Fullbacksympathy

Agree. And he’s a weight room kid. He’s physically stronger than almost anyone he’s guarding.

I just remember my dad loving Strick so much when he came in as a freshman. I truly modeled how I thought about defense watching him on the perimeter. “See 21? THAT’s how you sit down on defense.” He or Pike are the easy picks, but I’m gonna throw an often forgotten one out: Ade. Not sure I’ve seen a harder worker ever put the uni on.

Had em both on my summer league team and they both had a lot of love for Doc. Sek was an elite defender and is still meandering around pro leagues and Ryan led the B12 in 3pt % his senior year and greatly improved his athleticism/ball skills over four years. Both guys were able to scrape together a living hooping for a pretty long time after graduating. Says a lot about the toughness Doc instilled and their willingness to endure it.

His defense and 3pt shooting will get him to the league as a reserve for sure. He has elite athleticism. Will he be an all star? All time great? No. But picture a more athletic Pat Bev who can shoot. That’s gonna be him.

Hoping they land him or someone similar yep.

We could still use a true stretch 4 who can rebound. We still haven’t been able to put out a lineup where all 5 guys can shoot it from three while maintaining traditional defensive positions under Hoiberg. Mast and a true stretch 4 (6’8” 230 or so would be great). Sounds like we’re working on one.

Brice intrigues me at 6’7”, 40% from 3, 85% from the line, 14 ppg last season. Not to put that much on the kid but he kind of screams the same long scoring wing (TP, JPJ) that we’ve had previously. That tourney team had some serious defense though. I think we’ll have better shooting but TP, SS, Gallegos (elite perimeter defender), Webster, Rivers, Benny Parker, Smith could all really get after it defensively. And Pitchford was a matchup nightmare when he was dialed in. Very excited to see how this upcoming roster shakes out though, I agree. It’s as complete as any I can remember this millennium.

I would normally agree but there might be something coming down the pike given how things are currently going this offseason with regard to recruiting. No inside knowledge. Love WB.

I thought I was watching Janowski highlights! Those two could be a whole lot of fun.

Beyond impressive.

I’m guessing Allick will spend a healthy amount of time at the 4 and 5 next season and get his minutes that way. He and Gary on the court at the same time would give us some crazy athleticism. I could see Mast/Gary/Allick all getting about the same minutes if Allick is running back and forth wherever we need him. Gary has a knack for very clutch hustle plays and won us a couple of games with them last season. Regardless, Allick and Mast are seriously great additions.

This roster now has basically no weaknesses and certainly seems like they will play on the bubble next season. Amazing work from the staff.

Yep. Better late than never. Huge get.

Sorry. I was talking more in terms of his speed/athleticism. I don’t think he’s an elite offensive talent.

I love this get. Kid is elite in transition and can really play defense. Easily a good enough ball handler to run point and already has a lot of B1G experience at a program traditionally better than ours.

Think Juwan Gary at guard. Extremely fast, elite defender, unpolished but pretty effective at times offensively. Serviceable shooter. Impacts the game in many ways. For our newly found identity, great fit if we can get him. Definitely could play PG.

All true, but again with the smaller populations there is basically no AAU. Supreme is trying to get it going in Kearney though.

Fair, sorta, but the AAU coaches who get hired to coach high school have already demonstrated success at the AAU level. The AAU coaches that coach in HS dress up like anyone else does for HS games. Summer ball is what it is. My personal opinion is that every HS coach, whether or not currently employed, should be required to have a teaching certificate to be in that sort of an intense environment with public school students. I think it would weed out a lot of bad apples who make it into the HS ranks. Why would an AAU program start up anywhere in Nebraska outside of Lincoln or Omaha? That would make no sense. There is no population to support it. It isn't even a relevant issue in smaller communities where they have one, maybe two teams per grade and no one ever gets cut. My experience as a player and coach in a larger population is that relationships are established on club teams well before kids even know who coaches high school are or where they will attend.

I mean, I generally agree, but didn't you just complain about AAU creating inequity in your own situation? How do you reconcile those two things? It sounds like the kid you mentioned who skipped the game had more of an ethics problem than an AAU one. I personally believe club sports should be a younger kid thing and summer/offseason thing for HS kids, but I'm not the only person allowed to determine what has equitable value. Some people value club sports more. It is what it is. That said, the pageantry of HS crowds and student culture, to me, will always make HS way better than AAU anything, and I think it will always lure great athletes.

I think this is sound advice for small schools, but there are some rarely discussed privileges that come from playing lower competition in terms of opportunities. Not very many kids can play two or three sports in Class A because they aren't good enough (I think it's only like 30% at that level). The higher up you go in class competition, the lower percentage of kids playing multiple sports, and not all kids even like three sports. If a kid is talented enough to letter in more than one sport, they definitely should do it though, I agree. And, yes, college coaches look for multi-sport athletes because they are obviously the best athletes. Most kids don't have that gift. Most kids' ceiling in bigger districts is high school athletics and, in most instances, they have to work extremely hard to make one high school team before their athletic career ends at 18 (at the oldest). I'd rather a kid have to push through emotional burnout than never be able to experience high school athletics at all. I'm not sure what the solution is in bigger populations. I also think emotional burnout happens to kids who are constantly playing a sport and have no true offseason. I loathed going straight into basketball from football after the basketball season had already started in high school. It was multiple sports that personally burned me out and made me skip a spring sport to recharge. I see it now with kids I coach who begin baseball training in the middle of basketball season. For younger kids, it's important to expose them to multiple sports and let them decide, but I'm a pretty big proponent of keeping them physically active year round whether they like multiple sports or not given childhood obesity has tripled in the past 30 years. Basketball, specifically, should focus on individual skills in the summer and less games. Unfortunately, that trend is the polar opposite in many programs. I think kids should play 15-20 basketball games max in the summer (April-July), but a lot of them are playing 40-50 which is awful.

There are so many opportunities in the city of Lincoln for children to experience and incredibly wide range of things via public education. It's actually incredible. Sports is just one of them. But I will always scream to the rooftops that private donations to public schools (i.e. paying for this theater to be built for this specific school) should be completely illegal and instead go to LPS pot to be distributed evenly.

I can only speak from personal experience. There are pros and cons to both based on what I've seen. Pros of teacher-coaches: the educator is 1) available during the day 2) generally more reliable in terms of communication skills 3) typically is aware of building culture and what standards to uphold. Cons of teacher-coaches: they don't always know how to coach. Pros of non-teacher coaches: 1) the coach is usually going off multi-year relationships with players/families before they ever begin high school (they are constantly coaching in and out of the HS system) 2) they typically have good relationships with personal trainers to hook up their players with in the offseason to continue establishing good individual skills. Cons of non-teacher coaches: they are often undereducated and communicate in a substandard way (think basic grammar in some instances). They also tend to approach the culture as a representative of their AAU program rather than the HS. So, in their mind, HS is almost an extension of their program, sort of like a fun exhibition. It's interesting. So it's really a wash at this point as far as what's best for the kids. I'm the rare educator that only coaches AAU at this point. I've seen the beautiful and ugly on both sides.

I'm not sure that's true. There are the Erick Stricklands of the world who could go pro in three sports, and the just good athletes who need the advanced skills required to have their college paid for at a lower level. More kids in the area are getting opportunities to play collegiate sports because of specialization. I understand your sentiment though.

and he and Armon weren’t allowed to coach how they wanted to until Matt was gone. We played pretty well after Matt left. Oklahoma will be interesting to watch this season. That said, Fred brought in some absolute masterminds and I give him full credit for that.

He’s a less refined Bando for sure. Very apt comparison. And I loved having Bando here.