On the day Keisei Tominaga played the final regular-season home game of his career with the Nebraska Cornhuskers, a video acknowledging his accomplishments was assembled by B1G+, the streaming arm of the Big Ten Network. It included highlights from his career and a short clip from the Senior Day celebration attended by his father.
Can you imagine what a chore it was to cut Tominaga’s Husker highlights down to 90 seconds? To choose among the vast array of extraordinary moments he conjured?
Tominaga has scored 1,053 points in his three seasons since transferring from Ranger College in Texas, and while that point production has helped invigorate Nebraska and deliver the program its first NCAA Tournament appearance in a decade, the degree of spectacle on display has defined his performances.
There is no player in all of NCAA men’s basketball who can put the ball in the basket in more different ways.
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He gains most attention for his deep, logo-length threes and the dramatic celebrations that follow, and both are amazing, but he’s even more breathtaking when operating among taller players underneath the basket or in the lane and finding invisible openings to launch short shots and using spin to get them to fall off the backboard or the rim and into the goal.
Tominaga has been called the “Japanese Steph Curry” because of his style and efficacy as a 3-point shooter, but there’s honestly more Pete Maravich to his game. Maravich brought so many little tricks and deceptions onto the court while playing for LSU in the 1960s and early 1970s, and later in the NBA. And that is what makes Tominaga stand out most with the Huskers.
What is the Japanese word for “Pistol”, anyway?
“We’re always trying to limit his threes and his opportunities, but he’s become a really good basketball player,” Rutgers coach Steve Pikiell said. “In his first year here, it was a three or nothing, and now he’s able to do a lot of different things. And seeing him play with emotion and that kind of thing. So he’s a hard guy.”
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Tominaga and the Cornhuskers open their 2024 appearance in March Madness with a game Friday against Texas A&M. And if history is a guide, that is the day that will close their season.
Nebraska has not won an NCAA Tournament game since … ever. The Huskers have made it to the NCAAs for the first time in 1986 with Moe Iba as coach, then five times under Danny Nee between 1991 and 1998, and once more with Tim Miles in charge in 2014.
Of course, they never before took Keisei onto the court in an NCAA game.
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This is Fred Hoiberg’s fifth season, and the 23-9 success the Huskers have enjoyed can be traced directly to Tominaga’s emergence as a game-changing force near the end of another seemingly lost season in 2022-23. With the Huskers on a run of six losses in seven games, dropping them to six games under .500 in the Big Ten, Tominaga unleashed the first of many game-changing performances in a Nebraska uniform.
He connected on five 3-pointers, 12-of-18 shots and registered his first 30-point game. Nebraska beat NCAA-bound Penn State by nine points and finished the regular-season on a 6-2 surge that allowed them to finish at .500. For the first time under Hoiberg, the Huskers did not suffer a losing season. Since that 30-piece Tominaga recorded, Nebraska has won nearly 70 percent of its games and finished third in the 2023-24 Big Ten season – its highest placement in a conference regular season in more than 30 years.
At home in Lincoln’s Pinnacle Bank Arena, Nebraska has won 22 of 24 games in the aftermath of that Tominaga breakout game.
“Nebraska makes me feel like it’s my second home,” Tominaga said in an NU video. “I’ve been here for years, then how people support me, it’s been amazing.”
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Tominaga has not been the only force at work in turning around Nebraska baskeball, but so much has flowed directly from his left hand. Whereas many 3-point specialists must launch their shots from a particular spot on the floor, from a specific action or movement in order to maintain their accuracy, Tominaga is special because he is effective off the dribble, a short handoff, or as a catch-and-shoot artist. On his radio program, Hoiberg said Keisei “is up there at the top” among the best shooters he has coached.
“I had a team at Iowa State that led the nation in threes, and that had some really good shooters,” Hoiberg said. “Matt Thomas, who played in the NBA. Tyrus McGee, who led the nation in threes that year. Georges Niang is one of the top 3-point shooters in the league. We had so many guys that could make shots.
“Keisei, you look at him right now – he obviously had an adjustment period when he first got to Nebraska. There were some games that he really struggled with the physicality. And that’s where I give him so much credit, is how he has gained his strength that allowed him to bang against bigger, stronger opponents, and the ability to get his shot off when he’s being face-guarded out there against a lot of teams. It’s been remarkable to see the progress that Keisei has made.”
