WBB: Game #2 vs Mizzou - 2nd Round Preseason WNIT

[Row6Seat10]

 

Nebraska Cornhuskers vs. #24 Missouri Tigers

Monday, Nov. 14, 7 p.m.
Pinnacle Bank Arena

 

Live Radio: Husker Sports Network (pbp Matt Coatney, coloc Jeff Griesch)
KRNU 90.1 FM - UNL; KBBK 107.3 FM - Lincoln; KKCD 105.9 FM - Omaha; KHAS 1230 AM - Hastings;

KNCY 1600/105.5 AM/FM - Nebraska City; KHAQ98.5 FM North Platte; KNEB 94.1 FM - Scottsbluff;

Inside PBA 87.7 FM
 Free Live Audio: Huskers.com/Huskers App/TuneIn App
Live Video Stream: BTN Plus

 

Huskers Renew Rivalry with Mizzou in WNIT

 

The Nebraska women’s basketball team will face one of its oldest rivals when the Huskers play host to No. 24 Missouri in the second round of the 2016 Preseason Women’s National Invitation Tournament on Monday night at Pinnacle Bank Arena in Lincoln. Tip-off between the Huskers and Tigers is set for 7 p.m.

 

A live video stream will be available for BTN Plus subscribers as a BTN Student U production.

 

Nebraska advanced to the Preseason WNIT second round with a 71-53 victory over the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley on Saturday afternoon in Lincoln. Preseason All-Big Ten forward Jessica Shepard led the Huskers with 17 points and 15 rebounds, while senior center Allie Havers added 10 points and seven boards.
A balanced Nebraska attack and a stingy defense that kept 2016 Western Athletic Conference Player-of-the-Year Shawnte’ Goff in check, gave Coach Amy Williams her first win as Nebraska’s coach.

 

Missouri comes to Lincoln for the first time since the 2010-11 season when the Tigers suffered a 76-34 loss to the Huskers on their old home court at the Bob Devaney Sports Center. The 24th-ranked Tigers went 22-10 overall and 8-8 in the SEC on their way to the second round of the 2016 NCAA Tournament.

 

 

Probable Starters
 

Nebraska Cornhuskers

32 Jessica Shepard 6-4 So. F
22 Allie Havers 6-5 Sr. C
5 Nicea Eliely 6-1 Fr. G
11 Esther Ramacieri 5-8 Sr. G
34 Jasmine Cincore 5-10 Jr. G

Missouri Tigers

4 Cierra Porter 6-4 So. F
3 Sophie Cunningham 6-1 So. G
11 Lindsey Cunningham 6-0 RSr. G
23 Amber Smith 5-11 Fr. G
24 Sierra Michaelis 5-10 Sr. G

 

 

Scouting No. 24 Missouri

The No. 24 Missouri Tigers come to Lincoln for the first time since joining the Southeastern Conference. One of Nebraska’s oldest and most frequent opponents, Missouri made its last visit to Lincoln on Feb. 22, 2011, when the Huskers rolled to a 76-34 win

 

Missouri opened Robin Pingeton’s seventh season as the Tigers’ coach with a 52-46 win over defending Southland Conference champion Abilene Christian on Friday in Columbia, Mo. Sophomore Sophie Cunningham led four Tigers in double figures with 13 points. Cunningham was MU’s leading scorer as a freshman in 2015-16, averaging 14.0 and 5.8 rebounds per contest.

 

The Tigers, who went 22-10 overall last season, including an 8-8 SEC mark that was good for a tie for seventh in the conference, returned all five starters from a team that advanced to the second round of the 2016 NCAA Tournament.

 

 

• Nebraska leads the all-time series with Missouri 40-31 in one of the longest and oldest series in school history, dating back to a 67-61 Husker win over the Tigers on Jan. 21, 1977.

 

• In their second home game of the season, the Huskers own a 16-game winning streak.

 

• Jessica Shepard produced her 11th career double-double with 17 points and 15 rebounds in a Preseason WNIT first-round win over UTRGV. Her next double-double will put the sophomore in a tie for 12th on Nebraska’s career double-double list.

