uneblinstu's Post Game Chatter: ed 8, vol 8 - Miami

Well said, so close.  Lots to take away from tonight that was good.

This game made me mad, but not the normal mad I'm used to where we just didn't play well or just couldn't hit our shots. We played a heck of a game and just came out on the wrong end this time. A lot of players played great tonight and I think if we keep progressing like I think we can, this would be a game we would win in January and beyond. All in all great effort by the guys. Makes me proud to be a Husker fan!

• Shavon's charging fouls in the 2nd half I thought were legit calls (and not smart plays by Shavon.)  It was the no-calls when Shavon got mugged going to the rack that had me hoppin' mad.
• The no-call on Miami travelling at the end of regulation might have changed the outcome of the game if it had been whistled.
• Hot shooting night from 3 but you knew those shots wouldn't fall all night.
• What kind of offense were we running in the last 4 minutes of regulation and during overtime?
• Jack McVeigh's arse got quite a bit smaller tonight.  Whoa, he did something to piss Miles off.

• Hey, we went toe to toe with a ranked team.  Took 'em to overtime.  Lost.  I thought the better team probably won.  But I thought we made a bunch of stupid plays in the last 9 or 10 minutes (including the OT session) that probably assisted Miami to victory.
• Oh well, let's go get the next few. (Abilene Christian, Creighton and Rhode Island, I'm looking at you.)

Statistically, the game looks pretty good on the Huskers except for letting Miami shoot 28 free throws. UM also outrebounded NU 41-34, but with their length and athleticism, that has to be expected.

NU held UM to 41 percent shooting from the field and 29 percent shooting from deep.

Conversely, the Huskers shot 42 from the field and 50 percent from deep.

We had 12 turnovers to Miami's 14, NU had 10 assists to Miami's 8.

Our bench was outscored 23-16.

• Shavon's charging fouls in the 2nd half I thought were legit calls (and not smart plays by Shavon.) It was the no-calls when Shavon got mugged going to the rack that had me hoppin' mad.
• The no-call on Miami travelling at the end of regulation might have changed the outcome of the game if it had been whistled.
• Hot shooting night from 3 but you knew those shots wouldn't fall all night.
• What kind of offense were we running in the last 4 minutes of regulation and during overtime?
• Jack McVeigh's arse got quite a bit smaller tonight. Whoa, he did something to piss Miles off.

• Hey, we went toe to toe with a ranked team. Took 'em to overtime. Lost. I thought the better team probably won. But I thought we made a bunch of stupid plays in the last 9 or 10 minutes (including the OT session) that probably assisted Miami to victory.
• Oh well, let's go get the next few. (Abilene Christian, Creighton and Rhode Island, I'm looking at you.)

Edit: him being jack*

The defensive effort was amazing tonight.  Held Miami, who coming into the game shot 52% from the floor, to 41% for the game.  Miami also was shooting 44 % from 3, but was held to 28.6% from 3 tonight.

Need to find another player to complement Shields, for the rest of this year, and also, to get that guy for when Shields is gone next year.  Watson is probably going to be that guy.

Shot 50% from 3 tonight.  Should win some games shooting like that this year.

Either Miami is great at avoiding contact down low, or our guys need to take some acting classes.  A lot of contact down low especially on Shields tonight, where normally he would get to the line for 12+ attempts.

We seem to have that motto again of "Like the three, love the rim."  I like that.  It is more of an attacker mentality.  

 

• Shavon's charging fouls in the 2nd half I thought were legit calls (and not smart plays by Shavon.)  It was the no-calls when Shavon got mugged going to the rack that had me hoppin' mad.
• The no-call on Miami travelling at the end of regulation might have changed the outcome of the game if it had been whistled.
• Hot shooting night from 3 but you knew those shots wouldn't fall all night.
• What kind of offense were we running in the last 4 minutes of regulation and during overtime?
• Jack McVeigh's arse got quite a bit smaller tonight.  Whoa, he did something to piss Miles off.

