uneblinstu's postgame chatter: vol 12; ed 6 - George Mason

[uneblinstu]

Rough night, but a good chance to leave the islands with 2 wins.

 

Tough to make any comments on the game without seeing any of it. Sounds like we couldn't do anything on the boards, though.

[AuroranHusker]

Yeah, NU on the bottom end of a 49-26 deficit on the boards probably not the way to get multiple wins... NU was out-rebounded 54-28 by Southern, and barely escaped with an OT win. Sheesh.

 

 

[hhcmatt]

At least the night was not a total loss

 

[HuskerFever]

7 minutes ago, uneblinstu said:

Rough night, but a good chance to leave the islands with 2 wins.

 

My thoughts exactly.

[hskr4life]

Tough to see a “bright side” after games like this.  I hate losing, so for me it’s always unacceptable to “lose” a game.  But we can only go up.  Losing by 20 to GMason was probably better than losing by 20 to Riverside.

[hhcmatt]

There were a lot of disappointing things tonight. One of the more disappointing was how we couldn't get anything going in the paint against a team so small

[jayschool]

I'm finding this season oddly liberating, and this game is the perfect exemplar: we got crushed by a mid-major — next!

 

Listen, every game last year and the year before devolved into either extreme melancholic episodes (losses) and absurdly optimistic declarations of long-term world domination (wins).

 

This year, it's just a game, fun to watch but ultimately not all that important.

 

Screw it — NEXT!

[The Bouncer]

Did Kavas get jumped by the Monstars on his way to Lincoln? His 3 pt shooting is down 15% from the last 2 years. If he gets on track and can hit those open looks our offense can open back up in a hurry. I'm not banking on that right now, but tomorrow I'm seeing shades of that Honolulu tournament during Doc's first year where NU went W-L-W, Doc got tossed in the second game vs Hawaii, and NU came back to win on the tourney's last day. Get the W tomorrow and NU did what it needed to do in the Caymans.

[Handy Johnson]

Cam & Jervay were MIA in this one, that can’t happen if we plan on beating anybody...

[colhusker]

Why it's going to be a long year, look very good one night and well really bad the next.  Fred HAS got to figure out the rebounding thing even if it's just a partial band-aid.

[Norm Peterson]

They doubled us up on rebounds and we can't shoot. That's not a recipe for success. Not gonna win a lot of games this year doing that. If you were expecting us to win a lot of games, you should adjust your expectations.

[AuroranHusker]

2 hours ago, Norm Peterson said:

They doubled us up on rebounds and we can't shoot. That's not a recipe for success. Not gonna win a lot of games this year doing that. If you were expecting us to win a lot of games, you should adjust your expectations.

 

True dat.

 

 

[AuroranHusker]

4 hours ago, hhcmatt said:

At least the night was not a total loss

 

 

 

[FredsSlacks]

my thoughts through 6 games

 

3rd worst free throw shooting team in the country at 55%. get that number to 70% and we're scoring an extra 4 points per game and would have beaten southern utah at the very least and be 4-2.

 

there's no answer to improve our defense with our lack of size. we just have to play fast and score a lot of points to win games. size/defense should not be as big of an issue next year.

 

our bench is really bad except for cross. thor and kavas need to do more or they shouldn't be playing 20 mpg. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited November 27, 2019 by FredsSlacks

[khoock]

5 hours ago, FredsSlacks said:

our bench is really bad except for cross. thor and kavas need to do more or they shouldn't be playing 20 mpg. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1. Who else would you play? We only have 10 scholarship guys, four of which already play close to thirty or more minutes most nights. 

2. Thor has a real positive impact on the game. You just gotta be able to look beyond box score stats

3. Agree with your take on FT shooting and rebounding help

Edited November 27, 2019 by khoock

[Dean Smith]

5 hours ago, FredsSlacks said:

there's no answer to improve our defense with our lack of size. we just have to play fast and score a lot of points to win games. size/defense should not be as big of an issue next year.

 

 

 

 

No. Lots can be done defensively based on yesterday’s game. We gave  straight line drive after straight line drive to the basket with help arriving late or not at all. That’s a mental break down and should be fixable IF the players want to work hard. And I lost track of the “and ones” we gave up that were silly stick the hand in weakly, not stopping a shot ever, foul or concede, make up your mind, type of fouls. I could go on but even the rebounding can be greatly improved with more physical but mostly mental effort.  

