12/18/2012 - Jacksonville State Report Card

[hhcdave]

OFFENSE: D-

Nebraska may have scored more than the 40 they'd averaged the last two games, but against a team the caliber of Jacksonville State, 59 points is not acceptable. Period.

I don't care if Nebraska is young, if they're only playing six and a half scholarship players (due to injury and red shirts) or if they're banged up a bit - you have to be able to score without going into extended droughts against a team you:

A. Have WAY MORE SIZE THAN.

B. Have WAY MORE TALENT THAN.

C. Are PLAYING AT HOME AGAINST.

If you can't tell, I am extremely frustrated.

Nebraska looked scared and tenative once they got a big lead, and I'll harp on that a bit later in coaching.

The Huskers short armed at least four shots in the last five minutes and looked totally like they were playing not to lose. At home against this team, that is not going to fly.Nebraska showed absolutely NO ABILITY to isolate its big men and get them the ball in the post outside of a few possessions in the first half. That is pathetic. JSU had nobody over 6'7" and 230 pounds. Nebraska has two senior big men who go a legitimate 6'9" and 6'10" and way stronger.

Nebraska DID do three things well.

1. They got to the free throw line a fair amount and converted (17-21).

2. They only attempted five three's (though they missed all of them).

3. Two words: Shavon Shields. Without him, NU gets rolled. (14 points on 6-7 shooting in 28 minutes)

I am beyond frustrated that we had an over 6:00 field goal drought in the first half, that we quit trying to score and when we did, played scared in the second half and that we couldn't figure out a way to get the ball down low.

Just not acceptable.

DEFENSE: D-

Really? We're going to allow the game tying shot to come on a wide open finger roll off of penetration while we took away the three point shot at the end? Is this the Doc Sadler era again?

Nebraska was not impressive defensively the majority of this game. Jacksonville State just missed a number of open shots, especially during their own scoring drought in the last six minutes of the first half.

Nebraska wasn't quite awful defensively, but they were worse than bad.

They fouled WAY TOO MUCH and allowed JSU to come back via the charity stripe (13-16 in second half; 16-20 for the game).

Not impressed.

REBOUNDING: C-

35 to 25 - fair. Again, I'm taking into account the opponent and their size.

Only eight offensive rebounds was disappointing.

Decent effort by Ubel, pulling down ten boards.

BALL HANDLING: C

Nebraska turned the ball over in alarming amounts early, but did settle down as the game went on. Still, 14 turnovers against the Gamecocks (no, not South Carolina) isn't good.

Nebraska showed no ability to run any sort of offense, and a lot of that began with their inability to handle the ball in any sort of consistently good fashion.

COACHING: F

Defense on the last possession? Horendous.

Offense for 2/3 of the game? Horendous.

Lack of timeouts? Worrisome.

Nebraska left this game with three timeouts and with their inability to score in the last ten minutes, it would have been nice to see the coach design some offense.

Nebraska DID show a concerted effort to have Peltz and Parker dribble the ball to the free throw line extend before setting up the offense. I did like this.

I liked that Nebraska didn't settle for three after three.

But outside of that, offense was horrible, defense was close behind and this team looked scared down the stretch.

It was almost as if they were told to take the air out of the basketball and that nearly did (and probably should have) cost them the game.

Coach Miles has gone on record as saying they have a play where 25 seconds is taken off the clock when they get a big lead. It looked as if Nebraska started this at the six minute mark, or three minutes too early.

The team showed no confidence or fire down the stretch. They looked very lame duck.

My first night and day where I wasn't pleased with Coach Miles.

OVERALL GRADE: F

This was not a good basketball team Nebraska faced. The problem is, they nearly (and probably should have) lost this game.

Nebraska showed no ability to exploit strengths and no ability to finish a game. After the last two games, in which I was pretty calm and understanding, this one is not acceptable.

Bad, bad performance.

PLAYER OF THE GAME: SHAVON SHIELDS

2012-2013 PLAYER OF THE GAME RESULTS:

RAY GALLEGOS - 4

DYLAN TALLEY - 3

BRANDON UBEL - 2

SHAVON SHIELDS - 1

Click here to view the article

[Huskerpapa]

Yikes, tell us how you really feel Dave

[hhcdave]

CWG, it probably didn't help that my offshore account took quite a beating off of this game at the NU -6, either.

[HuskerFever]

atskooc, you got a grade on Miles' tie? I missed it this time. I was too distracted by the 6 minute drought in the first half and a 15 point swing in the second half.

[hhcmatt]

CWG, it probably didn't help that my offshore account took quite a beating off of this game at the NU -6, either.

