uneblinstu's postgame chatter: vol 14; ed 17 - vs. Illinois

[thrasher31]

1 minute ago, brfrad said:

I would maybe include Indiana in the above category.  On the road, we were within 7 with 6 minutes to go.

That may be a game Trey is back by too. Purdue definitely not, but home against IU? Maybe

[brfrad]

1 minute ago, HuskerFever said:

 

Is this still accurate for "any postseason experience"?

True, I don't think Verge, Wilcher, and Trey even made the NIT.

[The Polish Rifle]

I hate that Nebraska Basketball and Football have been reduced to discussing if we tried hard that particular game. What a sad sports existence. Not even winning or losing, just "Did our players actually look interested in playing today". 

[hhcmatt]

We lost by 10 at home in a game where Kofi and their 3pt shooting were kept in check.

We might have had a chance if we were up 10 with 4 to go. This team isn't going to win close games unless they're handed to them. 

[Ron Mexico]

Walker was a beast tonight battling Cockburn. Was also Andre's  best game. 

I saw that Bryce was 6-15 and I was surprised. Thought he had better shooting night than that. Tonight was the first time in a game that I've seen why NBA likes him so much. He explodes to the rim. If this team was half way decent we'd be talking more about that dunk he had over Cockburn. He is still not very big and needs to put on some muscle to keep from getting pushed around.

Played really well defensively for the most part. When you know you are going to get beat on your own glass you need to balance that out with TO's and we didn't do that.

Verge played pretty well until the end of the game, when he started pressing to much and going back to old habits of dribble dribble dribble to trying to do it himself. I'd rather seen Webster down the stretch. I saw that FH did pull Verge a couple times when he started making poor decisions.

Tominaga is an excellent shooter when he gets a clean look from 3. Like Verge, he seems to force up shots and tonight he didn't do that. I love his energy and passion on the floor. He is fun to watch. 

Wilcher and Webster both played well coming off the bench.

 

Most critical part of the game:

We come out the 4min media TO and Bryce hits his 2 FT to tie the game at 65. After that, on 2 consecutive possessions by the Illini where they get offensive rebounds ( 3 on one possession and 1 on the next) and score both times then go up by 4, FH should have called a TO. There was about 3min left in the game. The team needed to settle down a bit and cool off the Illini. Instead the next possession Verge turns the ball over and the Illini go down the court and run off about 30sec and hit a 3. That was the ballgame. 

[Handy Johnson]

What would this team look like if Teddy Allen would’ve stuck around & we had a healthy Trey & Wilhelm…?

[jimmychitwood]

Verge cannot be on the floor at the end of a close game. His hero ball completely kills any semblance of offensive cohesion and he thinks every off-balance prayer is a foul which leads to him pouting/complaining for half of the next defensive possession. Hopefully Trey’s return fixes that.

 

The constant switching up top on defense needs to stop as well. Too often there is confusion on who’s guarding who or we are left in serious mismatches which give open driving lanes that just compound the problem.

[Silverbacked1]

5 hours ago, Handy Johnson said:

What would this team look like if Teddy Allen would’ve stuck around & we had a healthy Trey & Wilhelm…?

Or dare I say Thor?

[Jugular]

6 hours ago, Handy Johnson said:

What would this team look like if Teddy Allen would’ve stuck around & we had a healthy Trey & Wilhelm…?

If we put a lineup out that featured Teddy, Verge, Bryce, Wilcher and Lat we could see full on Battle Royal for who gets to shoot or touch the ball. That would be more entertaining than what’s on the court most of the time. 

[Chuck Taylor]

6 hours ago, jimmychitwood said:

Verge cannot be on the floor at the end of a close game. His hero ball completely kills any semblance of offensive cohesion and he thinks every off-balance prayer is a foul which leads to him pouting/complaining for half of the next defensive possession. Hopefully Trey’s return fixes that.

 

The constant switching up top on defense needs to stop as well. Too often there is confusion on who’s guarding who or we are left in serious mismatches which give open driving lanes that just compound the problem.

Man, we had a horrible switch up top in the last 4 minutes that was a killer. (think it led to free throws after an easy drive to the basket.) Switches aren't exactly rocket science, it's just a matter of communication, but I guess you can add "talking" to the list of things we do crappy.

