskers cherish inaugural Crown title

LAS VEGAS — After the final buzzer sounded, after the white championship hats were donned and the shimmering gold ball denoting the game's Most Valuable player was awarded to Juwan Gary, after the giant throne was carried from the VIP section along the baseline to midcourt for a photo opportunity Nebraska's players and coaches will never forget, after the black and gold confetti spilled across the court at T-Mobile Arena and "We Are the Champions" blared through the sound system, after everyone took turns snipping a piece of the net, there was a fairly simple explanation for why the Cornhuskers won the inaugural College Basketball Crown on Sunday afternoon.

One day after UCF point guard Darius Johnson exploded for a career-high 42 points in a semifinal victory over the Villanova Wildcats, who still nearly beat the Knights in overtime, Nebraska smothered and stymied the superstar into his worst shooting performance of the season before he unceremoniously fouled out with 1:02 remaining, just a single field goal to his name. Nobody had blanketed Johnson, who averages 17.8 points per game, to that degree since the Knights suffered a brutal loss to Cincinnati in January of last season. UCF's first three opponents here in Las Vegas? They had been shredded for 88 combined points by Johnson on sizzling 26-for-58 shooting.

But on Sunday afternoon, during the game that mattered most, and with the largest chunk of this event's $500,000 NIL package at stake, Johnson could only produce four lowly points. Without him, the Knights were felled, 77-66, by a group of Cornhuskers that reveled in the program's first postseason championship since winning the NIT in 1996 — long before anyone on the current roster was born. 

"Listen," Hoiberg