 

• Hey, we went toe to toe with a ranked team.  Took 'em to overtime.  Lost.  I thought the better team probably won.  But I thought we made a bunch of stupid plays in the last 9 or 10 minutes (including the OT session) that probably assisted Miami to victory.
• Oh well, let's go get the next few. (Abilene Christian, Creighton and Rhode Island, I'm looking at you.)

 

I think it was the first charging call, where he stole the ball, got slapped across the wrist, which should have led him to the free throw line, before his charge.  

 

 

• Shavon's charging fouls in the 2nd half I thought were legit calls (and not smart plays by Shavon.) It was the no-calls when Shavon got mugged going to the rack that had me hoppin' mad.
• The no-call on Miami travelling at the end of regulation might have changed the outcome of the game if it had been whistled.
• Hot shooting night from 3 but you knew those shots wouldn't fall all night.
• What kind of offense were we running in the last 4 minutes of regulation and during overtime?
• Jack McVeigh's arse got quite a bit smaller tonight. Whoa, he did something to piss Miles off.

• Hey, we went toe to toe with a ranked team. Took 'em to overtime. Lost. I thought the better team probably won. But I thought we made a bunch of stupid plays in the last 9 or 10 minutes (including the OT session) that probably assisted Miami to victory.
• Oh well, let's go get the next few. (Abilene Christian, Creighton and Rhode Island, I'm looking at you.)

It looked like miles was mad at him after not blocking out the Miami player who then posterized Hammond

Edit: him being jack*

 

Yep, that was it. I believe Hammond picked up a foul because of that as well.

Box Score

• Shavon's charging fouls in the 2nd half I thought were legit calls (and not smart plays by Shavon.) It was the no-calls when Shavon got mugged going to the rack that had me hoppin' mad.
• The no-call on Miami travelling at the end of regulation might have changed the outcome of the game if it had been whistled.
• Hot shooting night from 3 but you knew those shots wouldn't fall all night.
• What kind of offense were we running in the last 4 minutes of regulation and during overtime?
• Jack McVeigh's arse got quite a bit smaller tonight. Whoa, he did something to piss Miles off.

• Hey, we went toe to toe with a ranked team. Took 'em to overtime. Lost. I thought the better team probably won. But I thought we made a bunch of stupid plays in the last 9 or 10 minutes (including the OT session) that probably assisted Miami to victory.
• Oh well, let's go get the next few. (Abilene Christian, Creighton and Rhode Island, I'm looking at you.)

It looked like miles was mad at him after not blocking out the Miami player who then posterized Hammond

Edit: him being jack*

No no no up arrow.

Game notes

Nebraska Coach Tim Miles Quotes

On Shavon Shields’ health
“Well, he got kicked on a play and he ended up cramping up. He’ll be all right. He’ll just be really sore tomorrow. After a slow start, I thought he was terrific. He did a lot of good things. Unfortunately, I maybe shouldn’t have had him out there at the end, because (Davon) Reed hit the 3, his first one all night, but we thought we had him on a good matchup. I could’ve maybe tried to burn a timeout, but he’s not going to get a heck of a lot healthier in a minute-and-a-half.”

On Shields’ performance
“Shavon’s as good a player as I think there is in the Big Ten. He only played 20 minutes against Cincinnati, but when he was on the floor there, I thought he was the best player on the floor. I thought tonight, he was as good as anybody on the floor, maybe better and that’s a top-notch ACC team, I would imagine. I think that he’s just developing and growing into a better and better player.”

On if he was happy with the Huskers outscoring Miami in the paint
“Well, I’m not happy with anything, but we had to be in the paint. They took away a lot of things. We still made some 3’s, but you can see their activity level, I thought, was good. I thought defensively, Coach Larrañaga had them locked in. He had them everywhere. They defended us right, they gave a lot of help on good guys. I don’t think I got Andrew (White III) enough shots. I probably should’ve tried to get him more. I tried to give him a few more, but it just didn’t happen. I thought Glynn Watson Jr. was really good early getting us some points and doing some good things, but we had to run a lot of actions tonight and not much motion, just because they took away so much space on the floor with their length and athleticism.”