[jimmykc]

Random thoughts: 1. How does Painter always seem to recruit a giant awkward goon at center? i wonder if he was a big fan of Lurch when he watched the Adams family as a kid. 2. I wish it would be acceptable to just forfeit going to Purdue and devote more practice for the Indiana game? 

[hskr4life]

24 minutes ago, jimmykc said:

Random thoughts: 1. How does Painter always seem to recruit a giant awkward goon at center? i wonder if he was a big fan of Lurch when he watched the Adams family as a kid. 2. I wish it would be acceptable to just forfeit going to Purdue and devote more practice for the Indiana game? 

Unfortunately we can’t because that gives an unfair disadvantage to BJoeHusker in the “when will we win our first conference game contest”

[basketballjones]

1 hour ago, Jugular said:

If we put a lineup out that featured Teddy, Verge, Bryce, Wilcher and Lat we could see full on Battle Royal for who gets to shoot or touch the ball. That would be more entertaining than what’s on the court most of the time. 

The ball would simply breakdown, scream/cry, and shout, "I CAN'T DO THIS ANYMORE!!!!"

[Navin R. Johnson]

9 hours ago, hhcmatt said:

We lost by 10 at home in a game where Kofi and their 3pt shooting were kept in check.

We might have had a chance if we were up 10 with 4 to go. This team isn't going to win close games unless they're handed to them. 

 

I was going to say the same thing.  I thought we played well, now we will see if we can bring the intensity on the road with us.  The trouble is that our defense is so bad that we cannot count on a stop at the end of a game, in fact it seems like it is automatic that the other team will score in the clutch and we probably won't.  Maybe if we had Trey back to guard a Frazier we might have a chance.

[49r]

11 hours ago, Norm Peterson said:

I'm not pissed they lost to Illinois at home. I'm pissed that, if they'd played like a team and given the kind of effort all season they did in the first 30 minutes of this game, we'd maybe be 11-6 instead of 6-11.

 

That's what pisses me off.

 

I wish I could upvote this a thousand times @Norm Peterson

[aphilso1]

Took some time to chew on last night's loss before responding.  Hard to believe a double digit loss feels like progress, but here we are.

 

-Walker did some serious yeoman's work against Kofi, and managed to do so while only committing two fouls.  Very, very impressive combination of gritty effort and high IQ playing.

-Speaking of effort, that seemed to be improved across the board.  I saw guys at least trying to rebound, even if the result was still -11 on the glass.  But hey, Illinois does that to pretty much everyone.

-We switched the point of attack more than normal.  Sticky hands and bad shots early in the shot clock will likely plague us all season long, but it's nice to see a game where that's not the entire offense.

-Bryce's thunder dunks were cool.  I wonder how soon teams will figure out to take away his ability to drive to his right?  Reminds me of JPJ a bit in that department.  Serviceable when going left, but an absolute monster when driving hard to the right.

-We had a handful of turnovers where an off-ball player cut hard one direction while the passer thought they were going to go a different direction.  Oddly enough, I see this as improvement.  WE HAVE PLAYERS TRYING TO CUT HARD OFF THE BALL! Sure beats standing around.

 

This season is a total loss, so all I really care about is finding something that can provide hope for the future.  I'll hang my hat on any improvement at all, and my eyeballs did see improvement last night.

[hhcmatt]

There were a few 'stand up and try and will the Nebraska defense' to make a stop moments of crowd engagement before Illinois put the game away.

[hskr4life]

8 minutes ago, hhcmatt said:

There were a few 'stand up and try and will the Nebraska defense' to make a stop moments of crowd engagement before Illinois put the game away.

Man the last probably 6-7 minutes it was just the constant feeling of “if we can just get a stop” but we never did unfortunately.  Kudos to the Illini for going toe to toe in those moments.

[MichHusker]

We have only played 2 full games with our top 8. I will wait to decide how i fully feel about this team until Trey comes back and we get through this frontloaded BIG 10 schedule. 

[Ron Mexico]

2 hours ago, aphilso1 said:

Took some time to chew on last night's loss before responding.  Hard to believe a double digit loss feels like progress, but here we are.

 

-Walker did some serious yeoman's work against Kofi, and managed to do so while only committing two fouls.  Very, very impressive combination of gritty effort and high IQ playing.

-Speaking of effort, that seemed to be improved across the board.  I saw guys at least trying to rebound, even if the result was still -11 on the glass.  But hey, Illinois does that to pretty much everyone.

