While the 2025-26 fifth-ranked Husker men’s basketball team is setting records right and left, the hoopla over the current season has Rob Ringler and a few Seward County residents reminiscing about Tom Baack’s time on the court 60 years ago.
Baack played for Nebraska from 1965 to 1968 and remains on the university lists of top-achieving players. Though he grew up in Indiana, his Seward roots run deep.
Those years were special for Baack and for the 12-2 Huskers in the Big 8 as they narrowly missed a chance to represent the conference in the race for the national title after losing to a 13-1 Kansas team in a single-elimination qualifying tournament in the 1965-66 season.
They ended with 20 wins overall and an 11th-place national ranking.
“I played with some really very good players,” Baack said of the Husker team, noting the players got along very well.
“I think we were a lot of fun to watch. It had been a long time since Nebraska had had a winning season,” Baack said via phone Jan. 27. “It must have been the right combination.”
Consider his stats.
Baack is currently 15th among the top career scoring leaders in the NU history boards, also ranking:
• 5th highest in per game scoring average at 17.3.
• 9th highest in free throw percentage at 83.2 percent.
• 12th highest in number of field goals attempted at 1,138.
• 15th highest in field goals made with 526 (46.2 percent).
• 28th highest in free throws made with 247.
• 47th highest in free throws attempted with 297.
Inducted twice into the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame in 2012 after being named Allen County Player of the Year and earning all-city and all-conference honors with a high school career scoring average of 22.9 points.
Inducted into the University of Nebraska Basketball Hall of Fame in 1995, the silver anniversary of his team’s 20-win season.
Then consider the rules:
• Baack earned his 15th place among career scorers when team members could not play until they were sophomores, giving him a base of 75 games for statistics.
• Dave Hoppen, who leads several NU record categories played 111 games, Tyronn Lue, who played in the late 1990s, is the only other player listed in that top 15 with fewer than 100 games, but still threw the ball in 24 more games than Baack.
• Baack amassed his scoring totals before the adoption of the three-point arc.
Baack, who was drafted by the Detroit Pistons, instead pursued his career from the sidelines, coaching at Brigham Young, Nebraska and what was then Concordia Teachers College in Seward.
As a 6-5 forward from Ft. Wayne, Indiana, who made a name for himself playing ball at Concordia High School there, he chose to play for Nebraska for a variety of reasons, including family ties.
Both he and his sister, Louise, were born in North Platte, but they moved with their parents Les and Tillie Baack to Fort Wayne, Indiana, in 1947. There, his father, who had played baseball at Concordia Teachers College in Seward, served as athletic director at Concordia Lutheran High School.
His grandparents, John and Clara Baack, farmed and raised a large family near Staplehurst.
And his sister, Louise (Baack) Ringler, had come back to Nebraska for college, then married and stayed in the area, though she now lives in Lincoln.
“I had a better chance of playing, and playing in front of relatives and people I knew at Nebraska swayed me,” said Baack, now 79, from his home in Colorado.
Sister Louise was always a fan. Her photo album of Tom’s playing career begins with clippings from his standout performance in a grade school basketball tournament. During her college years when he was still in high school, she could find his games on the radio.
But when he got to Nebraska, she was in the stands at the old NU Coliseum every game to cheer him on. She said her first child, Mike, was born during the team’s winter break and Rob was born at the end of her brother’s senior season in 1968 so she didn’t miss a game.
Her son, Dave, was born three years later, and was old enough when Baack came back to Nebraska as an assistant coach to join Rob as a ball boy at basketball games.
“I always said he got all the athletic ability,” Louise said of her brother. “I could not even play catch with him.”
She remembers him shooting 100 free throws each night when he got home from school, starting the count over when he missed. He also played baseball in high school.
“He was possessed with being good. He loved it. That was his life,” she said.
She remembers a Big 8 game in the coliseum when Tom scored his 33rd consecutive free throw in a game, but missed on the next one. She remembers because they had not sat in their usual spots at the game.
Another time his nose was broken, but he came back to finish the game. One of his uncles who was a doctor stayed close to keep an eye on him.
Tom said that kind of support was the routine.
“The thing I remember about Seward was the great support we had from the area,” he said. “A lot of people bought tickets.”
Tom and sometimes a few of his teammates came out for dinners. Louise recalls cooking many pancakes with her friend Karen to feed Tom and one of his teammates.
She also recalls Don Suhr (now Rob Ringler’s father-in-law) and the late Jack Aegerter hosting banquets for the team at Dale’s Restaurant each year.
When Baack coached at Concordia, he would bring his players to the farm for dinners, Louise said.
He coached two years as a graduate assistant at Brigham Young University while he worked on his Master’s degree, then taught at Green Mountain High School for a couple years before returning to Nebraska, where he was an assistant coach for nine years.
Tom and his wife, Paula, have a son, Paul, who continued the family tradition in athletics as a golfer at the University of New Mexico.
Baack played and coached with some impressive athletes, including coaches Moe Iba and Joe Cipriano, Nate Branch who had a career with the Harlem Globe Trotters, and his good friend, Stuart Lantz, who was drafted by the San Diego Rockets and played for the Pistons, the New Orleans Jazz and the Los Angeles Lakers.
Lantz, he said, was a 6-2 guard but his ability to jump made him play like he was 6-5. Baack said he was 6-5 and played like he was 6-2. The two of them led the team in scoring and had a sports card that featured them together.
“I think he is the best player Nebraska ever had,” Baack said. Lantz also remains on Nebraska’s record books.
The two men still meet up a few times a year when Lantz comes to Denver in his role as a television commentator for the Lakers. They also meet up at annual NU alumni gatherings around the Northwestern game, which this year will be Feb. 14.
Baack also keeps up with players he coached and has met at alumni events.
He has been following the Huskers as much as he can this year and looks forward to going to the Northwestern game.
“I am glad for the staff and everybody at Nebraska,” Baack said. “It is good that they are having a successful year. I think they can keep it going.”
“They are very, very good. They are well coached. They shoot the ball very well. They seem to get along very well,” Baack said. “Once you have a successful team, you can get players interested in coming to play.”
The 2025-26 Huskers are led by 6-7 forward Pryce Sandfort, a junior averaging 17.3 points per game – which was Baack’s career average, too.
