Game Day Essentials: Game #2 vs Southeastern Louisiana

SE Louisiana

Head Coach: Jay Ladner
Location: Hammond, LA
Conference: Southland
Nickname: Lions
Mascot: Roomie the Lion
Last time out: Beat William Carey
Shirt not to wear: Green, Gold, fur
Defensive Style: steal

Did I also copy this info from 2015 because like Mississippi Valley State we also played this team 3 years ago: You bet

Players to watch: Marlain Veal and Moses Greenwood

Veal and Greenwood are the two main returning members of the Lions team that earned a berth in the NIT last year by winning the regular season conference title.  The diminutive Veal (5'9") is the returning conference defensive player of the year and the starting PG was named to the conference all-preseason team.  Greenwood is a smaller center type (think somewhere between Nana and Roby) who is their best rebounder, especially on the offensive end. 

Players to watch: Parker Edwards

With LSU easily handling SELA in their season opener freshman Parker Edwards proceeds to come in like the Cajun Stephen Curry scoring 25 points in 7 minutes.  In two games thus far Edwards is 9 of 13 from 3 whereas the rest of the team is  6 for 32. The lefty is worth watching whenever he's on the floor.

Miles Presser

When I first saw tweets about this presser talking about how Miles talking about the benefits of shooting 3s my initial reaction was....'no shit". After actually watching the presser it became clear that this was no recent revelation and I think you can chalk up the relative lack of 3pt attempts to the roster.  I think you can make the argument that this year's roster, especially with its lack of traditional post players, is the most capable 3pt shooting team Miles has fielded here and the shot selection will reflect that.  If you can believe it last year's team had the highest 3pa% of any of Miles' D-1 teams.  It's probable that this one could be the first to rank in the top 1/3 of Div-1.

The Skinny: As the season wore on and the razor thin chance of making the tournament started to gravitate towards our schedule we spent A LOT of time on this site obsessing about the RPI and some of the teams that were killing it (Looking at you Deleware St).  This year we went back to the Div-II hack for one game along with bringing in a team like Cal St Fulerton during the holidays and even scheduling a neutral game vs Okie St.  I bring this up because our first two opponents will probably be the biggest SOS sucks and they were assigned to us because of the KC tournament we're in.  Miss Valley St and SE Louisiana are actually part of the Nebraska round of the 2018 Hall of Fame Classic tournament which is a way that teams can play 31 games instead of 29.  In conclusion, it's not all our fault these two teams were on our schedule.

The Lions under Jay Ladner have continuously improved and should be in the mix for the Southland Conference title as they return 3 starters from last year.  This is a team that is defensive oriented and tends to be more of a grinder so expect a slightly slower game than Game 1. The Lions defense will start with Veal upfront and they'll try and generate turnovers for some easy buckets. Speaking of easy buckets there should be plenty of chances as this team doesn't rebound well and hunt for offensive rebounds which means fast break point opportunities.  This is the sort of team that will have trouble with an explosive offense and these days that describes the Huskers.

Prediction: Nebraska 88 - SE Louisiana 62