Courtesy Nebraska Athletics
Not many sportscasts make statewide headlines during the pregame show. But then again, a Kent Pavelka broadcast was always one of a kind.
During the pregame show before Monday’s men’s basketball exhibition game between Nebraska and Kansas State in Grand Island, Pavelka, who first called a Cornhuskers’ men’s basketball game in 1974, announced that the 2026-27 season would be his last as the play-by-play voice of Nebraska men’s basketball.
“This is going to be my last year behind this play-by-play microphone, as I have decided to retire at the end of the season,” Pavelka said. “And it just about takes everything I can deep inside my soul to share that because, I think as most of you or many of you know who are listening, you know what has this has meant to me. But, it’s time.”
Pavelka’s current stint as the play-by-play voice of Nebraska men’s basketball began in the fall of 2007. Though witness to more lows than highs over the ensuing two decades, Pavelka documented the Huskers’ transition from the Big 12 to the Big Ten, the move from the Devaney Center to Pinnacle Bank Arena, and the Cinderella 2013-14 season, as Tim Miles led Nebraska to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 1998.
But the biggest highlights have come in the last three years. Under coach Fred Hoiberg, Nebraska qualified for the NCAA Tournament in 2024, then missed the Big Ten Tournament but won The Crown Basketball Tournament in 2025. The 2025-26 season would be the masterpiece of Pavelka’s most recent run as hoops voice, as he documented the Huskers’ first-even NCAA Tournament victory, a 76-47 triumph over Troy in Oklahoma City, followed by a thrilling 74-72 win over Vanderbilt to send Nebraska to the Sweet 16 round, where the Huskers lost to Iowa.
His most recent two-decade run as hoops voice is a dramatic third act to a sports broadcasting career that stretches back to the 1970s. A Lincoln native, Pavelka graduated from UNL in 1971. After three years at KHUB in Fremont, Pavelka was hired by legendary Husker voice Lyell Bremser at KFAB in 1974 to serve as Bremser’s color commentator on football broadcasts and to do play-by-play on Nebraska men’s basketball broadcasts on KFAB. Pavelka stayed at that post for nearly a decade, and when KFAB was awarded the first exclusive broadcast contract in NU Athletics history in 1983, Bremser and Pavelka were tabbed as the play-by-play team on football, with Pavelka continuing with men’s basketball.
Bremser called only the first season of games on the exclusive network, then retired after the 1983 football season. Pavelka was promoted to Voice of the Huskers for football as well as men’s basketball beginning in the fall of 1984. Pavelka’s football work covered the second decade of the Tom Osborne era, with Nebraska winning a share of the Big Eight championship in 1984, then the conference title outright in 1988. The Huskers ran off five straight Big Eight football championships from 1991-95, culminating with national championships in 1994 and 1995. His continued work with men’s basketball included trips to the NCAA Tournament with Moe Iba’s Huskers in 1986, then to the NCAA Tournament with Danny Nee in the 1990s and a run to the Big Eight Tournament Championship in 1994, before an NIT Championship in 1996.
But that NIT final broadcast in 1996 was bittersweet, as it was Pavelka’s last as Voice of the Huskers. KFAB had lost the bid for the rights to the NU athletic broadcasting package, and the new rightsholder, the Pinnacle Sports Network, decided to replace Pavelka with Warren Swain, who was working as the play-by-play voice of the Virginia Cavaliers before being hired as the Voice of the Huskers, beginning with the 1996 football season. That began a decade of exile from Husker broadcasts for Pavelka, who continued in his full-time role with KFAB before moving on to KKAR as the morning host on the Omaha station. Pavelka stayed mostly out of the sportscasting realm until filling in on a broadcast in the spring of 2007. Pavelka was restored as Husker men’s hoops voice full-time beginning with the 2007-08 season.
Pavelka’s broadcasts will be heard all season long on KLIN.