On getting Andrew White III more shots
“Well, that opens up a lot of things for a guy like Shavon Shields, so there’s some give-and-take there. I think we just need to put packages in for him and stay creative and random, so to speak. You can’t get too predictable. These guys won’t let you.”

On if the team is doing anything better than he expected
“I don’t want to be ‘The Little Engine That Could.’ I don’t want to be that program, and I don’t mean to be relentless on these guys or whatever it might be, but we had some freshmen that have got to get in the fight. That was a fistfight so to speak. When you go in that alley, you’ve got to go in ready to go. I thought we had a couple of young guys tonight that weren’t quite there mentally, weren’t quite there physically. It was moving pretty fast for them. Hopefully they’ll be able to adjust the next time that happens.”

Nebraska Junior Guard Andrew White III
On how Shavon played tonight
“I thought he played a really great game. Obviously he carried our team, and that just shows you that big players make big plays and that’s what he did. When you get in games like this, teams are so well scouted that most teams know what your sets are, they know what your tendencies are, so at that point you just have to have guys that can go and make plays and I think he did a good job of that tonight. He tweaked his ankle or something like that late in the game and it was unfortunate to see him kind of slow down his step, but he carried us big time tonight.”

On how the defense stiffened to send it into overtime
“At that point, you’re just trying to stop the ball from going in the hoop, and our timeouts, we weren’t talking a whole lot of strategy. At that point you know it’s just a man-to-man, stop your man from scoring and get the rebound. When you have the momentum of the crowd and the big moment, everybody knows what they have to do. We’ve been trained really well up to this point so everyone knew what positions they need to be in, what our defensive assignment was, it was just a matter of everybody executing and everybody stopping the ball from going in the hoop.”

On how facing a talented team like Miami can help the team down the road
“They definitely made some athletic plays on both ends of the court. You kind of get used to it when you play high D-1 basketball, you’re going to face athletes and some of our earlier games this year, they weren’t quite as talented, but we did face some athletes and some length…It helps you a lot, just when you play against talented guys. That’s more of the thing than their athleticism, just guys who can play.”

On if they’re still to the point where they’re satisfied with moral victories
“No, Coach Miles came in disappointed. This is not a situation where we’re necessarily happy for the effort or we walk out of here happy that we just hung with Miami. I think everybody here expects to win and this game and the Cincinnati game, those were such close games. It’s unfortunate because that’s how it works out in basketball sometimes.”

Nebraska Freshman Guard Glynn Watson Jr.
On how facing a talented team like Miami can help the team down the road
“I didn’t really think about it that much. I just tried to come out and play my game. They changed some of my shots, but it was nothing in my mindset to change my game up.”

Miami Head Coach Jim Larrañaga

On the battle between two historic programs…
“Two great leagues, battling. For us, we represent the ACC. To go on the road and win in overtime is a tremendous accomplishment. This is my fifth year in the ACC. We’re 3-2, but this is our first road victory in the ACC/Big Ten challenge. So we’re thrilled to get the victory tonight.”

On Nebraska shooting it well against them…

“Everybody’s shooting it well against us. I mean, those three’s that they hit in the first half, at the buzzer… the shot clock was going off and they’d launch. We played great defense for 29.5 seconds and they’d get three points still. That’s something we’re working on. That’s something we’re working on. We need to get better at it. I think we will, but we have to have a little better sense of urgency. We changed our starting lineup so that we get, maybe, our best front court defender on (Shavon) Shields and he still just torched us. We know we have a lot of work to do. At least I know we have more to do. I’m not sure the players know.”

