12/18/2012 - Jacksonville State Report Card

[hhcdave]

Its been a day and I don't feel much better.

Let me pose this question.

Had the JSU player made the WIDE OPEN layup to send this game into OT, and then Nebraska lost, would you agree with an "F"?

I know, I know, "what if" and "coulda woulda shoulda" but I have a hard time accepting that even in a down year, we should be going into overtime and nearly losing to JSU, and consider that "okay." I agreed at the start of this year to judge this team on a sliding scale - I took heat for that at the time. And I have done that.

But for a team that won by 20 at WFU and dominated USC, and beat Valpo, I'm not going to accept overtime against JSU as acceptable.

[49r]

could be worse...

[Norm Peterson]

Dave, I think they played better than an "F." I'm also not sure you give JSU enough credit. I am guessing that the near collapse in the last 7-8 minutes is what mostly lead to the bad taste in your mouth. Had the game been nip and tuck the whole way and we managed to hang on in the end and answer basket for basket, your grade would have probably been higher. (I know, "what ifs" right?) But the fact that we seemed to get up on them so easily makes you think we should have walloped them. But then we nearly lost the entire lead, and so that is what plays most prominently in our minds.

I will give you that they probably deserve an "F" for losing ~ 7 1/2 of the last 8 minutes by a score of 17-4 (i.e., going from 50-35 to a score of 54-52). If you just go by that last, roughly, 5 minutes of the game, yeah, that stretch of time, they earned an "F." But I think your overall grade fails to take into account that we won the first 35 minutes by a pretty comfortable margin.

Also keep in mind that they weren't without some players. That dude with the long, unusual name could really ball.