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Sports Illustrated

Sport

Patrick Andres

Nebraska Extends Fred Hoiberg: How ‘The Mayor’ Finally Won Big in Lincoln

Fred Hoiberg Nebraska Cornhuskers Big Ten Damon Stoudamire Georgia Tech Lincoln

Finally, after seven years at Nebraska, Fred Hoiberg broke through in 2026.

The Cornhuskers are extending their coach’s contract through the 2032 season, they announced Monday morning. Hoiberg has led the Cornhuskers to a 26–5 record this season—their best since a 22–2 campaign in 1920.

“Fred Hoiberg is a tremendous representative of the University of Nebraska, the Lincoln community, and our state. We are extremely proud that he will continue to lead the Nebraska men’s basketball program well into the future,” athletic director Troy Dannen said. “Fred has built this program step by step and his leadership has Nebraska positioned to continue to compete at a high level in the Big Ten Conference and nationally.”

Nebraska holds the No. 2 seed in the Big Ten men’s tournament, and will play one of Purdue, Indiana, Northwestern or Penn State Friday in the quarterfinals. After that, the Cornhuskers will attempt to make a bit of program history: never before have they won an NCAA men’s tournament game, despite having been seeded No. 8 or better on four different occasions.

Hoiberg’s breakthrough marks a stunning turnaround from his early years at Nebraska—routinely among the Big Ten’s worst teams in the early 2020s. The Cornhuskers won just seven games in both 2020 and ‘21, mounting a 2–18 Big Ten campaign in the former.

Fred Hoiberg: a brief career timeline

The 53-year-old coach played collegiately for Iowa State, where he became the Cyclones’ fourth all-time leading scorer and acquired the nickname that has tailed him his entire career—“The Mayor” (he received write-in votes in a 1993 election in Ames, Iowa). Drafted in the second round by the Pacers in 1995, he then forged a 10-year NBA career with Indiana, the Bulls and the Timberwolves.

After spending time in Minnesota’s front office, Hoiberg took Iowa State’s vacant job before the 2011 season. He gradually led the team back to respectability, and in 2014 the Cyclones reached the Sweet 16 for the first time since 2000. Another successful season in ’15 put Hoiberg on Chicago’s radar, and he returned to the NBA.

In the professional ranks, Hoiberg steered the Bulls to the 2017 playoffs but couldn’t break the franchise out of their doldrums. Chicago canned him after a 5–19 start in 2019, which paved the way for him to take the Nebraska job before the 2020 campaign.

How Hoiberg finally built a winner at Nebraska

This season is not the first time Hoiberg has flirted with a true Cornhusker breakthrough, having made the NCAA tournament in 2024 and won the College Basketball Crown in 2025. However, it has marked the most effective deployment of Hoiberg’s two-pronged Nebraska model of team-building. The prongs: keeping local talent local, and recruiting around the globe.

That first prong comes with a major caveat this season—one of the Cornhuskers’ best players, and one of the Big Ten’s best defenders, is Fred’s son, Sam Hoiberg, an alumnus of Lincoln Pius X High School, a school just a few miles from Nebraska’s campus. Still, a.) the improvement Fred has coaxed out of Sam is remarkable, and b.) the team’s leading scorer, forward Pryce Sandfort, is an Iowan who transferred from Iowa. A trio of other Nebraskans have seen minutes this season, most notably 11.7-point per game scorer forward Braden Frager of Lincoln Southwest High School.

In the international arena, Hoiberg has procured a starter from the Netherlands (Bradley transfer forward Rienk Mast) and from Turkey (ex-UCLA forward Berke Büyüktuncel). Iceland’s Leo Curtis is also seeing minutes off the bench. continuing a connection to that country forged by ex-Cornhuskers guard Thorir Thorbjarnarson. In total, Nebraska has rostered representatives of 12 different nations under Hoiberg, giving his program a globally-minded reputation.

The results speak for themselves. The Cornhuskers won their first 20 games this season, including a road win at Illinois and a home win over Michigan State. They’ve won three of their last four games, righting the ship a bit after an up-and-down February. And they may not be done winning yet.