The 4–13 line is where the bracket starts whispering to people. Nebraska arrives in the South Region at 26-6, with a No. 4 seed, a 15-5 Big Ten record, and the kind of wins list that still looks impressive even after the late wobble—wins over Creighton, Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan State, Iowa, Kansas State, Oklahoma and New Mexico, plus a long stretch spent inside the national top 10. Troy, meanwhile, is 22-11, won both the Sun Belt regular season and tournament, and walks in with exactly the sort of profile March loves to romanticize: pressure, glass work, free throws, and enough recent momentum to make the favorite sweat. Below is my preview, prediction, and pick for today’s March Madness college basketball game between the Nebraska Cornhuskers and the Troy Trojans.
Here’s how I’ll play it. I’ll be pumping out these predictions for individual games all season, with plenty of coverage here on DraftKings Network. Follow my handle @dansby_edits for more betting plays.
Nebraska vs. Troy prediction, preview
Nebraska still has the cleaner name-brand résumé, but the more important truth for this game is that the Huskers have looked a lot less invincible lately. Over their last three games, Nebraska is scoring only 64.7 points per game and carrying a -9.0 average scoring margin, which is a jarring shift for a team that spent most of the winter looking like one of the steadier outfits in the Big Ten. The Purdue loss in the conference tournament was the clearest red flag: Nebraska shot just 39.3% from the floor, got outworked on the glass 37-29, and managed only 58 points in a game that never really settled into its comfort zone. TeamRankings’ recent ratings tell a similar story. Nebraska’s full-season profile is still strong, but its Last 10 rating (17.1) and especially its neutral-court rating (14.3) sit below the peak version of this team, which matters now that the stage shifts away from Lincoln. Troy, meanwhile, has moved in the opposite direction, bringing in a stronger immediate pulse with a 3-0 record over its last three, 78.3 points per game, 65.3 allowed, and a plus-13.0 margin in that span.
That recent-form tension gets even sharper once the player layer takes over. Pryce Sandfort (G) is still Nebraska’s best offensive answer, but the current version of the Huskers has become more dependent on him than the cleanest version of this team wanted to be. He leads Nebraska at 17.9 points per game, and recent-form tracking has him up to 19.2 points over his last 10 and better than 21 per game over his last five. He also scored 15 in the Purdue loss, which says something important: even when Sandfort gets his numbers, Nebraska can still look cramped if the game turns physical and the support structure does not fully travel. Sam Hoiberg (G) remains the connective piece, and Rienk Mast (F) still gives them an interior scoring lane, but Troy’s recent player shape feels more collectively dangerous than its season-long reputation suggests. Thomas Dowd (F), the Sun Belt tournament MVP, just ripped Georgia Southern for 23 points and 13 rebounds in the title game, and Jerrell Bellamy (C) has been one of the real late-season swing factors in this matchup, averaging 15.3 points since Theo Seng went down while helping fuel a 5-1 stretch for the Trojans. That gives Troy a much more credible interior attack right now than the generic 13-seed label implies.
And that is why the underdog case starts sounding real once you stop staring at the season averages and look at the team each side is bringing into Oklahoma City this week. Troy is not just hot in the shallow, luck-driven sense. The Trojans won the Sun Belt tournament with a semifinal where they survived a poor three-point shooting night by manufacturing points at the line, then followed it with a 77-61 title-game win over Georgia Southern in which they shot 59% and dominated the glass 35-17. Nebraska, by contrast, enters off two losses in its last three games and a closing stretch where the offense has looked much more mortal than the seed line suggests. The first-half numbers are nearly even—Nebraska scores 35.3 before halftime and Troy 35.0—but Nebraska’s stronger second-half profile is still the main reason the favorite is favored. The more recent version of this matchup says Troy has enough current frontcourt form, enough rebounding edge, and enough confidence to make the game sweatier than Nebraska wants, even if the Huskers still have the cleaner path to advancing.
Troy vs. Nebraska pick, best bet
What makes this matchup interesting beyond the numbers is that Nebraska is carrying a very specific kind of March burden into it. The Huskers are 26-6, earned a No. 4 seed, and spent much of this season looking like a program finally ready to author a different kind of history—but the history is still sitting there. Nebraska has never won an NCAA tournament game, and that fact changes the emotional temperature of a 4–13 matchup in a hurry. This is not a blueblood trying to avoid embarrassment; it is a program trying to step over one of the sport’s most persistent pieces of baggage while hearing all week about a dangerous mid-major on the other side. Troy, meanwhile, gets to play freer. The Trojans already handled the pressure that mattered most to them by winning the Sun Belt regular-season crown and then finishing the job in Pensacola, where they beat Southern Miss in the semifinal and Georgia Southern 77-61 in the title game. So one side enters trying to protect a seed line and exorcise a decades-old tournament ghost, while the other arrives with fresh hardware, a looser psychological profile, and the exact kind of underdog identity—physical, older, and comfortable in ugly games—that can make that favorite-side tension feel a little louder than usual.
I’m hitting Troy +12.5. I liked it more at +13.5, and the number has undeniably gotten thinner, but the underdog still has a real enough cover path to stay playable here. Nebraska is the better team, the more efficient team, and the likelier winner, but Troy’s offensive-rebounding profile, free-throw volume, and current frontcourt form all attack the exact kind of game state that can keep a favorite from ever feeling comfortable. I do not need Troy to be the better team for 40 minutes. I need it to make this game ugly enough, often enough, that Nebraska’s cleaner second-half profile wins the game without necessarily burying the number. The call is Troy to hang around, Nebraska to advance, and the final score to land around Nebraska 75, Troy 65. The thing that can beat this ticket is obvious: if Nebraska completely wins the defensive-glass battle and keeps Troy off the line, the Trojans could get shoved into a much shakier jump-shooting game, and that is where a four-seed cover starts to look a lot more plausible.
Final score: Nebraska 74, Troy 64.
Best bet: Troy +12.5 (+100) vs. Nebraska
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