On his impression of Shavon Shields’ performance tonight…
“He was great. One of the things about coming to Nebraska, and I’m not sure you guys know, but Shawn Eichorst, the athletic director at Nebraska, and Steve Waterfield, his associate or deputy athletic director, they were the guys – Shawn hired me and then I worked very closely with Steve and I have great respect for them and the job that they do. It was important to me that we come in here and represent our program. They hired me to do a good job. I want them to be proud of the job that we are doing (at Miami). Shields was a guy we, basically, pinpointed and said, ‘This may be the key to the game.’ and he ends up 11-of-25 from the field and scored 28 points. Basically, since the season began, we have not been able to stop a guy from having a great game. Whoever the leading scorer is, he has his best game against us. So we’ve got to go back to the drawing board and figure out what we’re not doing and make an adjustment in our defense to just do it better.” 

On his thoughts of Sheldon McClellan’s work on guarding Andrew White III…
“Sheldon McClellan is terrific. He’s an NBA first round draft pick. His defense, last year, was inconsistent. He’s been absolutely terrific from the time… he’s been so focused on both ends of the cou rt. I don’t know how many points he ended up with, but he was 3-of-8 from the field, 1-of-2 from three and he went 7-of-9 from the foul line; 14 points. His work on Andrew White… Andrew was 4-of-8 (on the field), 1-of-4 from the three and ended up with 13 points, so they kind of negated each other. We know Andrew very well. His sister went to George Mason. We recruited him very hard when I was the head coach at George Mason. I got to know his Dad very well and Andrew very well. They came to our George Mason games and spent a lot of time in our gym, so we knew exactly who he was and what he was capable of doing.”

On his overall impression of Nebraska…
“Well, first, watching them on tape, they’re dripple-drive offense is very, very effective. They’ve got a number of different guys, options. They can put the ball on the ground and get to the rim. (Tai) Webster is really good at it. (Glynn) Watson (Jr.) is good. (Benny) Parker is very good of getting in there and then kicking it out to someone. The guy that’s a monster is Shields, who… he’s like a guard, but he’s like their four man. We normally start Ivan Cruz Uceda, but he’s 6-10 and normally guards post players and I didn’t want him trying to guard that guy and getting in foul trouble and putting Shields on the foul line.” 

Miami Senior Guard Angel Rodriguez
On what kind of work the players have to do to get better…
“The bottom line… we got to get stops. Like coach said, we haven’t been able to stop the best player on everybody we’ve played so far, but the good thing is it’s early in the season. We’re going to have a lot of games ahead and a lot of practices, so hopefully we get it right.”

On what overtime games do for teams…
“I think it’s great for the team, in general. You know, the first couple of games we really didn’t face adversity and the last game we faced some and came up short. Coming into this game, we knew that it was not going to be easy for us. We knew it was going to come down to the wire and it did, it went to overtime. I’m proud of our guys that we stayed together. We did everything that we had to do to win a game, whether it was pretty or not, I’m not quite sure, honestly. I’m just happy we won.”

Losing Tai on a fluke foul was a killer.  Not only is he by far our best defender (HUGE difference between him and Watson on the defensive side) but also Tai was the only guy besides Shavon being aggressive on offense.

When it got close to crunch time we reverted to bad habits - primarily just relying on dribble drives from Shavon while everyone else just watched.   Looked too much like last year on offense.   We need Andrew White to challenge himself to be a complement of a challenger to Shavon.  Don't let Shavon take all the big shots - be aggressive yourself.   Not saying Andrew played poorly tonight - but we do need him to have a little more of a take charge and be a leader on the offensive end.

