uneblinstu's postgame chatter: vol 15, ed 29: Minnesota

43 minutes ago, roscoe said:

Time for my "old man get off my lawn" thoughts. Raiola, Rhule and Tominaga parents get screen time and huge cheers. Why is 4* recruit John Bol not getting shown any love? 

Exactly my thoughts.  I really hope he wasn't offended by not getting the same love.  Our students need to get it together.

Oh he got quite a bit of love.  He was approached often.  

I did feel Minnesota had a very good game plan and we were fortunate to win this one. We always seemed to have an answer when they cut it close!!

fyi I was listening to post game and Fred said they were taking keisei and Oleg and their parents out for supper tomorrow night. That would be a very interesting table to sit at!  Lol

The longest active winning streak in the Big Ten belongs to the 12th place team 

We are officially on a heater!

2 hours ago, NUtball said:

When he was shooting FTs late in the game, the announcers were talking about him not wanting to drink any water.  Did anyone else hear that and what the heck is that all about?

We need to get him some red Kool-Aid

2 hours ago, NUtball said:

So true.  I do think Minnesota actually has a decent group of freshmen.  Especially Payne.  Thought he looked pretty good after the first game and this game didn't change my opinion.  He could be a pain in the coming years.  No idea if Johnson is the guy to keep those guys there and mesh the pieces together.

Will be interesting to see if any of their guys transfer out after this year. They return basically everyone for next year, most of their roster is actually from Minnesota. They just lost a 5 star center who asked for his release a few days ago.

Feels like Oleg could be a real solid bench big next year. A lot of the good things he did today were based on footwork, body placement, and active hands on defense. Another year in the weight room and him n keita could be a hell of a combo 

1 hour ago, Handy Johnson said:

You can obviously tell he’s a Coaches Kid & a lifelong Gym Rat. The “Governor” that folks of every Political persuasion can get behind…

Exactly - I especially loved today when he was feeding Walker in the post, he always took a purpose dribble to improve the angle before he made the feed. No lazy pass, no poor-angle pass. He made sure he was in the perfect spot to make the pass without risk of turnover. Just little things that you have to be a gym rat to do correctly every time.

Winners win.

Just keep winning. 

Lightning in a bottle 2.0?  I remember the first time we caught lightning in a bottle, most people realllly started talking about us after a win vs…. MSU.  Can we do it again?

Notes from UNL

• Nebraska won its fourth straight Big Ten Conference game, its first four-game winning streak in conference play since the 2017-18 season.
• The Huskers never trailed in the game, marking the fifth time this season and second time in Big Ten Conference play that Nebraska won a game without trailing.
• Nebraska scored 78 points, improving to 12-1 this season when scoring at least 70 points. Nebraska has scored at least 70 points in each of its last six games.
• NU came away with a season-high 13 steals, eclipsing its previous high of eight. The Big Red recorded double-digit steals for the first time since totaling 12 steals against Minnesota on Feb. 9, 2022.
• Fueled by the 13 steals, Nebraska outscored Maryland 21-5 in points off turnovers. The plus-16 advantage was a season best for the Big Red. The 21 points off turnovers were the most the second-most points off turnovers for the Huskers this season (most in Big Ten play), while Minnesota’s five points tied for the fewest points off turnovers by a Nebraska opponent this season.
• Six Huskers scored in double figures to mark the first time Nebraska had six players score 10 or more points in a game since a Nov 25, 2020 matchup against McNeese State.
• Sam Griesel led all scorers with 19 points. He scored 13 of his 19 points in the second half, going 6-of-11 from the field in the final 20 minutes.
• CJ Wilcher had 12 points and six rebounds. His six rebounds were a season high and tied his career high.
• Jamarques Lawrence added 11 points, one shy of his career high. Today marked Lawrence’s fourth career game in double figures.
• Keisei Tominaga saw his streak of five consecutive 20-point games snapped, but he reached double figures with 11 points on 4-of-8 shooting. Defensively, Tominaga had a career-high four steals.
• Sam Hoiberg scored 11 points off the bench and tied his career high with six rebounds. Nine of Hoiberg’s 11 points came in the second half.
• Derrick Walker rounded out the six Huskers in double figures with 10 points, and he also led Nebraska with seven rebounds and four assists.