Ah....I think this dropped the grade about two spots.

[Silverbacked1]

Dave I think this is a fair report card tonight.

It was ugly and I think for the first time this year we looked "uninterested".

I guess that is the word I would use.

If we do this in El Paso we will not come home with 2 wins.

[husker8282]

KENPOM: Nebraska 204, Jacksonville State 214. I'm sorry these two teams are not that far apart when it comes to talent. In fact, Jacksonville State was clearly the more athletic team if you ask me. That being said, the one thing I agree with that's the most disappointing was the mindset once we were up 15, we seemed to stop playing and that was very bad.

[schestev]

Agree, their guards were way more athletic then us. Ubel isn't bad but Almeida is a pretty poor player. I was just disappointed that we played not to lose for last 6 mins, otherwise I think we win by 15.

[tcp]

KENPOM: Nebraska 204, Jacksonville State 214. I'm sorry these two teams are not that far apart when it comes to talent. In fact, Jacksonville State was clearly the more athletic team if you ask me. That being said, the one thing I agree with that's the most disappointing was the mindset once we were up 15, we seemed to stop playing and that was very bad.

A rare moment when I completely disagree with Dave on a report card. This might be, what, three times in 4 years? Sorry, mon frere.

Jacksonville St. might not be good in the scheme of things, but neither are we. And I think we have to grade these things relative to the team we actually have. And in this case, I don't think this card does.

The Cocks (I still giggle, even after all these years) had better athletes, and comparable talent. They were just smaller, but athleticism can often make up for size.

We're going to have some dogfights against teams in the top 300 rpi. We had one tonight. In many respects, we're playing a team with high end SWAC talent. A little better than that, but not a whole lot. And nearly zero depth.

I think our defense was pretty good most of the game, although JSU doing the stand around thing helped out a bit there. Towards the end, our guys really were just coasting to the clock, and that is fine to pin on the coach. I thought he should've taken more time outs during that stretch--or any time outs--but as he said in his presser, he wanted to teach them something about closing out. It almost cost us. But by and large, the matchups were solid and he used Shavon well as the player they left loose.

We've played better this year, true. But we've played worse. I thought it was a C game for the Huskers.

We have to get used to some of this. We're not very good.

[atskooc]

atskooc, you got a grade on Miles' tie? I missed it this time. I was too distracted by the 6 minute drought in the first half and a 15 point swing in the second half.

I only got a quick look at it tonight. It was my anniversary and my wife didn't want to spend too much of it watching basketball.

That said, I'd give it at least a B. It was simple, yet refined!

[trickey]

quote name='HuskerFever' timestamp='1355893961' post='7600']

It was my anniversary and my wife didn't want to spend too much of it watching basketball.

That said, I'd give it at least a B. It was simple, yet refined!

While this is a very decent grade for anybody's wife...does she know you are scoring?

[Chuck Taylor]

Not going to argue with the grades, but as was pointed out, this was a pretty even matchup in spite of what we might think of the name "Jacksonville State." We are not a good team unless (1) Andre is on the floor and engaged (2) we're having a good night shooting (3) we can maintain a modest level of confidence that hasn't been sapped by previous poor performances.

I think the last 6 minutes were largely the result of (1) Jacksonville is having a decent year and still has the confidence to fight when they're down (2) maybe we got a little complacent (3) we fell back into a "we can't score" mindset brought on by the previous two beatdowns.

This is a scenario that's going to play out for the entire year with this roster, and I'll grade the coaching simply based on whether he can keep us plugging away despite the long odds we face almost every game.

[HB]

We have WAY more talent than JSU? Really? That isn't true even if our top 8 was healthy, and 3 of them were at way less than full strength. Try managing 40 minutes out of that mess.

[Norm Peterson]

quote name='HuskerFever' timestamp='1355893961' post='7600']

It was my anniversary and my wife didn't want to spend too much of it watching basketball.

That said, I'd give it at least a B. It was simple, yet refined!

While this is a very decent grade for anybody's wife...does she know you are scoring?

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. I just about split the seat of my pants doubled over in laughter after reading that. Well played, sir. Well played.

[atskooc]

While this is a very decent grade for anybody's wife...does she know you are scoring?

I walked right on into that one!

[49r]

Although I dislike saying things like "it could be worse", because in sports that's a lot like making an excuse for a bad performance, for which there is no excuse, but...

From the "it could be worse" file: Stephen F. Austin 56, Oklahoma 55 - Dec. 18, 2012

NORMAN, Okla. (AP) - Taylor Smith scored 14 points and Hal Bateman chipped in 13 as Stephen F. Austin held off Oklahoma in the final seconds for a 56-55 win Tuesday night.

