Nebraska basketball players Pryce Sandfort and Cale Jacobsen made a visit to Broken Bow this week to assist with a youth basketball camp in association with Viglianco Hoops with player development and training coach Thomas Viglianco. The event began with a camp on Tuesday afternoon for boys and girls entering 7th and 8th grade with another to be held Wednesday morning for boys and girls entering 4th through 6th grade.
Camp director Thomas Viglianco visited with KCNI/KBBN sports and shared how the vision for Viglianco Hoops and the desire to train and develop players started.
“I’m downtown (in Lincoln) Lazlo’s and some ladies walk in a ladies dinner night and ask me if I played for the Huskers, which I did not, and they asked me if I played Pro
Ball, which I did, and they’re like, hey, can you train our kids? And I said I don’t do that, but okay. And they’re like, okay, here’s our card, can you please call us? Literally the next day I drive out to Eastern Lincoln past Firethorn now, and there was two little kids shooting hoops and started training them a few times a week before I went back to overseas. And uh yeah, the rest is kind of history. I was coming out every summer building the Viglianco hoops brand for two or three months before I’d go back overseas. And yeah, that was 2008, but now it’s 2026 and I trained you know thousands of players in the Midwest and NBA players down to young kids and I’m an agent now as well with clients all over the world. But yeah, it’s wild.”
Assisting Viglianco with the Broken Bow camp were Husker players Pryce Sandfort and Cale Jacobsen who took time to visit with KCNI/KBBN sports about Husker Hoops and their visit to Broken Bow. The Nebraska men’s basketball team is coming off an historic season winning an NCAA tournament game for the first time and advancing to the “Sweet Sixteen”. Jacobsen talked about the team’s togetherness that helped make last season so special.
“When you get the right people in the building, those two things kind of just happen naturally and so we had a group of guys starting you know with our coaches down all the way to our players that they just like to be around each other. There was never uh it didn’t feel like it was ever tension or force when you were together and so when you can do that off the court I think it really just starts to build into success on the court and so the way that our systems and our styles are set up, like it takes five guys to to
be on the same page and to play together and so that’s a big buzzword right now, but also a thing that we really pride ourselves on is we’re gonna have a strong culture and we’re gonna be a team that’s really together and connected.”
Sandfort led the Huskers in scoring this past season averaging 18.1 points per game and was a first team All Big-Ten selection. Sandfort shared what makes playing at Nebraska special and why he chose to come back for his senior season.
“There’s a lot of special things about this place. My dad being from here is one of them. I grew up a Nebraska fan, so to be able to put that “N” on my jersey and put that on, it’s super special for me. Our fan base is incredible. Honestly that was a huge part of why I wanted to come back and do it for another year for my senior year. Just the support we got all last year was just incredible. It’s so much fun playing in front of them at PBA and pretty much anywhere we go where there’s gonna be Nebraska fans and you know just the city in general, like everything about it I just love. So I knew I couldn’t go somewhere else or turn down another opportunity to play here.”
INTERVIEW WITH PRYCE SANDFORT AND CALE JACOBSEN
INTERVIEW WITH THOMAS VIGLIANCO
