uneblinstu's postgame chatter: vol 11; ed 5 - Texas Tech (HHCDave edition)

[hhcdave]

Texas Tech throttles #24 Huskers

Copeland the lone bright spot as Tech proves to be the better team 

 

 

Hello All,

 

Longtime lurker, first time poster. The first part is true, at least.

 

I thought I would chime in with my thoughts on tonights game since I was able to attend in person (last night as well).

 

We will break this down as "The Good, The Bad, The Ugly"

 

THE GOOD:

 

-Our starting five is scary talented. The athleticism and INDIVIDUAL players are there.

 

-We have better depth than I anticipated. I have been pleasantly surprised by Nana, Tanner and Brady (though we didn't see him tonight). Amir hasn't shown me much yet but that's to be expected by a true freshman.

 

-Isaac Copeland is off to a great start.

 

-Glynn Watson shows the energy and glue you need.

 

-The defense has been pretty dawgone good.

 

THE BAD:

 

-We have NO ACTION OFFENSIVELY. AT ALL. It's all iso.

 

-Our in bounds plays leave........ a lot to be desired.

 

-We will struggle rebounding against bigger teams (though we won that battle last night and we already knew this fact going into the season).

 

-We are very selfish and there's very little fluidity to the offense.

 

-James Palmer has looked brutal in all but one game, really. Is he banged up more than we know?

 

THE UGLY:

-This game.

 

Look...... We could afford ONE game like this in the nonconference. ONE.

The problem is, we now have used it up, and have no margin for error until Big 10.

 

We literally CAN'T lose more than one more nonconference game if we want to get to the NCAA Tournament. I really believe that.

 

Think about it, if we lose to Clemson AND either Creighton or Oklahoma State, we have the exact same problem as last year - we lost to the good teams in nonconference, and picked up 1-2 marginally good wins.

 

AKA, its doubtful Seton Hall is a signature win. So losing to Clemson, Texas Tech and either Creighto nor OSU would give us nothing impressive in the noncon.

 

GRANTED, the Big 10 is much stronger this year and finishing in the Top 5 would mean more.

BUT if we can't beat OSU on a neutral court and Creighton at home - after already getting TROUNCED by Texas Tech - we likely aren't going to finish Top 5 in the Big 10 anyways, especially since we aren't likely to see an experienced team get a whole lot better at this point in the process.

 

I was EXTREMELY frustrated tonight at the game... Can honestly say I cussed out loud for the first time ever as a Husker fan in public toward Coach... and I'm not proud of myself for that. I love Tim Miles. I really do.

 

I love James Palmer. I love Isaac Copeland. I love Roby. Etc. I want all these guys to have the pro careers they want, too.

 

There is a LOT invested in this team, program and INDIVIDUALS future.

That's one thing I'm really worried about, is how individual'ized this team looked the last two days.

 

I have yet to read any other posts on the board so I might be in left field with these thoughts, or maybe I'm dead on. I just wanted to get my thoughts on "paper" before reading others and while they were fresh in my mind.

 

Tonight certainly felt like any number of nights throughout the last 20 years, didn't it? It could have been any coach or any team we've had with high expectations - and there's been more than we realize.

 

The good news is the season is VERY young and its quite possible we just had an off night. It's also possible Texas Tech is a Top 15 team and this ends up not hurting us in the least.

 

BUT at some point, we have to start beating good and great teams if we plan on A. Making the NCAA Tournament and B. Winning a couple of games.

 

And anything less this year would be a massive failure.

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[Faux Mike Peltz]

Something that bothered me, and maybe I’m way off onthis take, but it really looked like we kind of gave up, our body language was terrible, and we closed to 11 points with over two minutes left, and allowed them to increase the lead, no sense of urgency. Would’ve thought I’d see more hunger and urgency from our veteran team...

[hhcdave]

I agree. They came out guns ablazin', and by the 3 minute mark of the first half, they looked gassed and uninterested.

 

They DID play hard on the defensive end (outside of various spurts in the second half) but the offense was so stagnant, selfish and rigid, it cancelled that out.

 

Its possible playing two games in two days found them extremely fatigued/not well enough conditioned.

 

Any way you spin it, this game was not a good look for Miles.

 

He 100% HAS to beat 2 of the 3 between Clemson, Creighton and OSU.

 

Drop two of these and regardless of Big 10 finish, we will be (at the best) on the bubble Selection Sunday.

[HuskerFever]

21 minutes ago, hhcdave said:

Drop two of these and regardless of Big 10 finish, we will be (at the best) on the bubble Selection Sunday.

