uneblinstu's postgame chatter: vol 14; ed 1 - Western Illinois

2 minutes ago, Bugeaters1 said:

I thought I heard on the radio that Andre wasn't suited up.

 

he wasn't available tonight per Washut

Saw some issues with Verge that give me a great deal of concern going forward. Don't be fooled by the stat line.

Two examples:

With under a minute left and a 4 point NU lead, WIU has the ball out of bounds on the sideline and their PG goes deep into the backcourt to await the inbounds pass. Trey indicates to Verge to get out there on the guy. Verge reacts with some REALLY TERRIBLE body language towards Trey and instead gives the WIU guy PLENTY of room to catch the ball and bring it up court. Verge is then on his heels backing up as the guy steps into a 3. Just gonna let him step into a ... oh man.

Then, after Verge misses the layup on that last drive (which everyone in Pinnacle Bank Arena knew he was going to take), he pouts for a moment, and then runs directly for the tunnel and Kobe Webster has to chase him down and call him back to go through the handshake line.

I saw more issues than that throughout the game, but those were two prominent things in the last minute. That's a really bad sign. Fred better nip that in the bud quickly or we'll be lucky to surpass last season's win total.

A silver lining I was trying to think about.  I remember an Iowa State team beat a Division 2 team in OT their 1st game.  I looked it up and it was in 2000 - 01, they beat Morningside 102 - 97 in OT.  They went on to make the NCAA tournament as a 2 seed.  In Nebraska fashion they lose in the 1st round to Hampton.  But, I will take an NCAA tournament trip this year.  I don't see it happening.

7 minutes ago, The Polish Rifle said:

he wasn't available tonight per Washut

He was available. 

This is worse than any loss of the Hoiberg era considering our supposed talent this year vs previous years.

Someone did something to curse Huskers men’s athletics. Period.  I’m convinced of it.

Just now, CrazyforNUHOOPS said:

8 minutes ago, The Polish Rifle said:

he wasn't available tonight per Washut

He was available. 

Washut? Yeah, you don't want him out on the court.

Just now, HuskerFever said:

 

Washut? Yeah, you don't want him out on the court.

I agree with that. Eduardo was suited up and available. 

2 minutes ago, CrazyforNUHOOPS said:

I agree with that. Eduardo was suited up and available. 

This is what I saw. 

Couple of things.  Verge, unless he changes, is a skinny Teddy Allen and needs to play within the system.  I really wonder how much of the poor rebounding is a product of the offensive mindset and wanting to run.  Curious what Freds oace of play was at Iowa St and the reboundimg numbers there

Andre was in the regular team sweats and participated in warmups.   I assume he had his uniform on under the sweats but he never took them off so guess we don't know for sure.   But by all appearances at the game he was available.   Webster and Mayan were both in street clothes.

webster/mayen/andre should all be in our 9 man rotation and didn't play tonight. 

having said that we still should have won...

this team still has potential, but it's going to be a grind...

Guys, I got nothing and I was there. Rebounding is going to be an issue most of the year and I think most everyone assumed that. The ball movement tonight, was not good. I thought that was more devastating to the team than rebounding. Empty possessions by just driving to the rim and throwing something up as soon as you cross haircut

Montana State is ahead Colorado middle of 2nd half. 63 to 53

27 minutes ago, CrazyforNUHOOPS said:

He was available. 

I saw him on the bench. But I don't remember seeing him go through warm ups. Didn't look hard for him though

2 minutes ago, thrasher31 said:

Guys, I got nothing and I was there. Rebounding is going to be an issue most of the year and I think most everyone assumed that. The ball movement tonight, was not good. I thought that was more devastating to the team than rebounding. Empty possessions by just driving to the rim and throwing something up as soon as you cross haircut

andre/mayen are 2 of our top 3 rebounders and didn't play tonight.

26 minutes ago, hskr4life said:

This is worse than any loss of the Hoiberg era considering our supposed talent this year vs previous years.

 

Someone did something to curse Huskers men’s athletics. Period.  I’m convinced of it.

The baseball team pretty well dominated the Big Ten last year. (And received a terrible draw in the tournament). BTW, when does baseball season start?