[49r]

4 minutes ago, Dean Smith said:

No. Lots can be done defensively based on yesterday’s game. We gave  straight line drive after straight line drive to the basket with help arriving late or not at all. That’s a mental break down and should be fixable IF the players want to work hard. And I lost track of the “and ones” we gave up that were silly stick the hand in weakly, not stopping a shot ever, foul or concede, make up your mind, type of fouls. I could go on but even the rebounding can be greatly improved with more physical but mostly mental effort.  

 

Exactly.  Last night was about effort, plain and simple.  We didn't give it, or at least not enough of it, Mason did.

 

 

[Norm Peterson]

What will it take to transform this team from a doormat to a contender in year 2?

[Nebrasketball1979]

35 minutes ago, Norm Peterson said:

What will it take to transform this team from a doormat to a contender in year 2?

 

Alcohol improves my game but I'm not sure that's the answer you are looking for.  

 

It's really going to take patience and another recruiting cycle or two to get this thing rolling in a more favorable direction.  We have (3) sit out players this year and depending on who you listen to, they could be the best 3 on the team or at least 3 in the group of 5 starters.  I think a big goal for this team this year is to learn's Fred's offensive and defensive sets and to show improvement as the year goes on.  Improvement may not be measured in wins and losses but in just the overall quality in play based on the eye test.  Year 2 should be quite a bit better but I'm much more optimistic about how this thing takes off in year 3.

[Norm Peterson]

We can tweak the offensive sets and fine-tune how we run them, kinda polish the execution and whatnot.  But if we still can't shoot for crap, that won't matter a lot. Our outside shooting is atrocious for a system that relies on it. And our free throw shooting is embarrassing, even in a transition year.  Mystifying that a guard-oriented roster is so bad from the stripe and beyond the arc. Aside from Kavas, our best FT shooter with more than 2 attempts is Dachon Burke at 61%.

 

Green and Mack are both under 60% and Cheatham is under 50% from the stripe. Which is shocking.

 

This is just my opinion, but we need to find some shooters for next year. I'm talking legit shooters, not a one-hit wonder with an odd hitch in his giddyup who's sometimes on and sometimes not.  I'm talking about an athlete or two who has some skill and can catch, turn and shoot with good balance, form, and technique. And speed. And who can reliably hit that shot when he takes it.

[TourneyBound]

7 minutes ago, Norm Peterson said:

We can tweak the offensive sets and fine-tune how we run them, kinda polish the execution and whatnot.  But if we still can't shoot for crap, that won't matter a lot. Our outside shooting is atrocious for a system that relies on it. And our free throw shooting is embarrassing, even in a transition year.  Mystifying that a guard-oriented roster is so bad from the stripe and beyond the arc. Aside from Kavas, our best FT shooter with more than 2 attempts is Dachon Burke at 61%.

 

Green and Mack are both under 60% and Cheatham is under 50% from the stripe. Which is shocking.

 

This is just my opinion, but we need to find some shooters for next year. I'm talking legit shooters, not a one-hit wonder with an odd hitch in his giddyup who's sometimes on and sometimes not.  I'm talking about an athlete or two who has some skill and can catch, turn and shoot with good balance, form, and technique. And speed. And who can reliably hit that shot when he takes it.

 

I totally agree Norm!!!  Gotta find some legit shooters out there whether they are transfers or high school kids.  Been awhile since Nebraska has had some good shooters though..

[khoock]

Kind of astounding how poor of a shooting team we are considering expectations.

 

- Matej Kavas was suppose to be an elite shooter

- Jervay Green and Haanif Cheatham were suppose to be good shooters

- Dachon Burke, Kevin Cross, and Samari Curtis were all suppose to be adequate 

 

On paper, thats a good shooting team. For whatever reason we havent met those expectations. As for free throw shooting, I have no comments.

Edited November 27, 2019 by khoock

[Chuck Taylor]

My first thought was to suggest that some of the FT percentages are low right now because of the adjustment to playing D1 for the first time, or from sitting out a year. Plus, it might require some time to learn to settle down at the FT after playing full speed.

 

But then I checked juco FT stats from Cam (64.6%) and Jervay (53.6%) and from Dachon (62.8%) in his last year at Robert Morris. So never mind. 

[millerhusker]

The free throw shooting is perplexing and concerning. 
 

The first three games we were absolutely awful from the outside. But in the last three games we’re 31-69. That’s about 10 threes per game at a 45% clip. I think it’s still early to decide that we’re a poor outside shooting team. We’re at 33% right now and I think that’ll go up a bit. Hoiberg’s Iowa State teams were consistently around 35-36%. Tim Miles’ teams here were anywhere from 28-34% just for reference. 

[hskr4life]

Yeah... stand up if you had our best three point shooter at 50% through 6 games as..... Thor.