LINCOLN, Neb. — The NCAA has sus­pend­ed Nebraska’s Der­rick Walk­er for the first 16 games of the sea­son for a rules vio­la­tion while he was at Ten­nessee in 2018–19.

The Nebras­ka ath­let­ic depart­ment made the announce­ment Wednes­day short­ly before the Corn­huskers’ open­er against McNeese State.

The 6‑foot‑8, 232-pound junior for­ward played lim­it­ed min­utes for the Vol­un­teers team that reached the NCAA region­al semi­fi­nals in 2018–19. Walk­er sat out last sea­son at Nebras­ka under trans­fer rules.

“Since arriv­ing at Nebras­ka, Der­rick Walk­er has been phe­nom­e­nal at own­ing up to a mis­take he made pri­or to com­ing here,” coach Fred Hoiberg said. “He was trans­par­ent through­out the recruit­ing process and acknowl­edged his mis­take. In turn, we told him con­fi­dent­ly we would sup­port and fight for him.”

The nature of Walker’s vio­la­tion was not disclosed.

The 16-game sus­pen­sion is based on a nor­mal 31-game reg­u­lar sea­son. Hoiberg said he had hoped the sus­pen­sion would reflect half of an abbre­vi­at­ed 2020–21 sea­son, which is sched­uled to be 27 games.

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