 

I'd say you're crazy, but it turns out last year that we were fighting to even be on the bubble since early December.

[FredsSlacks]

wish roby would be more selfish. 5 shots in 37 minutes is not helping the team.

 

i think palmer will be fine. we saw what he's capable of in the 2nd half of the seton hall game. those charges threw off his game. 1 of which was not a charge.

 

everyone else has pretty much been what we expected. Roby and Palmer have to be the difference makers or we're going to have more games like tonight.

Edited November 21, 2018 by TimSmiles

[Chuck Taylor]

6 hours ago, hhcdave said:

 

-We have better depth than I anticipated. I have been pleasantly surprised by Nana, Tanner and Brady (though we didn't see him tonight). Amir hasn't shown me much yet but that's to be expected by a true freshman.

 

I agreed with everything except this. TM only trusted his bench to play 24 TOTAL minutes last night. That's a pretty brutal assessment of the bench.

 

I do agree that Tanner has been effective, and I think Nana will become more trustworthy as the season goes on. Those guys would be good 8th and 9th members of the rotation, but not 6th and 7th. Amir and Brady will have to get minutes, but they're really going to have to improve a lot to become trusted members of the rotation. The things they need to develop (shooting and physicality) can't be added during the season, I fear.

[Handy Johnson]

That was a sobering loss that only underscored some things we already knew:

-For all of his shortcomings, Jordy gave you a low post prescence & was someone you could dump it down to on the block. We’re missing that.

-Not enough fast break/transition buckets.

- Lack of scoring off the bench.

Time to get to work and not let one loss become 2 or 3

Edited November 21, 2018 by Handy Johnson

[jimmykc]

Good to hear from HHCDave, but he may be a jinx. Don't plan to attend any more in person, old buddy. Nothing to say about last night but we laid another egg as usual. Team will just have to man up and move on to the next big game. 

[4huskers]

One thing that stuck out - was the announcers saying - "look at TT - they set screens HARD, they do their cuts HARD, where Nebraska dribbles around and have lots of standing around"  Not the exact words used, but they could see the difference on offense.  

[B-town hoopsfan]

After thinking over night did it seem like our guards got beat repeatedly off the bounce putting our bigs in bad positions on defense? 

[Buglem]

2 minutes ago, B-town hoopsfan said:

After thinking over night did it seem like our guards got beat repeatedly off the bounce putting our bigs in bad positions on defense? 

Yes, repeatedly. 

 

Look, I'm as down this morning as anyone about the game last night. I saw things I hoped we wouldn't see this year. That said, I'm hoping it was a bad night combined with a really good night by Tech. They were locked in, played the best defense I've seen in a long time and played great fundamental basketball on offense (good picks, hard cuts, etc.). Hopefully the guys learn from it and come out stronger for it. If not, maybe Beard would like to move to Lincoln next year...

[jimmykc]

Not much positive to say about last night, especially since those of us watching on tv missed the only part of the game in which our team looked decent, i.e.the start. For those who were there, what happened after Palmer got his second charge? Were they bad calls? Did sourpuss Beard intimidate the refs? Why were we unable to draw any charges on their guy who seemed to drive the lane with impunity? Is the team mentally relying on Palmer too much? In the part of the game I did see, we seemed to play very tentatively like a team which was shocked by playing from behind. And TT did seem to get all the bounces, like banking in 40 ft shots. Oh well,hopefully we learn from the game, which, after all, is only one loss. So lets all enjoy the holiday and be thankful our houses weren't burnt up in a fire or washed away in a hurricane. 

[Fullbacksympathy]

We didn’t shoot well at all and rebounded terribly on the defensive end. 

 

That’s a recipe for distaster for this team as we have the capability to make up for bad shooting with transition buckets.  

 

We were also awful at the line when we got there.

 

I think we’ll be fine, but we have to make @ Clemson our god damned super bowl.  It’s the most important game of the year. 

 

Props to Copeland for showing up for every game this season.  

Edited November 21, 2018 by LK1

[unl]

Roby has got to step up. He’s an amazing talent but played hesitant. Where’s the alpha dog? Who’s going to nut up when needed? 

[hskr4life]

53 minutes ago, jimmykc said:

Not much positive to say about last night, especially since those of us watching on tv missed the only part of the game in which our team looked decent, i.e.the start. For those who were there, what happened after Palmer got his second charge? Were they bad calls? Did sourpuss Beard intimidate the refs? Why were we unable to draw any charges on their guy who seemed to drive the lane with impunity? Is the team mentally relying on Palmer too much? In the part of the game I did see, we seemed to play very tentatively like a team which was shocked by playing from behind. And TT did seem to get all the bounces, like banking in 40 ft shots. Oh well,hopefully we learn from the game, which, after all, is only one loss. So lets all enjoy the holiday and be thankful our houses weren't burnt up in a fire or washed away in a hurricane. 