[2tall]

They won. I'm happy.

[Norm Peterson]

Using the transitive property of basketball matchups, this Jacksonville State team would have been about our equal going into this. They also played Oregon on the road and, in an apples-to-apples comparison, lost by exactly the same margin that we lost to Oregon by. They had 4 players averaging double figures in scoring going into the game and they had 4 players score in double figures against us. In terms of size and athleticism, they were actually fairly similar to that UNC-Charlotte team we faced in the NIT a few years back.

I agree with what tcp stated about needing to grade this team on a sliding scale and I think I mentioned this earlier this year as well. Unfortunately, we cannot expect a lot out of this squad. Our lack of depth and lack of players and playmakers was exacerbated last night by having to additionally deal with players slowed by injury. It was a challenge for this roster to cover 200 minutes last night. Almeida and Rivers, who both average about 20 minutes, combined to play 23 minutes last night. And Benny Parker was about 10 minutes under his average. Which meant you saw a lot more of Mike Peltz than normal.

There were certainly some good things offensively. First, we got 28 points in the paint. Me likey. We scored 11 off turnovers and had 9 second chance points. And, most importantly, our bench contributed 18 points, which was just over 30% of our total scoring. That's a big deal. Especially when Ray and Talley both have sort of off nights offensively. And I include Talley in there, even though he posted a double figure scoring night, because you generally expect Dylan to carry a significant offensive load and he didn't reach double figures until a free throw with less than 10 seconds left in the game.

One other thing you have to consider and something that I felt really let the Gamecocks get back into the game was the officiating. Jacksonville State shot 4 freethrows in the first 20 minutes. They shot 4 TIMES that many in the last 20 minutes, mostly after we got our biggest lead. And I think that's because the officials were not consistent in the two halves. I thought they were really blowing some ticky-tack whistles in the 2nd half that allowed the Gamecocks to get back into it. And, give 'em credit, JSU hit 13 of 16 foul shots in the 2nd half. That, as much as anything, collapsed our lead. I know I tend to pick on the refs a bit, but that's because I think it's reasonable to expect consistent calls for 40 minutes. What was a foul in the first 20 minutes should be a foul in the last 20. And you don't start tightening your whistle in the 2nd half just because the other team is down by 15, which is what I thought was happening at the time.

In fairness, I think it was, overall, a decently officiated game. But, until the closing moments, there was a significant 2nd half foul disparity, 10 to 4 at one point. And I thought the refs were letting some things go on their end of the floor when they were trying to amp up the defense to get back into it that drew whistles on the other end of the floor when we did it. You'd like to say that it shouldn't be a factor but I think the reality was that it was a factor.

[longtimefan]

I rarely disagree with Dave's grading but I don't agree on the Overal grade of F. Anytime you win, especially with as little talent as we have this year, you should get no lower than a D-.

[Handy Johnson]

It's games like this that make me glance at our Big 10 schedule and CRINGE.

[Huskerpapa]

I kind of thought that the officiating was pretty reasonable Norm. I thought that in the last seven minutes, we started to play nervous and with lead feet. Tie that to the fact that Andre was sitting on the bench, which seemed to expose the middle of the key. The Cocks did a nice job penetrating the middle and kicking it out, they did a nice job getting to the hoop and our defenders ended up reaching. The fouls were not gawd awful, but they were called.

Take it one step further, on the last play, their drive to the hoop, I applaud the refs for keeping their whistles in their pockets. They could have easily called a foul on Peltz. They chose not to call that contact.

So in the grand scheme of things, we pooped down our figurative leg during the last seven minutes of the game. It could have been because we were tired. It could have been because Andre and Benny were sitting instead of playing. It could be for a lot of reasons, but we need to learn to finish games like this...whether or not the officials are for us or against us.

But hey, we won.

[RedEyedFanatic]

The Cocks did a nice job penetrating the middle

lol, I see what you did there

[BannedAccount]

I don't get the negative report either. I mean seriously? This team will be lucky to get 12 wins this year, 12! Based on the lack of depth, injuries, and current roster a win is a win. What will you say and how upset would you be when they lose to 40 to a big 10 team? I think relatively speaking the collapse at the end was bad, but they did have this game in control in the second half. It's not like they totally dominated NU and we were lucky to sneak out a victory.

[BjoeHusker]

Giving Nebraska an overall grade of an "F" makes ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE

[hugh42]

Just a suggestion, but it might be better to wait a day to do the report card after games. Posting ones thoughts immediately after a game can be less than objective when you're emotions are running high.