From a post I read on another board:

”I found this amusing. Minnesota is terrible, so Nebraska actually dropped 5 spots in the NET Rankings overnight after beating them by double digits. They are now ranked 93. 

The Huskers are the only team ranked outside the top 65 without a Quad 3 or 4 loss. 

If Nebraska had played Penn State's non con schedule and was sitting here today with an 18-11 record, everyone would be saying Nebraska's non con was too weak. However, their game control stats would've been far more favorable which would've manipulated the Net rankings to move the Huskers into the top 60. 

Now if you're wondering what I mean by game control stats, the NET rankings considers offensive/ defensive efficiency, and margin of victory or defeat into their rankings equation. Wins and losses, strength of schedule, quality wins, and quality losses are only part of the equation. 

And for most of December and January, Nebraska couldn't score and they were blown out a lot. 

Ohio State, ranked 71st in the NET rankings, has gone 1-13 since the first week of January. They even lost to Minnesota. And in comedic fashion, OSU only fell 2 spots after their 3 point loss to the Gophers. Since most of the Buckeye's losses were in the 6 to 9 point range, the NET rankings seem to value those losses more than actually winning games. Ohio State only has one Q1 win as well.”

Those NET rankings are ridiculous.   I am not sure how the math works but there are so many obvious anomalies that it is clear the system is very flawed.   It should not have any credibility at all at this point.

Thanks to Wiscos loss… we’ve moved up to 11th.  If Rutgers beats PSU tonight, we’ll be in 10th

52 minutes ago, hskr4life said:

Thanks to Wiscos loss… we’ve moved up to 11th.  If Rutgers beats PSU tonight, we’ll be in 10th

Technically. But if I'm reading the tiebreakers correctly, that #2 Big Ten spot could be a make or break for us. Too bad we didn't get that Purdue win. That would've sealed the deal with any tiebreaker with Penn State.

Do we benefit by not avoiding a play-in game in the Big Ten Tournament? I'm thinking playing in one of the Wednesday games greatly improves our chances of going at least 1-1 at the tournament and hopefully ending the season with an overall winning record. Isn't a .500 plus record required to play in the NIT?

54 minutes ago, Bruce said:

Do we benefit by not avoiding a play-in game in the Big Ten Tournament? I'm thinking playing in one of the Wednesday games greatly improves our chances of going at least 1-1 at the tournament and hopefully ending the season with an overall winning record. Isn't a .500 plus record required to play in the NIT?

There is no 0.500 requirement for the NIT.

If you're looking for NCAA qualifications, a Wednesday game isn't going to do anything for us. We need Quad 1 wins, not Q3/4.

Do we benefit by not avoiding a play-in game in the Big Ten Tournament? I'm thinking playing in one of the Wednesday games greatly improves our chances of going at least 1-1 at the tournament and hopefully ending the season with an overall winning record. Isn't a .500 plus record required to play in the NIT?

On 2/25/2023 at 9:46 PM, millerhusker said:

The longest active winning streak in the Big Ten belongs to the 12th place team 

Nebraska's now tied for 10th place with Penn St. & Wisconsin. Both PSU & UW lost today.

On 2/25/2023 at 9:46 PM, millerhusker said:

The longest active winning streak in the Big Ten belongs to the 12th place team 

10th now!!! 

8 hours ago, HuskerFever said:

 

There is no 0.500 requirement for the NIT.

 

If you're looking for NCAA qualifications, a Wednesday game isn't going to do anything for us. We need Quad 1 wins, not Q3/4.

We aren't making the NCAA Tournament, though. We're talking about the NIT. In my opinion, stacking up another win would help us.

41 minutes ago, HuskerActuary said:

We aren't making the NCAA Tournament, though. We're talking about the NIT. In my opinion, stacking up another win would help us.

Id assume the goal is to make the NCAA tournament… not the NIT.

1 hour ago, HuskerActuary said:

We aren't making the NCAA Tournament, though. We're talking about the NIT. In my opinion, stacking up another win would help us.

Another win against Minnesota (or any bottom feeder teams in conference) isn't going to move the NIT needle. There is more downside to playing in the first day than upside.

The way we are playing we could make a run in the BIG tourney.  A lot of it will depend on matchups.  We don’t seem to do well against Illinois, Michigan, Indiana and Northwestern.  It will be interesting to see how the final standings shake out.