uneblinstu's postgame chatter : vol 17; ed 31- Iowa

[Nebrasketball1979]

12 minutes ago, hskr4life said:

 

This is 100% spot on and why I feel we need to be careful about trying to make excuses about this season. Sure we had some bad luck on the court, Berke rolled an ankle at the wrong time, we missed a few key and important shots. But as you said, results have to matter. If this was more of a one-off year and we had a very successful first few seasons then maybe you could point to this as an outlier.

 

I don't remember which game thread it was, but I jokingly said that the only reason we could entertain the idea of not wanting Fred back was if we missed the B1G tournament. At the time, I figured we'd 100% make it. There was no way we wouldn't. In a two to three week period we went from 80% likely to make the NCAA Tournament to not even making the B1G tournament.

 

I'm firmly on the fence honestly. The university I feel will 100% retain Fred and give him more opportunities and I truly am ok with that. I hope we pony up some money and we're able to secure the type of commitment that went elsewhere last year. However, I won't sit here and say that I'd be up in arms if the university decided to move in a different direction either.

 

Whether the season was a failure or not is, I believe, all about how you look at the season as a whole. If you are going by before the year, I believe that expectations were a little bit lower, so maybe one could say that it was an ok season where we finished about where some expected. BUT if you look at the season by what we now know, I can certainly see how one could thing it is a failure of a season. 12-2 and just beat UCLA at home. Blow a 15 point lead and rattle off 6 straight losses. Win 4 in a row including a road sweep and then lose 6/7 to end it. Blow an 80% chance to dance. I could see it being a failure in the sense of we were greatly exceeding expectation and all we had to do was play average to do something special. And we played well below average to finish at "expectations".

Yeah, that's fair.  Knowing how close we were in so many games and moments definitely slants my opinion.  They all went against us.  Is that bad luck or emblematic of an issue with coaching, leadership, etc.  We didn't have these issues in 2023-2024.  Or, I don't remember many gut punches that year although I am sure there were some.  We took kicks to the balls repeatedly this season.  So which season is the outlier or is the reality probably somewhere in the middle?  If it was even sort of close to the middle this year, we are talking about seeding today.  And, right or wrong, I largely ignore Fred's first three seasons here.  He had to do a hard reset and adjust his coaching and recruiting philosophy to today's college basketball.  Maybe I am part of the standards problem with Nebrasketball but I am willing to give someone I believe to be a really good head coach the benefit of extra time and patience.

 

Regardless, as I said, next year is pivotal for Fred.

[Navin R. Johnson]

2 hours ago, hskr4life said:

Baseball looking like it may throw their hat in the ring too if we don’t get it turned around.

 

Losing our All American pitcher and one of our top relievers does not help a team who's big bats are struggling.

[Navin R. Johnson]

1 hour ago, HB said:

We'll just have to agree to disagree on that.   You state the better year as fact.  Hardly.  A complete regression and failure of a year.

 

Agreed.  I argue enough with my wife the way it is, no need to argue on this board!

[HuskerFever]

People need to point out where they actually think these two programs are on this graph, because those two programs don't exist on the same local maximum...

 

 

And for those who enjoy our demise, global minimum = Rock Bottom