Texas Texas/Nebraska Nebraska Men's College Basketball recap on ESPN

"We just got tired of losing at home," said Cookie Belcher, who scored 18 points. "We had five good days of practice. We worked hard. Coach showed us some things -- that we were better on defense and rebounding than last year. We had confidence coming in."

Steffon Bradford scored 20 points and Kimani Ffriend had 18 points and 10 rebounds for the Cornhuskers (8-7, 1-1), who won their first Big 12 game under coach Barry Collier.

"I think it's a great win for us. But it's just one win in a 16-game conference schedule," Collier said.

And it couldn't have come at a much better time for Nebraska, which hadn't played since a 68-66 loss at Missouri last Saturday.

Texas is the first of three straight ranked opponents for the Huskers, who visit No. 5 Kansas on Wednesday and are home again for No. 23 Iowa State next Saturday.

Nebraska never trailed and scored 20 of its final 22 points on free throws after struggling earlier from the line. The Huskers were 29-for-47 on free throws, but were solid at the end, hitting 11 of their last 14.

Texas (12-3, 2-1), which had won seven straight, never recovered from a bad start and was just 22-for-67 from the field.

Darren Kelly had 31 points and Chris Owens had nine points and nine rebounds for Texas.

Any time the Longhorns made a run, the Huskers retook the lead. The Huskers never let the Longhorns put together a run larger than five points in the second half.

"It's all for nothing. We lost the game," said Kelly, who tied his season high. "We didn't start off well at all. We came out in the second half trying to play catch-up. That isn't easy to do on the road."

Kelly was the only Longhorns player to finish in double figures.

"It seemed like they kept going back to him. We just kept playing and didn't want to let anyone else hurt us," Belcher said. "You can't win a lot of ballgames having one person doing all the scoring. You've got to balance it out a little bit."

After Texas closed to 51-41 on a shot by Kelly with about eight minutes left, Nebraska went up by 13 again on a pair of free throws by Ffriend.

Ffriend, a 43 percent free-throw shooter, had hit the floor hard after getting fouled by Ogden. The 6-foot-11 Ffriend sprung up immediately to go after Ogden, but the Huskers grabbed him in time. Once Ffriend relaxed, he calmly hit both free throws.

After getting tangled up with Brian Boddicker while going for a rebound, Ffriend was 1-for-2 to put Nebraska up 61-51, Bradford added a pair of free throws and Rodney Fields went 2-for-2 from the line to give Nebraska a 64-51 lead, its biggest until Bradford's layup with 20 seconds left.

Ogden hit a 3-pointer with 2 minutes left to cut the lead to 69-62, but that was as close as the Longhorns got.

"We know we're better than we were five games ago," Ffriend said. "Our defense is really something and if we get playing consistently, we can win."

Texas opened just 5-for-21 from the field and let Nebraska pull ahead by as much as 11 twice. The Longhorns cut the lead to six on a dunk by Kelly and Roosevelt Brown's 3-pointer, but Belcher put Nebraska back up 28-20 with a layup just before the buzzer.

The Longhorns shot 29 percent (7-for-24) in the first half and had seven turnovers while tying their lowest scoring half of the season. Texas also scored 20 Wednesday in a 63-41 win over Kansas State.

"We weren't executing our offense at all," Kelly said. "Our game plan was not to let them beat us. We didn't execute our game plan well enough."

ALSO SEE
Men's College Basketball Scoreboard

Texas Clubhouse

Nebraska Clubhouse