 

Actually a huge mentality shift early that killed us.  Firstly, the two Palmer charges were meh calls.  Honestly think that refs are just looking for him to drive and commit the charge.  I related it to Nebraska and football penalties earlier this year.  

 

The real killer was a possession or two or two later when Tanner was more set than either of the two charge calls on Palmer.  They called a block and 1 call on Tanner.  

 

Thats why it’s tough to say that refs don’t lose games.  Sure, I get that the refs didn’t shoot for us, the refs didn’t play our D, etc. However, the refs really played a killer in our mentality.  At this point in the game, we were rolling.  And then everything switched.  We were less aggressive on D and less aggressive driving.  Key to disaster in this game was those two things.  I believe the refs played a huge role in why we were less aggressive on both of the two mentioned things above.  So yes... while they didn’t lose the game for us, they greatly altered the game that wasn’t in favor of us.  That’s basketball though, and we need to find a way to fight through that.

[dustystehl]

28 minutes ago, hskr4life said:

 

Actually a huge mentality shift early that killed us.  Firstly, the two Palmer charges were meh calls.  Honestly think that refs are just looking for him to drive and commit the charge.  I related it to Nebraska and football penalties earlier this year.  

 

The real killer was a possession or two or two later when Tanner was more set than either of the two charge calls on Palmer.  They called a block and 1 call on Tanner.  

 

Thats why it’s tough to say that refs don’t lose games.  Sure, I get that the refs didn’t shoot for us, the refs didn’t play our D, etc. However, the refs really played a killer in our mentality.  At this point in the game, we were rolling.  And then everything switched.  We were less aggressive on D and less aggressive driving.  Key to disaster in this game was those two things.  I believe the refs played a huge role in why we were less aggressive on both of the two mentioned things above.  So yes... while they didn’t lose the game for us, they greatly altered the game that wasn’t in favor of us.  That’s basketball though, and we need to find a way to fight through that.

 

Why even waste your time talking about the refs and calls? We were up 15-4 and lost by 18. The refs have little to nothing to do with a 29-point swing.

We lost because our coaches had no answer for Texas Tech's defensive strategy. We allowed them to constantly have a help defender on Palmer. We could have tried spreading it out, clearing the lane. We could have tried SOMETHING, but did NOTHING. As the original post in this thread said, it was the same stagnant, hesitant, timid offense.

 

Team reflects the coach. We got Timid Miles last night.

[hskr4life]

14 minutes ago, dustystehl said:

 

Why even waste your time talking about the refs and calls? We were up 15-4 and lost by 18. The refs have little to nothing to do with a 29-point swing.

We lost because our coaches had no answer for Texas Tech's defensive strategy. We allowed them to constantly have a help defender on Palmer. We could have tried spreading it out, clearing the lane. We could have tried SOMETHING, but did NOTHING. As the original post in this thread said, it was the same stagnant, hesitant, timid offense.

 

Team reflects the coach. We got Timid Miles last night.

 

The OP asked about the calls and I responded.  I also disagree.  We were up big at the time of those calls and they completely switched our mentality.  That was my point of the post.

 

It’s ok to say that the refs were bad and killed our mentality while also saying we looked bad.  Both can be true.

 

No need to overreact.  Take a deep breath and enjoy the weekend.  It was one game and judgements can’t be made after one game.  Come back refreshed on Saturday but first... you sir have a Happy Thanksgiving.

[B-town hoopsfan]

53 minutes ago, hskr4life said:

 

Actually a huge mentality shift early that killed us.  Firstly, the two Palmer charges were meh calls.  Honestly think that refs are just looking for him to drive and commit the charge.  I related it to Nebraska and football penalties earlier this year.  

 

I didn’t think those were terrible calls. The block on tanner was horse poo after those but those both seemed like charges to me at the time. Now after that their were a lot of bad calls coupled w every loose ball seemingly going to tech. Palmers 3rd,4th and basically 5th fouls were all really bad plays on his part IMO

[nustudent]

Don't think the refs cost us the game by any means....but that sequence of fouls (2 on Palmer, 1 on Borchardt) is why there needs to be a change.  The charge/block call is the worst call in sports.  There is no consistency to it.  It is easy to manipulate (flopping).   Their needs to be an evolution in how it's called.   Charging should only be called if it is egregious.  