We got opposite kinds of freshman nights from Watson and McVeigh.  Jack was a deer staring into headlights in the 2nd half.  The game was just to big for him and he played without confidence.  He will learn from that and get comfortable in those moments eventually.  Watson on the other hand plays with absolutely no fear - sometimes to his detriment.  The bad shots he hit in the first half came back to haunt us a little bit when he missed the same kinds of shots in the second half.  That said he stepped up and hit a huge double pump shot at the end of regulation.  He just needs to do a little better job of picking his spots - which again is something that gets learned from experience.   I do just wish he focused more on creating shots for others and not so much on creating shots for himself.  He also has a lot of learning to do on defense but that will come over time also.

All in all a disappointing finish but not a bad effort overall.  I do think Miami is a very legitimate team who should have a good season.  Would have been a good win to get - but if we come back and win out the rest of the non-conference games we will be looking good.

For as much pregame bitching I did today I will man up and say that the crowd was FANTASTIC. Nobody left until 20 some seconds in the over time.

Beautiful engery and you could see it helped the guys.

I love it when it is like that.

Also great effort tonight, but our legs kind of gave out late on us. This team is going to win more games than they will lose if they play this hard every night.

Might be a bubble team, but I think we could make a deep run in the NIT.

Get our legs back tomorrow and get ready for Saturday, kind of a trap kind of game. Should roll but we could also struggle some.

Good night and take care Husker nation.

just my opinion, but Watson seems better than benny in pretty much every way. i'd like to see him start.

benny played nearly twice as many minutes as watson.

benny didn't play bad, but i think watson is a better all around player right now.

jake still has a ways to go, but he's all we got right now inside. he had some nice blocks.

mcveigh had a crucial turnover, but he needs to be shooting way more than 1 time per game.

shields played great, but probably tried to do a little too much.

white is pretty consistent. probably should be shooting a little more.

tai has been playing very good all around.

Morrow did alright, but isn't doing as much as i thought he would be. he is playing backup center which is not his position.

Even though his stat line didn't show it, I thought Jake Hammond played a hell of a game! He busted his butt on defense all night and their big guy never got it going. I was impressed with his energy and effort. If he continues to improve every game like he has been so far, he's got a higher ceiling than most give him credit for. Well done Jake!

just my opinion, but Watson seems better than benny in pretty much every way. i'd like to see him start.

 

benny played nearly twice as many minutes as watson.

 

benny didn't play bad, but i think watson is a better all around player right now.

 

jake still has a ways to go, but he's all we got right now inside. he had some nice blocks.

 

mcveigh had a crucial turnover, but he needs to be shooting way more than 1 time per game.

 

shields played great, but probably tried to do a little too much.

 

white is pretty consistent. probably should be shooting a little more.

 

tai has been playing very good all around.

 

Morrow did alright, but isn't doing as much as i thought he would be. he is playing backup center which is not his position.

I get people wanting Watson to start.  He's a future stud for this team.

WITH that said.  Benny did a HELL of a job on Rodriquez.  That dude can play, and Benny and his on ball pressure was great vs him.  Size wise they matched up fairly well, so I had no problem seeing Benny play the minutes he did.  Benny also did a great job getting into the paint tonight.  Problem was, they had a 6'11 dude waiting on him.  I'm a huge Benny Parker fan.  I think some of the things he does on the defensive end are overlooked by fans because he may not do quite as much on offense.  

Either way, its nice for us as fans to name off about 3-4 players that we think "should" be playing more outside of the top 3-4.  Shows that we are finally getting some solid depth to this team.

Loved the effort last night and there are many more positives than negatives, but I do have a question:

In the games I've watched this year, I've noticed a trend of not even trying to enter the ball down low. There were a few times last night that Hammond had excellent position. I've also noticed in previous games with both Hammond and Morrow flashing across the lane or working for position and we aren't even looking for them. It would seem even dropping it down and then back out might give us a few easier looks.

Is that by design? If I'm Morrow or Hammond, I think I'm gonna get pretty frustrated if I don't get at least a few touches when I'm open.

McVeigh clearly wasn't ready for the moment last night.  But I have a hunch he's the kind of guy who will learn from it, and respond better in the future.  And I suspect Miles knows Jack can handle getting yelled at.