Really disappointing result.   I think Fred (like me) kept thinking we would wake up enough to pull out a win.   Actually would have except for the sudden inability to make free throws at the end and the 2 bombs thrown in by Western Carolina at the end - the 2nd one by a guy who likely would never make that shot more than 1 in 10 times.

That said our performance was abysmal.    Apparently after getting badly outrebounded in the win over Colorado we reached the conclusion that rebounding doesn't matter.   If you wanted to grade our rebounding effort tonight it would be impossible because an F isn't bad enough to describe it.    I do think Walker tried to get boards and Verge obviously had a high rebound total - but the other guys absolutely made no effort at all to block anyone out on the defensive side.

Offensively it certainly seemed that our only offensive play was to let either Verge or Bryce get a pick from Walker and drive to the hoop to throw up whatever they could get off toward the basket - while the other 3 guys literally just stood and watched that happen.    No ball movement and no movement without the ball.   Even the one time late when Wilcher did get a kick out he was completely out of position to take a shot.   Of course I can understand by that point why he was surprised to get the ball on offense.   Verge and Bryce are both very talented - but hope they learned tonight that for the team to be successful they have to acknowledge they have teammates and maybe even let them participate in the offense once in awhile.   But you do wonder why Fred just let them continue to do the same thing over and over without trying to run an offense.   Before the last possession when we were in the timeout the guy next to me said that whatever Fred was drawing up what is going to happen is Verge is going to get the ball and drive to the basket and put up whatever he can get off without even looking to pass to anyone else.   That is even harder to do successfully when everyone on the arena - including the Western Illinois coaches and players - knew that was exactly what was going to happen.

All that said - if our only offense was going to be to have someone drive to the hoop and take whatever shot they could get - why did Bryce stop being an option to do that the last 4 minutes.    While that is not what I would have wanted to see - it would have been better to see Bryce be involved in some way down the stretch because he was at least our most effective option in that "role" up to that point.

You can learn alot from games like this - and hopefully we will learn some lessons from it.   Problem is that losses in games like this really haunt you all season.  People forget narrow wins against mediocre teams early in the season.  But losses to this kind of opponent stick out like a really sore thumb when you look at a team's "resume" at the end of the year.

7 minutes ago, Navin R. Johnson said:

 

The baseball team pretty well dominated the Big Ten last year. (And received a terrible draw in the tournament). BTW, when does baseball season start?

They did... but even their loss to Arkansas was gut wrenching.  In a game where it looked like... just maybe... it was torn from us.

I was also in attendance at the Oklahoma State game a few years back in OKC.  Sighhh

As others have stated, we need to start actually playing within our offense yesterday.  We have players that can hit shots. Get them their shots.  Our offense gets guys like Walker easy baskets at the rim. How many of those did he have tonight? 

And because I'm frustrated and want to vent, if you're going to play "me" ball, finish with your left hand on the left side.  You won't hit the under side of the rim and you will look like a 5 star player.  That might be a low blow.  But it stands out to me how bad some of those finish attempts were when trying to force it tonight.

1 hour ago, brfrad said:

I had my top 2 wisdom teeth pulled today.  I don't know what was more excruciating, the teeth or watching the ending of that game?

Could have used some laughing gas watching this one.

So on Selection Sunday will this be considered one of our “bad” losses…?

Wilhelm with 11 minutes 0 rebounds, 0 points and 4 fouls.. I’m sure we will see big things out of him down the road, but tonight was not a great debut for him..  

Not much to add that anyone else hasn’t said already but my concerns about our PG has has not been alleviated after watching this horrible display of team offense.  This was the Verge I was afraid we would see.  I hope that this is a major teaching moment Fred can use to get the kids to buy in to his system.

Conversely, Creighton broke in a freshmen PG tonight and he took 10 shots and had 10 assists.  Kind of what PG production should look like.  I really thought this was the year we beat Creighton….we have a lot to get corrected in the next week if that is going to happen.

3 hours ago, huskerbaseball13 said:

Bryce/Trey’s podcast just lost 50% of their listeners. 

 

For a team that had/has NCAA hopes that’s going to look really ugly on the ole resume. 

For everyone talking about their podcast and how they have to stop that and get focused, maybe listen to the pod or something first, because they announced after the last pod before the games started that they'd slow the pod pace down and only do it once a month or so whenever they can fit it in. Calm down.