Game Day Essentials: Game #15 vs Rutgers

[hhcmatt]

Nebraska Cornhuskers (8-6) vs Rutgers Scarlet Knights (9-6)

Date: Thursday, Jan 8th, 2015
Time: 8:00 p.m. CST
Arena: Pinnacle Bank Arena
Capacity: 15,000


Broadcast Information

Television: ESPNU

Online: WatchESPN

Announcers: Adam Amin and Craig Robinson

Satellite Radio: Sirius (Ch. 84); XM (84)
Play-by-play: Kent Pavelka
Expert Analysis: Matt Davison

Rutgers Scouting Thread

Rutgers Info


Head Coach: Eddie Jordan
Location: New Brunswick, NJ
Conference: B1G 10
Nickname: Scarlet Knights
Mascot:Scarlet Knight
Last time out: Beat Penn St.
Typical Rotation Depth: 8 players
Tempo: Middle of the road
Offensive Style: Princeton
Defensive Style: Obfuscate
Opening Line: Huskers by 7.5
Shirt not to wear : Scarlet, Batman
Fun Fact : This is three conferences in three years for Rutgers. Last year they were in the AAC after leaving the Big East with the rest of teams with football squads.

Other Previews
Huskers.com - http://www.huskers.c...6&DB_OEM_ID=100
Journal Star - http://journalstar.c...168bc52ad3.html


Possible Starters

Huskers

3 Benny Parker 5-9 172 Jr
5 Terran Petteway 6-6 215 Jr
31 Shavon Shields 6-7 221 Jr
2 David Rivers 6-7 200 Sr
35 Walter Pitchford 6-10 237 Jr

Scarlet Knights

4 Myles Mack 5-10 175 Sr
5 Mike Williams 6-2 190 Fr
10 Junior Etou 6-7 230 So
35 Greg Lewis 6-9 245 Jr
11 Kadeem Jack 6-9 235 Sr

Player to Watch

Kadeem Jack: The 6-9 Senior leads the Knights in shot attempts and offensive rebounds. He is part of a 5 man rotation of players that weigh 230+. Expect a slugfest all night of the Huskers attempting to keep the Rutger's big men out of the paint.

The Skinny

Tim Miles doesn't want to run a slow down offense but the pace of this team is trending towards the 2013-14 season instead of keeping pace with last year's team. We don't have a full bench of players we feel comfortable playing so this isn't exactly a surprising revelation. It's hard to play 7 guys in the B1G at a fast pace. Playing 7 guys slow isn't necessarily a losing formula...it's what Wisconsin is doing.

Enter Nick Fuller. Fuller looked serviceable against Iowa and hopefully can provide some much needed outside shooting in order to open up the lane some more for Petteway and Shields. Whose minutes is he going to take? At the moment hopefully the answer is "everyone's" Currently we're playing few enough guys where 2-5 minutes from our top 6 guys is still going to have them playing major minutes. One other note about Fuller: As a guy who probably won't handle the ball much we could potentially see his minutes be turnover free..a major issue with this team.

Rutgers is a team under 2nd year coach Eddie Jordan who runs the Princeton offense. Considering they are a poor shooting team, it should be a matter of the Huskers staying inside the arc like they tend to do anyway. The Knights also play a tough brand of defense which means that we should see an ugly game of basketball tonight. Hopefully the Huskers can play an average or better game and they should be able to come away with their first conference win of the year.
Prediction: Nebraska 57 - Rutgers 51 with a 9% chance of Runzas

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[atskooc]

Now it's game day!