-We switched the point of attack more than normal.  Sticky hands and bad shots early in the shot clock will likely plague us all season long, but it's nice to see a game where that's not the entire offense.

-Bryce's thunder dunks were cool.  I wonder how soon teams will figure out to take away his ability to drive to his right?  Reminds me of JPJ a bit in that department.  Serviceable when going left, but an absolute monster when driving hard to the right.

-We had a handful of turnovers where an off-ball player cut hard one direction while the passer thought they were going to go a different direction.  Oddly enough, I see this as improvement.  WE HAVE PLAYERS TRYING TO CUT HARD OFF THE BALL! Sure beats standing around.

 

This season is a total loss, so all I really care about is finding something that can provide hope for the future.  I'll hang my hat on any improvement at all, and my eyeballs did see improvement last night.

Tominaga hit Verge? on a back door cut. I had to blink twice  to make sure I wasn't seeing things. While we did miss with some of the off ball cuts, as you said this is actually a good sign. Maybe the timing of this will improve as we move forward.

 

I'm with you on finding something I can hang my hat on. It helps with my sanity. 

Can Bryce only go the right? While I haven't seen any dunks from the left, I have seen him make plays on the left. I think he is a bit more versatile than JPJ.

Walkers ability to battle down low with arguably the best big man in the BIG is great news. It gives us defensive options.  Walker is the team MVP thus far.

How about that contribution by Andre.

 

From my view we are starting to see some semblance of an offense. Ball movement is the biggest improvement along with actual running sets.

Defense, for the most part is effort. Huge improvement there. 

 

We all know that it is 99% certain that FH will be back next year so it is really a moot point to keep screaming "fire him, fire him."

 

There is still a lot of basketball left and this team has enough talent to compete.

I was day dreaming after Saturdays game that our first win of the season will be in the BIG Tourney.

How about this for an even more outrageous scenario. We win the BIG Tourney with our only wins this season happening at the BIG Tourney.

 

 

 

 

[Silverbacked1]

I think that Andre defends the the back to basket player.  He is strong enough to bang.  Where he gets is trouble is the pic and roll.  Not quite ready in his maturation to defend a smaller quicker player when he hedges.

 

I think for some reason we play as good as our opponents are.  Rutgers not great, we play like not great.  Ohio State, Illinois etc., better team, play better.  Not all of the time but mostly.

 

I also remember people saying it takes a Juco half a year to get going, so maybe Keisei is ready to really take off.

[hskr4life]

24 minutes ago, Ron Mexico said:

 

I was day dreaming after Saturdays game that our first win of the season will be in the BIG Tourney.

How about this for an even more outrageous scenario. We win the BIG Tourney with our only wins this season happening at the BIG Tourney.

 

 

 

 

They’d still find a way to give us a road NIT game.

[Ron Mexico]

8 minutes ago, hskr4life said:

They’d still find a way to give us a road NIT game.

That would be the most Nebrasketball thing ever.

[Crush78]

On 1/11/2022 at 11:07 PM, brfrad said:

True, I don't think Verge, Wilcher, and Trey even made the NIT.

Verge with probably would've been at least nit in '20 if the postseason actually happened

[millerhusker]

Unpopular opinion, but I don’t see how adding Trey back makes this team better. We’re an extremely inefficient team and Trey is an inefficient guard. But beyond that, the whole culture surrounding Husker hoops has to be the worst I’ve seen and I don’t think Trey fixes that. I don’t know if his intensity comes from a selfless place. He celebrated like we literally won the national championship after a dunk while losing to Western freaking Illinois rather than getting back on defense. Went on to lose the game but Trey proudly posted the dunk all over Twitter and talked about it fondly on the podcast. I don’t mean to pick on Trey, because it’s obviously not just him. The coaches should be embarrassed how Bryce decided to stare down the Illinois players and flex his muscles after a meaningless dunk with 40 seconds left in the game. These are just two examples (of many) but tells me all I need to know about this team. We’ll never win close games because the players do not care about winning. I’m sure they think they do, but they truly don’t care. Derrick Walker appears to be the only one who does. 
 

Usually bottom feeders are scrappy and lovable. Our players whine and complain about every. single. call. that doesn’t go their way like they’re NBA superstars. It’s all just embarrassing. This has to be the most unlikeable team in history.