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I am going to say the following; but I do not want it to come across as disrespectful or malicious in any manner, so here goes. With Bando and Gary we were a defense oriented team that played at a slower pace. One could have even said we were a poor shooting team. With the injuries, we adjusted our game and have somehow become a faster tempo team that actually has a well rounded offense that can score in the paint and on the perimeter. All while maintaining the strong team culture, pesky defense and comraderie. Great leadership and coaching adjustments! But still, how does that happen 2/5ths the way through a season with a staff supposedly on the hot seat. Wow

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I’m gonna miss Griesel so much. We gave up 20 some offensive boards today but play after play and game after game this year he’s busted his ass for us on the defensive glass. So happy he decided to come back home for his final year. He’s a shining example of what this programs foundation should be built on.

Jamarques Lawrence received his first Freshman of the Week award from the Big 10 after averaging 15 points, 4.5 rebounds, and 3.5 assists in a loss vs Michigan St and a win at Iowa. In the game vs Michigan St, Lawrence finished 7-10 including 6-6 from 2. Versus Iowa, Lawrence hit a career high 5 3pters, finishing 5-9 from the field. Lawrence is the first freshman player of the week since Bryce McGowens in 2021-22. View full article

Here's an important factor noted in today's Omaha World-Herald: "Iowa used future NBA lottery pick Kris Murray to follow Keisei Tominaga everywhere." Think about that, too: Tominaga is everywhere on offense (running hard and cutting hard . . . all the time), and Iowa's best player is following and guarding him everywhere . . . all the time . . . then trying to be a force on offense too. During the last stages of yesterday's game, that NBA lottery pick is worn down and lacks his normal punch on offense. Keisei Tominaga may have served one of his most-important roles as a Husker, yesterday, while scoring his fewest points in a very long time.

This is the point I wanted to make in reading this thread. There is no way to know for certain what our record may have been without the injuries. But I think it is clear that Bandoumel and Gary were a huge part of instilling the defensive culture that we still bring to the floor. Had Bandoumel not get hurt we likely would not have seen the emergence of Jamarques Lawrence into a really valuable player - but at the same time I am pretty certain that without Bandoumel on the team Jamarques would not be the player he has become. Even though we have done well without them on the floor I don't think that diminishes the huge positive impact that Bandoumel and Gary had on this team.

I think what's really important is that not only are teams putting their better/best defenders on Keisei, but they are putting length on him (Battle, McConnell, Murray off the top of my head). Allows for other guys like Griesel to get more favorable matchups from smaller defenders

I hate to ask, but it's a question someone at some level really needs to consider. When Bandoumel and Gary went down, we distributed minutes from guys who were shooting 22.4% and 26.3% from three, respectively, to guys who are shooting 40.3%, 36.2% and 40.9% (Tominaga, Lawrence and Hoiberg) from three. I am suspicious that our defensive effectiveness has not diminished significantly, but that our offensive firepower has increased by a lot. And, if that's true, then the lesson to be learned from this is maybe an emphatic "Recruit to shoot." So, the question: Do you think we would be over .500 right now if Gary and Bandoumel were still in the starting lineup?

And, let’s not forget how HUGE Lawrence has been setting the tone right out of the gate. I’m excited to see what he & Lloyd might look like in the same Backcourt.

We managed to not lose close games. I would think that would be a good thing. But the ppl who put this thing together would rather see teams lose close games and curbstomp their opponents in wins. Which tells me the objective is NOT to identify the best teams, but to find the teams most likely to cover.

From the Iowa Gazette Yet, who loses when they get 21 more field goal attempts than their opponent, or has 21 offensive rebounds? Or steals the ball 12 times and only has it stolen once? On top of taking 17 free throws to the foe’s eight? Who loses after turning the ball over just six times while forcing 15 miscues, while scoring 21 points off turnovers while allowing only 10, while getting 31 second-chance points to the other team’s 11? Hey...who dat...dat is IOWA!!!!

He gave a great postgame interview with Kent & reminded him this season is FAR from over…

Hummel was very fair. Some posters only notice the stuff they disagree with and never the complimentary things. Same with refs.