 

• Jessica Shepard’s 15 rebounds against the Vaqueros on Saturday marked her third career game with 15 or more boards and her 11th career game with double-figure rebounds.

 

• Jessica Shepard and Allie Havers both hit the first three-pointers of their careers in Nebraska’s season-opening win over UTRGV.

 

• Freshman guard Hannah Whitish also hit the first three of her career against UTRGV

 

GAME NOTES:

 

Beat Mizzou!

 

[Bugeaters1]

http://mutigers.com/news/2016/11/13/womens-basketball-mizzouwbb-travels-to-nebraska-for-preseason-wnit-quarterfinal.aspx

[Husker15]

Improved play against UTRGV.  Made some strides in offense.  More balanced.  Threes started falling.  Confidence building in younger players. 

 

Areas of Improvement

 

1)  Beat the press.  Still struggling to bring ball up the court.  

2)  Rebounding was good but we need to get the ball to an outlet quicker.  Too much passing to get ball up the court.  

3)  Need to pass the ball quicker in the zone to create open looks.

4)  Reduce turnovers.  21 is too many.

 

Missouri will be a good test of where we stand early on in this young season.  They have experience but seemed to struggle against Abilene so I'm optimistic we can hang with them.  Offensively - Develop a balance to take some pressure away from Shepard.  Defensively - Win the matchup. 

 

Tough week.  The schedule is brutal and will catch up to us at some point.  So far so good.  Go huskers.  

[colhusker]

If we can shut down Cunningham (younger of the two as she is clearly the better of the two) we have a great chance.  They had missing 2 or 3 key players they were counting on this year, including their center.

[Row6Seat10]

One thing to take note of is how many fans show up tonight. In the old Big Eight and the Big Twelve typically every year the games between Kansas and Missouri alway's drew the biggest crowds. 

[redsteve]

This will really be a test for the young ones. Mizzoooo is for real.  We'll see how much more we've learned and improved, thus far.

[Bugeaters1]

Players shooting trey's that shouldn't be shooting.

 

[huskerchode]

Can't throw the ball in the ocean tonight.

[Bugeaters1]

That was a fugley half of basketball.

 

[whoopdeedoo]

uhhhhhhgggg....not much to be happy about in that first half.

 

even jess' shots look bad. she is moving on her jumper instead of getting set. 

Edited November 15, 2016 by whoopdeedoo

[Noah121]

We're down by 14 near the end of the third. Not looking good...

[Cazzie22]

34 points?  10 of 63?  Girls better get in the gym and shoot.  I would have thought Shephard would have really worked on free throw shooting.  Allie Havers?  No impact at all.  Nothing positive from tonight.

[redsteve]

This team needs to practice and settle down. Got outplayed by a much more experienced team.

 

Our girls got pretty frustrated tonight. Got their hats handed to them rebounding.... and ... 

 

Jess spends too much time away from basket...we had no inside game tonight. Way way to much three shooting.  Until we can develop the guard play to be a scoring threat.....will be a tough season.

 

Poor free throw shooting. Looked pretty ragged overall. Kind of stayed with Mo. for a while after the first qtr., but were about 15 down all the time.  We don't seem to have a pull up jumper by anyone.

 

At this point....willing to give the girls lots of slack.  It's got to be pretty tough for them after tonight.

 

 

Edited November 15, 2016 by redsteve

[Merlin]

We need to be patient but I seriously can't see 3 point shooters anywhere on this team although we continued to jack them up. May be a couple can be, but it will be a painful season. 

I do like Nicea. She'll be a good one. 

[chuck.bentjen]

Coach has her work cut out for her.  Our fundamentals need some serious work - boxing out, ball movement, rebounding, positioning, etc.  DW could be a real force inside if she'd learn how to position herself. Jess tried to do too much last night. She needs to stay in her role. 

 

Nicea continues to be a bright spot with her athleticism and intelligence.