 Fun game last night.  Needed a beer at Gate afterward to deal with how it ended.  Beats the old long walk to the car at Devaney and a trip home.  The immediate attitude adjustment available with the new arena is nice.

Ughhhhh!

A loss --- it sucks!!

Freshmen should grow up from this game - and honestly from the three games versus top 25 teams we have played so far.

Man, that was tough...it sucked!

Anyone who doesn't believe Tai is a top D1 talent is, wellll, nuts!

Damn!

We played a good game, missed some easy looks, likely due in part to Miami's length, that made a big difference.

SOB, I wanted that one!

Tough loss....again, alot of good...some bad.  Not a whole lot to complain about...we took some iffy shots down the stretch, but Miami turned it up a notch on the defensive end.  As a whole, that team may be the most athletic group we see all season.  This team is still much farther along than I anticipated at this point, if they continue to progress we could end up with a solid Big Ten record.

Shavon was our biggest friend and our biggest foe last night. Not in it without him, but he might have shot us out of it also. As my buddy who is a casual Nebrasketball fan, to say the least, texted me - "I thought that Petteway guy graduated :/ ?" He got an angry reply back....

Before I get attacked, please remember I'm as big of a Shavon fan there is. 11-25 shooting hurts, as do 4 turnovers. Just the way it was last night.

Shavon was our biggest friend and our biggest foe last night. Not in it without him, but he might have shot us out of it also. As my buddy who is a casual Nebrasketball fan, to say the least, texted me - "I thought that Petteway guy graduated :/ ?" He got an angry reply back....

Before I get attacked, please remember I'm as big of a Shavon fan there is. 11-25 shooting hurts, as do 4 turnovers. Just the way it was last night.

That's kind of what I was getting at in my post at the beginning of this thread when I asked what offense we were running the last 10 minutes of the game, including the OT.

Where was all the "making the extra pass" stuff?  That completely went out the window.  And the problem was we were having to force bad shots at the end of shot clocks.

We were  stuck on 61 (down 1) for about 6 straight possessions and I don't think we really got a good shot on any of them until we finally broke the ice and took the 1-point lead.  (I think it was their very next possession where their PG dragged his pivot foot and wasn't called and then they scored.)

just my opinion, but Watson seems better than benny in pretty much every way. i'd like to see him start.

 

benny played nearly twice as many minutes as watson.

 

benny didn't play bad, but i think watson is a better all around player right now.

 

 

I had a discussion with a friend of mine before the game about the Watson/Benny thing. It seems that the prevailing thought is that Benny gives us a spark off the bench. While that's true I also think that Watson give us a spark, but it's an offensive spark. That's pretty much the only place Watson holds an advantage over Benny in my mind. And if Benny keeps shooting like this, that advantage is going to be quite small. Watson still has a lot to learn, let Benny have his moment. He's not hurting the team as much as people think/have thought in the past.

On another topic, it didn't look like they wanted to help off White. Granted they didn't need to since anyone who drove to the bucket was met by a giant rim proctor. We need to find a way to go inside out to get White some open kick outs. He hasn't show me much to think he can get his own shot off.

I thought Hammond & Morrow were really strong against Miami's big dude - they really battled him all night and didn't let him go crazy on us, which I feared could happen.

Miami did a nice job face guarding White, and it was obvious he didn't really want to force many shots - it seemed they rotated help on the penetration a little differently than many teams do, so they didn't have to leave him. Miami's coach had some interesting quotes about White, said he knew White's game well since he had recruited White at George Mason & White's sister played at GMU, so he was around their program a lot as a high school player. 

Miami is really good and has nice depth, looks like a team that could be in the hunt for the ACC title. We forced them to take - and unfortunately make - a lot of tough shots. Repeating that kind of effort will give NU a chance in nearly every B1G game.

A disappointing loss, but certainly not a discouraging one.