12/18/2012 - Jacksonville State Report Card

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