unelinstu's postgame chatter: vol 15, ed 7: Florida State 

Didn’t see the game.  But according to the box score, Walker is an important part of this team.

In the first half both teams played pretty bad.  It was a turnover nightmare.  

But I do give credit to the adjustments we made.  But for a four minute stretch,  we dominated.  Man, that feels strange to say.

What was up with Blaise tonight, was he injured or was Walker just too dialed in to let Keita spell him for a few minutes…???

2 minutes ago, Handy Johnson said:

What was up with Blaise tonight, was he injured or was Walker just too dialed in to let Keita spell him for a few minutes…???

We really can't afford to have Walker off the floor.    I like Keita better than Wilhelm - but Wilhelm is now getting his minutes mostly at the 4 position.   If we play the 5 out offense there really is no place for Keita to play.

I just saw the second half of this game - which is sounds like is a good thing.   I am hopeful it is an indication that we are learning how to play with Walker and improvement in that aspect will continue.   Another good thing is we overcame a really off performance by Emmanuel who has easily been our most consistent player to this point.   If he had been playing like he did the other night this really would have been a blowout I think.   Hopefull gives us some positive momentum going into the Boston College game which is an important one to win.

Been largely checked out due to thanksgiving and the Iowa game, was able to watch it tonight and chose a good one to watch, Walker just adds so many dimensions to this team, still won by 17 despite an awful game from Manny Bando, another P5 pickup game opportunity on Wednesday vs a bad Boston College team

5 minutes ago, HuskerBB said:

We really can't afford to have Walker off the floor.    I like Keita better than Wilhelm - but Wilhelm is now getting his minutes mostly at the 4 position.   If we play the 5 out offense there really is no place for Keita to play.

 

I agree, I was just listening on the Radio in & out & thought something might’ve happened to Blaise I wasn’t aware of. 

Something to build off of. I liked the way we played in the second half. Walker was unbelievable. 

Looks to me that DW will be on the floor as much as possible.  Also looks like Gary and Briedenbach will fill in when Walker is out.  The game is just too fast for Blaise at this moment. Spare minutes here and there may earn him more minutes down the road.

Briedenbach is going to get 8 to 15 minutes a night.  I think that is a good thing; but it looks like I am in the minority.

Walker at Point Forward gives us added dimension on offense.  He is a good passer and the ball moved.  We scored points in the paint. Hard to believe s Leonard Hamilton team is struggling so much.

The last two games there was a lot of anxiousness and stressing about getting beat, and my thought had been, well, neither Memphis nor Oklahoma really "manhandled" us. And I saw some things that I thought were good. Both of the teams we faced previously in this tournament were top 30ish type teams and we didn't get just blown out.

Now, FSU isn't great but they aren't exactly chopped liver either. They might be 1-7 but if they were not a Power 5 team but were instead a solid mid-major coming in to face us at PBA, it'd be the kind of match-up where we'd be a little concerned even with our best of teams. It's a Kenpom top 150ish team. Those kinds of teams have given us fits at home in the non-con. And we handled them easily in this neutral floor game.

Everything about this team is eminently more watchable than they were a year ago. No hero ball. No me ball. No bullshit of certain players wanting to make sure they get their shots in to the detriment of the team.

I mean, yeah, we lack talent. But I'm going to rejoice in the improved execution by players who are more concerned with team goals than individual stats.

That said, here are my three likes, in no particular order:

After a rocky start, we got things under control. We had 4 TOs in the first 4 minutes of the game and only 10 TOs the rest of the way. We made some adjustments to the way they were pressing and it worked.

Sam Griesel almost had a double-double with points and assists. He would have been well over 10 assists if Bandoumel had had a better shooting night from the corner. But Sam is showing some solid court vision and awareness. He's making the passes that set his teammates up for success.

The return of Walker. What can you say? I mean, second game back and he puts up 20 points and grabs 13 boards on 10 shots from the field? He even had 4 assists. The man really showed up tonight. I don't think his presence would have flipped any of the games we lost, but it probably would have made them closer contests. But we probably win some going forward that we would have lost without him. Glad he's recovered from his health issues. He was probably the biggest difference in the game tonight. He's giving up 8 inches to McLeod, but he out-muscled him.

And can we also give it up for @hhcmatt? His game day essentials pegged it. FSU is the second-tallest roster in the nation (behind only Oregon IIRC) and yet he predicted we'd out-rebound them. And we did. Good work on the essentials, Matt.

5 minutes ago, Cazzie22 said:

Walker at Point Forward gives us added dimension on offense.  He is a good passer and the ball moved.  We scored points in the paint. Hard to believe s Leonard Hamilton team is struggling so much.