[hskr4life]

2 minutes ago, B-town hoopsfan said:

I didn’t think those were terrible calls. The block on tanner was horse poo after those but those both seemed like charges to me at the time. Now after that their were a lot of bad calls coupled w every loose ball seemingly going to tech. Palmers 3rd,4th and basically 5th fouls were all really bad plays on his part IMO

 

I think they could have went either way.  I agree that coupled with the Tanners call, it made them worse. Problem is that Palmer now has the stigma around him that he is going to commit offensive fouls and I think refs will continue to not give him the benefit of the doubt. He’s going to have to learn this.

[Dead Dog Alley]

1 hour ago, hskr4life said:

 

Actually a huge mentality shift early that killed us.  Firstly, the two Palmer charges were meh calls.  Honestly think that refs are just looking for him to drive and commit the charge.  I related it to Nebraska and football penalties earlier this year.  

 

The real killer was a possession or two or two later when Tanner was more set than either of the two charge calls on Palmer.  They called a block and 1 call on Tanner.  

 

Thats why it’s tough to say that refs don’t lose games.  Sure, I get that the refs didn’t shoot for us, the refs didn’t play our D, etc. However, the refs really played a killer in our mentality.  At this point in the game, we were rolling.  And then everything switched.  We were less aggressive on D and less aggressive driving.  Key to disaster in this game was those two things.  I believe the refs played a huge role in why we were less aggressive on both of the two mentioned things above.  So yes... while they didn’t lose the game for us, they greatly altered the game that wasn’t in favor of us.  That’s basketball though, and we need to find a way to fight through that.

 

Unfortunately if this season is anything like the previous 20 seasons they can expect to get hammered by the refs in at least 15 games, so they’d better get used to it.

[dustystehl]

37 minutes ago, hskr4life said:

No need to overreact.  Take a deep breath and enjoy the weekend.  It was one game and judgements can’t be made after one game.  Come back refreshed on Saturday but first... you sir have a Happy Thanksgiving.

 

I SO BADLY want to agree with you and I hope it was "just one game". But, unfortunately, our history of an inability to adjust in-game is still very worrisome to me. I fear Texas Tech discovered a formula to beat us and I'm not all that confident we can fix it.

 

The issues that plagued us last night were the same issues that have plagued us for several years (stagnant offense, poor shots, etc.). And I have yet to see a game plan or coaching adjustment that addresses those issues.

 

It really felt like we were watching the same team we had two years ago. And I don't understand how fans can continuously defend that. How is this not frustrating to all of us?

 

I just want to win. Tired of getting kicked in the dick in big games.

Edited November 21, 2018 by dustystehl

[hskr4life]

2 minutes ago, dustystehl said:

 

I SO BADLY want to agree with you and I hope it was "just one game". But, unfortunately, our history of an inability to adjust in-game is still very worrisome to me. I fear Texas Tech discovered a formula to beat us and I'm not all that confident we can fix it.

 

The issues that plagued us last night were the same issues that have plagued us for several years (stagnant offense, poor shots, etc.). And I have yet to see a game plan or coaching adjustment that addresses those issues.

 

It really felt like we were watching the same team we had two years ago. And I don't understand how fans can continuously defend that. How is this not frustrating to all of us?

 

I just want to win. Tired of getting kicked in the dick in big games.

 

We all want to win.  I know that.  Hell, we have one of the most active boards for a college basketball team that I have seen out of everyone and we’ve never won a damn tournament game.  That’s crazy when you think about it!

 

Yes last night was like watching two years ago, three years ago, etc.  We are sometimes too quick to forget that our first 4 games looked like a better team than last year.  That’s saying something too.

[PointGuard]

Last nights game looked like a team that hasn't learned how to win on the road.  Bad spacing, not moving on offense and just passive.  Waiting for a person to do something rather than working as a team.  First half of game with Missouri State was similar.

[dustystehl]

3 hours ago, hskr4life said:

 

We all want to win.  I know that.  Hell, we have one of the most active boards for a college basketball team that I have seen out of everyone and we’ve never won a damn tournament game.  That’s crazy when you think about it!

 

Yes last night was like watching two years ago, three years ago, etc.  We are sometimes too quick to forget that our first 4 games looked like a better team than last year.  That’s saying something too.

 

The only thing the first four games proved is that we have increased our talent level.

 

Feels like we get out-coached more often than not when we play a team with a similar talent level (like last night). It's discouraging and disappointing. I'm tired of it.

Edited November 21, 2018 by dustystehl