Ex-Bulls coach Fred Hoiberg went back to the future — to Nebraska — and feels right at home

Complain? That wasn’t Fred Hoiberg’s style.

Suffer out loud? Not a chance.

But fired is fired. And the first time it happened to Hoiberg, it hurt like hell.

“Initially, I wasn’t very good at handling it,” he said this week, recalling those early days after the Bulls kicked him to the curb in December of last season. “I had a lot of sleepless nights. I did a lot of staring at the ceiling in the night.”

It was quite a thing for “The Mayor” to sort through the feelings associated with such outright rejection, not to mention the uncertainty about what his next move would be.

The same guy had ruled the sports fields of Ames, Iowa, in his youth, blossomed into a high school “Mr. Basketball” there, became a celebrity at Iowa State — first as a player, later as a coach — right there in his hometown.

When the Bulls hired him early in the 2015 offseason, his reputation was pristine. He certainly hadn’t been fired yet in his life. Is there anything else quite like it?

Ah, well. Not only did Hoiberg — who makes his return Saturday as coach of Nebraska, taking on Northwestern at Welsh-Ryan Arena — move on, he went back to the future.

Everybody thinks of “The Mayor” as an Ames guy. In fact, his roots in Lincoln, Nebraska, are even deeper.

Hoiberg, 47, was born in Lincoln. His mother grew up there. Both of his parents attended Nebraska. His grandfather was a sociology professor at the school for 30 years. His other grandfather, Jerry Bush, was the Huskers’ basketball coach for nine seasons in the 1950s and ’60s.

“We’ve got a lot of family history in this state,” Hoiberg said.

Enough for it to feel just like home.

Daughter Paige is starting a job in Chicago at the Big Ten Network. Son Jack is playing for Tom Izzo at Michigan State. But twins Sam and Charlie are right there in Lincoln, playing varsity ball on one of the best high school teams in the state.

“High school is such a tough [time] to move,” Hoiberg said. “But they’re fitting in beautifully. I’m really proud of them.”

About as proud as he was the other day when Jimmy Kubacki came around to share stories of how Grandpa Bush had helped shape his life. Wait, Jimmy who? Kubacki, you see, hit the winning shot in perhaps Nebraska’s greatest hoops victory ever — in 1958 against Wilt Chamberlain and Kansas.

Hoiberg says there’s no time to really keep tabs on the Bulls, but he eyes the highlights or a box score now and then. He knows all about the 14 three-pointers Zach LaVine made earlier this season in Charlotte. He pulls for Lauri Markkanen, “one of my favorite guys I’ve ever coached.” He doesn’t need anyone to tell him that Jim Boylen is struggling.

“I’m always rooting for those guys,” he said.

And how is his own reputation coming along? Look at it this way: It’s somewhere between Big 12 coach of the year (Iowa State, 2012) and “worst coach in the NBA” (ESPN, 2017).

Not that either former distinction matters anymore. Hoiberg has years of heavy lifting to do with the Huskers (7-8), who seem to have been built almost out of nothing. Hoiberg inherited what can be described as essentially the least accomplished and most incomplete roster in the history of mankind. There are 14 new faces in all among his players. After being hired last March, Hoiberg somehow put all the pieces together in about 30 days.

But the same team that lost to UC Riverside and Southern Utah to start the season has since knocked off Purdue and Iowa and taken Indiana to overtime on the road. How about that? Things are coming along.

If Hoiberg has his way, the Huskers will make a dramatic, long-lasting move up the Big Ten pecking order. And he’ll be right there, in the place of his birth, overseeing it all.

A man could do far worse.

JUST SAYIN’

You ever get the feeling that Jason Benetti lives inside of your TV?

Every time I turn mine on, there he is calling a game during this White Sox offseason.

Let the record show that Benetti has called more than 30 TV games in all, not counting the Sox, since the start of college football season. That includes mostly college football and basketball, with a few Bulls assignments mixed in (there’ll be at least four more of those, three in February).

When I caught up with the 36-year-old announcer Thursday, he was in Jack Hoiberg’s neck of the woods to call a Michigan State-Minnesota contest. Benetti had just finished yapping it up with Gophers assistant coach Ed Conroy, a big Sox fan.

Does Benetti ever sleep? Relax? Kick up his tootsies and have a cream soda?

Short answer: Nope.

“If you told 16-year-old Jason Benetti, ‘You could work for ESPN and the White Sox,’ never would he dream of saying, ‘Oh, I should cut back,’ ” he said. “This is everything I ever wanted out of a career.”

• Illinois’ 71-70 victory at Wisconsin on Wednesday was its first against the Badgers in 16 tries. It was also the first time the Illini, 3-2 in Big Ten play, have had an above-.500 record in the conference since late in the 2014-15 season.

All this, less than two months after the Illini football team’s giant upset of the Badgers in Champaign? No wonder fans are stoked.

Then again, some of us are old enough to remember when beating Wisconsin in either sport was about as remarkable a feat as picking lint out of one’s navel.

Perspective, people.

• Oh, Jim Boylen.

“What I wanted to do was establish a system where we learned how to play basketball,” the Bulls coach said after Wednesday’s unspeakably foul performance in New Orleans.

Translation: I wonder if I’d be a good NFL defensive coordinator.

• Let’s try this again.

This weekend’s NFL winners: 49ers, Ravens, Chiefs and Seahawks.

Sure, you can trust the schmo who went 0-4 on his picks for the wild-card round. Why not?