They said he’s the 5th Winningest Coach in ACC history which surprised me. I can remember when he was at Okie State. 

Props to Coach Hoiberg.  Ran a couple nice sets and saw the mismatch and played off Walker the rest of the game.  Like Norm said, it was fun to see the movement and team play.  I don't think last years team would have had the patience to play off Walker like that.

5 minutes ago, Navin R. Johnson said:

Ran a couple nice sets

Probably holding the rest of his sets close to the chest for March 

42 minutes ago, Cazzie22 said:

Walker at Point Forward gives us added dimension on offense.  He is a good passer and the ball moved.  We scored points in the paint. Hard to believe s Leonard Hamilton team is struggling so much.

He can't really bring the ball up against actual pressure but he was dribbling the ball behind his back before going all Uncle Drew on FSU's center

17 minutes ago, Navin R. Johnson said:

Props to Coach Hoiberg.  Ran a couple nice sets and saw the mismatch and played off Walker the rest of the game.  Like Norm said, it was fun to see the movement and team play.  I don't think last years team would have had the patience to play off Walker like that.

Patience & then passing to the open man cutting down the lane was surely a thing of beauty. Juwan Gary dunking is also fun to watch.

I was glad Sam was able to rebound from a few tough outings to put a stamp on that impressive 2nd half vs FSU. Really happy for him.

17 minutes ago, hhcmatt said:

 

He can't really bring the ball up against actual pressure but he was dribbling the ball behind his back before going all Uncle Drew on FSU's center

Reminds me a bit of Royce White playing point forward when Hoiberg was at ISU. And I seriously think he can be used similarly going forward. How many B1G 5s can cover Walker bringing the ball up the court. Overall, a great bounce back game!

Two things of note with this short video.  The first is rather obvious; DW's dunk. The second item is the player on the bench who jumped up in celebration...

https://fb.watch/h3YS9XvgNt/

Let’s take a TWO game Winning Streak up to Omaha, & just guessing those Top 5 ACC Coaches in no particular order: 

Dean Smith 

Coach K

Roy Williams 

Lefty Driesell 

Leonard Hamilton 

12 hours ago, Handy Johnson said:

Let’s take a TWO game Winning Streak up to Omaha, & just guessing those Top 5 ACC Coaches in no particular order: 

Dean Smith 

Coach K

Roy Williams 

Lefty Driesell 

Leonard Hamilton 

That's a pretty salty list of coaching pedigree. The top two would be switched, I presume.

Surprised if Matt Doherty can't crack the top fifty.  (And I had forgotten that his predecessor Bill Guthridge had two Final Fours in his 3 seasons.)

Took care of business in impressive fashion, albeit against a horrific team. But we did it nonetheless 

Notes from UNL

*-Derrick Walker posted his second straight double-double with 20 points and 13 rebounds on Sunday. It was his fifth career double-double and fourth of the season for a Husker.
*-Walker’s 20 points is a career high, as his previous best was 16 on three occasions most recently against Northwestern in the Big Ten Tournament
*-Walker’s career-high tying 13 rebounds marked the sixth time in seven games NU has had a player grab at least 10 rebounds. Walker also 13 in NU’s four-overtime game at NC State last season.
*-Walker is the sixth different Husker to lead NU in scoring in the first seven games
*-Sam Griesel’s nine assists is a season high as the Huskers had 22 assists on 33 baskets. Nebraska’s 22 assists was NU’s most since having 25 against Doane in 2020-21, and most vs. a Division I opponent since having 22 against Purdue in the 2019-20 season
*-Nebraska put a season-high five players in double figures
*-Juwan Gary tied a career high with three steals, the fifth time in his career with three steals
*-Keisei Tominaga had 13 points off the bench, marking his fourth double-figure scoring effort of the season off the bench.
*-Nebraska shot 50 percent, including 55 percent in the second half. NU had 11 of its 14 turnovers in the first half and ended up leading points off turnovers by a 17-9 margin.
*-Nebraska improves to 16-19 all-time against current members of the ACC, including 2-1 against Florida State. All three meetings between Nebraska and Florida State have taken place in the state of Florida, as the teams met previously in Sunrise (2005-06) and Tallahassee (2014-15)
*-Derrick Walker made his 50th career start as a Husker against Florida State tonight.

Happy for the guys to pick up a win in Orlando - whoever called it the Happiest Place on Earth didn't go 0-3 in a tournament down there, clearly.

It certainly looks like a different team with Walker on the floor combined with the overall effort they give.

Hope we take care of business Wednesday in a very winnable game and then worry about what's coming later. Stay in the moment.