Luca Virgilio always observes the opponent’s bench during the opening minutes of Nebraska men’s basketball games.
The exercise started months ago for Virgilio, the school’s director of basketball strategies, who glances over to see opposing players’ reactions to Cornhuskers star Keisei Tominaga, the 6-foot-2 senior guard who has given Nebraska hope that it can qualify for the NCAA tournament for the first time in a decade.
Nebraska (20-9, 10-8 Big Ten) opened this season with its best start in more than 30 years. Its emergence has come as the 22-year-old Tominaga, nicknamed “the Japanese Steph Curry,” has made his mark while pursuing a long-shot NBA dream.
“Some of the shots that he takes amaze. It’s stuff that you don’t see usually on a basketball court — I mean, unless you’re in the NBA,” Virgilio said. “When he does it and you see it in person and he’s doing it to your team, as an opponent, you’re kind of shocked. I always look at our opponents’ bench after he makes the first couple of shots, and you can see the look in their eyes: ‘Oh, man. We’re screwed tonight.’ ”
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Tominaga’s nickname predates his time in Lincoln. Virgilio first learned of him during his time as a graduate assistant at St. John’s. He had a knack for identifying promising international prospects, and one of his contacts reached out about a player in Nagoya, Japan, who wanted to play college basketball in the United States.
To Virgilio, Tominaga’s profile as a smallish player from a country not known for producing NCAA talent wasn’t striking. Tominaga’s range, on the other hand, intrigued Virgilio as much as his pedigree and personal story — a member of Japan’s under-18 team and the son of two professional basketball players in Japan. Tominaga’s 6-11 father played center for Japan’s national team.
Virgilio said he began recruiting Tominaga to St. John’s, but his grades needed improvement, so Tominaga went the junior college route, spending his first two seasons at Ranger College in Texas. Meanwhile, Virgilio moved to Nebraska, following Tominaga’s development as he starred stateside at Ranger and overseas representing Japan in three-on-three basketball at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021.
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Tominaga went to Nebraska on the heels of the Olympics, where his 6.9 points per game were third best in the competition. “That was a super great experience for me,” he said. “I think those opportunities gave me more confidence and helped make me a better player.”
Nebraska was opening its third season under Fred Hoiberg, the former Chicago Bulls coach whose Cornhuskers went 7-20 the season before. In the 1990s, Nebraska made five NCAA tournament appearances, including four straight starting in 1991. It has made the tournament just once since the turn of the century, in 2014.
That tournament-less stretch continued through Tominaga’s first season, when the Cornhuskers continued to struggle and he adjusted to his new surroundings, largely remaining quiet in team settings because of the language barrier. He dazzled teammates in practice, regularly draining what teammate Sam Hoiberg called “ridiculous” shots, but Tominaga averaged just 5.7 points in a little more than 16 minutes per game.
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Hoiberg, a redshirt sophomore guard and the coach’s son, has been Tominaga’s roommate since 2021. He said Tominaga began to interact more with teammates midway through that first season, eventually opening up to share stories about his time at the Olympics. He began to cook curry for teammates and challenged them in Mario Kart on Nintendo Switch. Tominaga’s English improved as his second season progressed, and when it failed him, he relied on Google Translate to bridge the gap.
“My English has improved because I come around my teammates and I also have my girlfriend that I can talk English with all the time,” he said. “I think that’s what helps me a lot.”
Hoiberg described one of his most formidable memories of his roommate, from a one-on-one session at practice last season between Tominaga and Oleg Kojenets, a 7-footer from Lithuania who later transferred to Wyoming. Hoiberg said Tominaga recovered a loose ball but was stuck without a dribble some 30 feet from the basket. Kojenets blanketed him. Tominaga reached around his body and tossed up a one-handed, underhand shot and banked it in for the win.
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Hoiberg’s father occasionally scolded Tominaga for his more ambitious attempts in the past, but that changed last season after injuries forced Tominaga to shoulder more of the scoring load.
He averaged 19.4 points while shooting 45 percent from three-point range during the final 10 games of the 2022-23 season. Nebraska surged, and Tominaga made a name for himself. By year’s end, a .500 Nebraska team had bowed out of the Big Ten tournament in the opening round, but Tominaga earned all-Big Ten academic and honorable mention honors.
“Everybody makes comparisons about him being so similar to Steph Curry or even James Harden,” Virgilio said. “The reality is a player that has unlimited range and plays with such a joy for the game that [it’s] contagious.”
Tominaga’s dream is to play in the NBA. It’s why he came to the United States and why he tested the NBA draft waters last summer. He worked out for the Indiana Pacers but returned to Lincoln.
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“I think the most important thing I have to improve is getting a bigger body and working on some defensive stuff,” he said. “I’m a scorer, but in the NBA you [have to] be able to make plays, so I need to get better.”
Last summer, Tominaga played for Japan at the FIBA World Cup, in which he averaged 11.4 points and helped his country qualify for the Paris Olympics.
He built on that momentum this season. Despite suffering an ankle injury early in the season, he helped Nebraska, which won 12 of its first 14 games, to its best start in three decades. He is averaging a team-high 13.9 points.
Tominaga’s 19-point performance fueled an upset of then-No. 1 Purdue on Jan. 9, and Nebraska knocked off No. 6 Wisconsin in overtime Feb. 1. On Sunday, the Cornhuskers beat Minnesota to match the single-season school record for home wins (17).
Most NCAA tournament projections have Nebraska somewhere between a No. 7 and No. 10 seed. That’s acceptable to Virgilio, who would be happy to see Nebraska in the field for just the second time this century. Nebraska is the only team from a power conference never to win an NCAA tournament game, and if the Cornhuskers get in, he’s keen on watching Tominaga surprise viewers and opponents alike.
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“You envision these things for all the players that you recruit, but with him, I always had this dream that we’re going to play in the NCAA tournament and he’s going to go crazy and drop 30 and everybody in the country is going to be talking about him,” Virgilio said. “We’re almost there because we’re to a point where everybody in the nation knows who he is, knows who we are.
“Nebraska. Keisei Tominaga. We go hand in hand. We just need to win a few more games to get there.”
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