Saint Louis heads to Lincoln for a Friday night exhibition against a Nebraska program coming off the best season in its history.
The Billikens open the 2026-27 preseason at Pinnacle Bank Arena at 7 p.m. CT against the Cornhuskers. The game streams live on B1G+ and free on YouTube as a B1G+ Free Friday event.
Both sides arrive with hardware from a season that rewrote their record books.
Saint Louis finished 29-6 and 15-3 in Atlantic 10 play, sharing the regular-season title. The 29 wins broke the school mark of 28 set in 2012-13, and the 15 conference victories were the most in program history. SLU made its 11th NCAA Tournament, beating Georgia 102-77 in the first round before falling to eventual national champion Michigan.
The offense was historic. The Billikens set school records for points (3,053) and 3-pointers made (379), averaging 87.2 points and 10.8 threes per game.
Five of those scorers are back. Trey Green (10.7), Amari McCottry (10.5), Kellen Thames (9.7), Ishan Sharma (9.1) and Quentin Jones (9.1) all averaged at least 9.1 points. Green, McCottry and Thames were third-team All-Conference. Sharma made the league’s All-Academic team.
Josh Schertz is in his third season after 48 wins in his first two. He went 19-15 in year one, then led SLU to the school-record 29 and an NCAA berth. He is 48-21 at Saint Louis and 451-130 for his career, a .776 winning percentage that ranks among the top 10 of active NCAA head coaches across all three divisions.
Nebraska is the tougher measuring stick. The Huskers went 28-7, their most wins ever, and reached the Sweet 16 for the first time. They also set program marks for Big Ten wins (15) and conference road wins (seven), climbed as high as No. 5, and finished No. 14 in both final polls. They spent a school-record eight weeks in the AP top 10.
Fred Hoiberg was named AP National Coach of the Year and Big Ten Coach of the Year for that run.
The returners match the résumé. Senior wing Pryce Sandfort is a unanimous Preseason All-Big Ten pick after a first-team season at 18.1 points and 4.9 rebounds. He ranked fourth nationally at 3.7 threes per game, shot 41.6 percent from deep, and broke Nebraska’s single-season record with 129 made threes. In the NCAA Tournament he averaged 21.0 points, including 25 in the Sweet 16.
Big Ten Sixth Man of the Year Braden Frager is back as well. The sophomore averaged 11.8 points and 3.8 rebounds as a freshman, made the All-Freshman team, and scored 14.7 points per game in the tournament.
Exhibition results do not count, but the setting does. A road night in Lincoln against a Sweet 16 roster, with Sandfort and Frager still in the building, is an early read on whether last year’s school-record offense travels. For Schertz, it is the first public look at a group that already has five double-figure returners and a conference title on the wall.