[huskerchode]

http://journalstar.com/sports/huskers/womens-basketball/huskers-historically-bad-on-offense-in-loss-to-missouri/article_ea0e1844-3c9e-50b1-a992-513a3dbaa8f1.html

 

[huskerchode]

Can someone give me their thoughts on what the issue is with their shooting?  Are they just bad shots, bad form, not set, rushed shots, etc?  I think we got pretty spoiled there for a while with Lindsey Moore, Hooper, Theriot (who we could always count on to get a bucket), and Romeo.  We just don't have anyone like that right now - we don't have that clutch shooter (or ball handler either).  We have Kissinger coming in next year and hopefully she can get up to speed quickly, and then the two transfers seem to have good stats, but will we have a ball handler?  I agree that Shepard needs to stay inside and keep that inside game established.  I always kind of thought that about Chatrice White when she played at Illinois - that she popped out along the perimeter way too much.  That might be an OK thing to do if our guard play was more of a scoring threat, but as it is right now, our inside game is going to have to carry us for a while.

[chuck.bentjen]

One thing we need to remember is that our two best guards are likely the one's sitting out due to transfer rules. I think they would add a whole different dynamic to this team. Also, Rachel Blackburn's injury really hurts us as well. 

[Huskerpapa]

Gruesome!

 

[whoopdeedoo]

i would expect to see more of the same (i.e. "the blueprint has been laid")-------clog the paint, big time pressure on jess. until others prove they are a force to be reckoned with...........

 

 

[KarlHessEatMy....]

Is Shepards shots that easy to block? She gets blocked more than I think she should. Its like she doesn't have a vertical at all just uses her body to get the space to get the shots off. Going to be a long year until the girls can make outside shots to open up Shepard.

[HUD]

The thing that was the most alarming to me was that our 3 most experienced players Shepard, Havers and Cincore were just 4 of 32 from the field and had 6 of our 10 turnovers.  Many of their shots were forced and they didn't play good defense much of the night.  

 

Jas definitely has an attitude but not sure it's the right one for the game of basketball.

[colhusker]

Missouri was missing two of their top bigs and Jess played outside?  Hum

[redsteve]

3 hours ago, huskerchode said:

Can someone give me their thoughts on what the issue is with their shooting?  Are they just bad shots, bad form, not set, rushed shots, etc?  I think we got pretty spoiled there for a while with Lindsey Moore, Hooper, Theriot (who we could always count on to get a bucket), and Romeo.  We just don't have anyone like that right now - we don't have that clutch shooter (or ball handler either).  We have Kissinger coming in next year and hopefully she can get up to speed quickly, and then the two transfers seem to have good stats, but will we have a ball handler?  I agree that Shepard needs to stay inside and keep that inside game established.  I always kind of thought that about Chatrice White when she played at Illinois - that she popped out along the perimeter way too much.  That might be an OK thing to do if our guard play was more of a scoring threat, but as it is right now, our inside game is going to have to carry us for a while.

 

Shooting last night was all of the above. bad shots, bad form, not set, rushed shots, .... many of our girls got frustrated pretty early, and never pulled out of the funk. Kind of lost their focus when shooting.

 

Shepard was outside too much...but Mo's defense was the obvious...collapse on Jess inside(three defenders usually)....all because we had no outside or short jumper scoring to help open up the lane. We'll continue to get the same defenses against us until we can come up with more scoring threats.

Theroit was the difference previously , she could make assists like there was no tomorrow, and was usually good for about 15-+ points...3's and many short jumpers just outside the lane.  She made the other teams defense have to guard her, and couldn't collapse inside so much.

 

Anyway, we just have to much inexperience. You  can see the talents there...just not yet able to put it all together. This years going require lots of patience...for everyone.

 

Agree where said else where....Nicea is the real deal.....just not hindered by the newness of it all, Sometimes going to fast, and needs to continue to improve her shooting...but she clearly gets it !!  Great addition to the team.  Like the freshman guards too.....just have the feeling their getting more confident all the time. They will be excellent with a little more time to get adjusted to the college  game.

Edited November 15, 2016 by redsteve