Game Day Essentials: Game #13 vs Nicholls St - 12/29/2012

[hhcmatt]

Nebraska Cornhuskers (8-4) vs Nicholls St. Colonels (1-8)

Game Time 2 p.m CST, Saturday 12/29/2012

Huskers on TV/Radio/Internet

Television: None

Internet: Big Ten Digital Network - subscription required

(http://video.btn.com/allaccess/)

Radio: Across the state on the IMG Husker Sports Radio Network, including KLIN (1400 AM/94.5 FM) in Lincoln, KFAB (1110 AM) in Omaha and KRVN (880 AM) in Lexington.

Play-by-play: Kent Pavelka; Color: Matt Davison

Internet Radio/Stats: Free on Huskers.com

Satelitte Radio: Sirius Ch. 117, XM Ch. 191Nicholls State Info

Mascot: Colonels (Colonel Tillou)

Conference: Southland

School Location: Thibodaux, LA

Shirt not to wear: None (They are also Red N)

Last game out: Lost to UC Davis

Coach: JP Piper

Australian Players: Four (They also have a Brazilian player who hails from Andre's hometown of Sao Paulo)

Probable Starters:

Nebraska Cornhuskers (8-4)

15-Ray Gallegos -6-2 -Jr.- G

24-Dylan Talley -6-5 -Sr.- G

31-Shavon Shields -6-6 -Fr.- G/F

13-Brandon Ubel -6-10-Sr.- F

32-Andre Almeida -6-11-Sr.- C

Nicholls State (1-8)

1 Dantrell Thomas G 6-2 200 JR

21 Shane Rillieux G 6-2 190 SO

22 T.J. Carpenter G 6-4 200 FR

20 Fred Hunter G 6-5 240 SR

2 Lachlan Prest F 6-7 209 SO

Opposing player to watch: Fred Hunter

Hunter is a 6'5" 240 force of a player...perhaps like a bigger version of Lance Jeter. The man does it all for a terrible Nicholls St team...averaging nearly 20 ppg, over 8 rebounds, and consistently making it to the free throw line. Seems like Ubel could draw Hunter given the Colonel's lack of height. Freshman T.J. Carpenter is the other main scoring threat for Nicholls St with much of his damage coming from outside.

Huskers rolling out B1G lineup

For the first time this season Nebraska looks to have a new starting lineup with a healthy Shavon Shields and his height/scoring threat subbing in for Benny Parker. It really seems like Shavon should be coming in for the under performing Andre Almeida but perhaps this is a message to Parker that they need him to score. Regardless of who sits to start the game it's not surprising to see the talented Shields make his way into the starting lineup.

Nicholls State is not a good team. The undersized Colonels don't really have much to compliment the matchup nightmare that is Fred Hunter so it's not surprising this team has only won one game. Nicholls St is fairly inefficient on offense and worse on defense. The team does have four Australian players as former J.P. Piper player and current assistant Czepil is an Australian native and the Colonels have looked down under to compliment their roster of Louisiana natives.

The Huskers will win this game so hopefully they can figure out how to put away this team early. This is sort of a weird game to experiment with the BIG lineup considering that the Colonels don't have a player over 6'7" on the roster. However with the B1G conference coming up next, this seems like a really good time for a roster change.

Prediction: Nebraska 75 - Nicholls St 56 with a 92% chance of Runzas

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[hhcmatt]

Had the Huskers shot 81% from the free throw line i would have nailed this score