LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — James Palmer Jr. had 18 points and Nebraska opened up a 19-point lead midway through the first half and turned back a second half Delaware State surge to take an 85-68 win Friday.

Nebraska (9-5) ran off 14 straight to go up 20-6 on Thomas Allen’s layup with 12:56 left in the opening half, and stretched that to 28-9 over the next four minutes.

A 10-2 flurry by Delaware State (2-12) cut the Nebraska lead to 11 on Kavon Waller’s 3 pointer with 6:34 left in the half. But the Huskers scored eight straight to go back up 19. Nebraska, which hit 60 percent of its shots in the half, led 42-26 at intermission.

Delaware State trailed by 21 when it put together an 11-1 run to cut the Nebraska lead to 59-48 on Demola Onifade’s basket with 10:35 left in the game. Anton Gill’s 3-pointer two minutes later put Nebraska back up by 15 and Palmer’s layup with 6:17 left gave Nebraska a 71-50 lead.

“These Christmas times are just really difficult,” Nebraska coach Tim Miles said of his team’s up-and-down play. “We’ve been through it. We’ve got one more to go. We’ll be locked in and find enough guys to do it. Tonight, we did. We had just enough guys that were locked in. It’s hard.”

Delaware State coach Keith Walker said that, even with the Hornets comeback, the game was decided early.

“I thought we started out a little slow,” Walker said. “I don’t know if it was the atmosphere, because this is probably the largest crowd we’ve played against all year. I don’t know if that threw the young guys off a bit, but we started out a little slow. But once we figured out that we could play a little bit with them, I think they did a much better job the second half. Because of the deficit we built the first half, we weren’t able to overcome it.”

Gill and Thomas Allen each had 14 points for Nebraska, Isaac Copeland had 11 points.

Waller had 16 points to lead Delaware State. Simon Okolue and Artem Tavakalyan had 13 points each and Pinky Wiley had 12 points.

BIG PICTURE

Nebraska: The Huskers were averaging 75.5 points per game entering Friday’s contest, the highest scoring mark for a Nebraska team through 13 games since the 1995-96 season. Nebraska has scored more than 80 points in six of its 14 games.

Delaware State: The Hornets have been mired in a season-long shooting slump. Delaware State shot just 39.5 percent from the field through its first 13 games. The Hornets hit 37.8 percent of their shots in the first half Thursday, then made 51 percent of their shots in the second period.

AN EARLY CHRISTMAS PRESENT

Tanner Borchardt, a walk-on junior from Gothenburg, Neb., got a scholarship Saturday in unusual fashion.

“Santa brought a present to the locker room,” Borchardt said. “I got a little Christmas cookie that said `Congrats.’ Then got a shower full of teammates for about a minute, a jumping huddle. What a blessing.”

FROM ICELAND WITH THREES

Thor Thorbjarnarson, Nebraska’s first scholarship player from Iceland, had a career high 6 points, playing in front of family members who made the trip from Reykjavik. “Eight family members came over Iceland,” Miles said. “To be able to get him in the game and have him make those two threes was pretty cool stuff. That second one was deep. I thought I was going to be in the way.”

UP NEXT

Nebraska hosts Stetson on Dec. 29, ending non-conference play. The Huskers will resume Big Ten play at Northwestern Jan. 2

Delaware State travels to Penn for its final non-conference game. The Hornets will open MEAC play Jan. 3 against NC Central.

— Associated Press —

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — Anton Gill was a game time decision for Nebraska on Wednesday night and the Cornhuskers were thrilled he decided to play.

The fifth-year senior scored a career-high 21 points, including a 3-pointer and three free throws in a late 9-0 run, to help Nebraska beat UT San Antonio 104-94.

“He had a migraine in the pre-game, wasn’t even able to go through pregame, kind of a question mark going through warmups,” said Nebraska coach Tim Miles. “Finally at game time, he was `I’m going to give it the old try.’ You look at 21 points later, that worked out pretty good. We needed him tonight.”

Gill didn’t mention the migraine after the game. But acknowledged he was sluggish early, trying to shake off the disappointment of a 73-72 loss to No. 13 Kansas Saturday.

“Me, personally, I took that loss pretty hard,” he said. “At the same, they (UTSA) are a good team. They came in here thinking they were going to win. We took their best shot; we took their punches. We had some stretches where we didn’t play well. But at the end of the day, we got the win.”

Nebraska (8-5) scored more than 100 for the first time since beating North Carolina A&T 107-57 on Dec. 19, 2005. The 198 total points is the most ever scored at Pinnacle Bank Arena, which opened for the 2013-2014 season.

The Cornhuskers led by as many as 10 points in both halves only to see the Roadrunners come back to tie the score repeatedly in the second half.

UTSA (7-6), which trailed by seven at intermission, hit 10 of its first 12 shots of the second half, knotting the score at 70 on Nick Allen’s dunk with 11:27 remaining. Nebraska opened up a five point lead at 81-76 on Isaiah Roby’s free throws with 8:06 remaining but saw that advantage eliminated by a Jhivvan Jackson 3-pointer followed by a driving layup.

UTSA tied the score five times in the second half but never took the lead — “I think it proves prayers do work,” Miles quipped.

Gill hit a 3 pointer with 4 minutes left, then was fouled shooting a 3 pointer 40 seconds later and sank all three free throws. A James Palmer, Jr. layup and free throw put Nebraska up 95-86 with 1:54 left.

Nebraska’s strings of defensive stops, including a pair of blocked shots in the final four minutes, were the key to the game according to UTSA coach Steve Henson.

“I’ve watched some of their games, they’ve done that to other people,” Henson said. “Boston College was a close game going into the last few minutes they just shut them out down the stretch. Kansas the other night, close ball game, shut them out until the very last shot pretty much. So we knew we had the capability of screeching us to a halt.”

The Huskers hit 37-of-50 free throws in the game that saw USTA whistled for 31 fouls. Palmer, who scored a career high 25 points, was 13 for 17 from the line. The Roadrunner were 9 of 10 from the free-throw line. Nebraska was called for 12 fouls.

Nebraska intended to get to the line Wednesday after shooting just 10 free throws in each of the last two games.

“We talked about it yesterday,” said Thomas Allen, who hit 3 of 4 free throws. “Just get to the rim. They don’t really have a shot blocker, so you just attack the paint. Make layups or get fouled. Tonight, we struggled from the free throw line a little bit. But it will get better.

Nebraska used a 10-0 mid-first half run to take a 27-17 lead at the 8:22 mark and led 49-42 at half.

Jackson led UTSA with 26 points, Deon Lyle scored 15 and Allen had 12 points. Keaton Wallace and Byron Frohnen had 10 points each.

Evan Taylor had 16, Glynn Watson Jr. had 13 points and Roby scored 10 points for Nebraska.

QUOTABLE

Miles on UTSA’s offense: “We kept telling our players this team has similar offensive number as the Michigan States, Creightons, Kansas. They just don’t look like it. One of our guys says afterward to coach (Jim) Molinari, `I didn’t think they were like that.’ Yeah, they are like that.”

BIG PICTURE

Nebraska

It was the fourth consecutive game in which Nebraska played a team in the top-30 nationally in scoring offense. Only UTSA, ranked 20th at 86.6 points per game, scored more than 80 against the Huskers.

UTSA

A UTSA freshman has been named Conference USA Freshman of the Week in four of the season’s first six weeks. Wallace has earned the honor three times and Jackson once.

UP NEXT

Nebraska hosts Delaware State Friday, the third game in a four-game non-conference December home stand for the Huskers.

UTSA travels to Rice on Dec. 28 for its Conference USA opener.

— Associated Press —