It's that time of the season. Time for an irrational thought... Regardless of how many wins we get, why don't we just never lose to Creighton, Iowa, and Wisconsin ever again?

Congrats to Tim on his MW coach of the year award and Omari Moore on his Player of the Year award.

We did take the #1 team in the country to overtime with them on the floor.

What would hvae hopefully happened in the multiHuskerverse is that you stopped playing Gary and Bando at the same time all game. Start to get you going defensively, but then you stagger their minutes with other shooters being in there. What's scary is to ponder just how important Sam Hoiberg has been, and how little (never) he would have played. Seriously, he makes like the same 3 or 4 big plays to close out games every time. 1 huge 3, gets to the free throw line, gets a steal and/or charge. Some huge tip so we get an O rebound.

Everyone is going to have different perceptions of who is best to play, given the parity in the league. That being said, I think this is about the best path we could realistically ask for. That being said, we can easily lose to Minny. If we survive that, we will play a Maryland team that is better than we are, but doesn't shoot well away from home. You add in the notoriously difficult on college kids shooting backdrop at United Center, I think we can win if we take away the lobs and the pick and roll, roll man. Then Indiana who simply is not great AND has not faced our defense in a long long time. It is different than most Big 10 defenses. Then hopefully NW or Penn St. Neither overwhelm us talent wise. I think we are in the dance at that point with a respectable effort against whoever we play and a non absurd set of results in other tourneys.

Teams #2-12 have lost 8 to 11 conference games. They're all beatable. Let's ride!

It's simple logic: A. Do you keep winning more games? B. Are you Nebraska? If A, then host an NIT game. If A+B, then automatic road NIT game.

If we finish with a winning record with our schedule and don't at least make the NIT, then the whole scheme is crooked.

40% of Hoiberg's wins at Nebraska came from this season (50% of conference wins).

It's insanity that this team finished 16-15 with everything they've gone through. And I think they have a bit more insanity in them, starting Wednesday.

Well whatever else you might say - Fred Hoiberg has coached teams that have ruined the senior days of Brad Davison and Connor McCaffrey in consecutive years. He deserves a contract extension just for that !

Snagging a nice trout would be the type of fishing NU needs to accomplish.

Haiby, Hake, Coley, and Stewart are from Minnesota.

well, posting Dream Weaver in the Iowa thread seems like it worked (h/t @Cazzie22 thanks for mentioning it), so my superstitious self is gonna ride that horse until it drops: Plus, it's just a hell of a good song so if you don't like it, tough.

I probably came on too strong about McCabe. No problem to disagree. That's why I like this forum. Differing opinions. I probably have a burr under my saddle from her signing with Iowa.

It's real hard to get worked up over the Kenpom stuff because our record matches up with the fact that we're on the NIT bubble at the moment and nowhere near the NCAA tourney.

Keisei Tominaga posed his team-high 21st double-figure game, as he finished with XI points. He has reached double figures in each of Nebraska’s last nine games.

OK, so this is just fucking crazy. Iowa loses by a small amount and goes up three spots in the NET. We win buy an equally small amount and drop five spots in the NET. And it was the same game. At Iowa. Their non-blowout home loss to us >>>> our non-blowout road win over them. Scrap the NET and start over.

That is a totally fair question and the answer in NO. We were not a great offensive team with our previous lineup and with injuries, we were forced to play guys that are much better on the offensive end of the floor while still giving full effort on the defensive end. I think Fred is finally getting back to how he likes to coach as previous seasons, it seemed like there was conflicts in philosophy with assistants on best way to coach and win games. You can see they are all on the same page. You can't win gave based on playing defensive only. We finally have a lineup that can score which was lacking earlier. I 100% tip my hat to the coaching staff as well as the entire roster (including Bandoumel and Gary) for this season and watching this team and coaching staff evolve to what it is today. Extremely impressive

So, I thought that now the regular season is done I should do a proper KenPom update. It's been a pretty disheartening 4 years, so my enthusiasm has waned greatly. But the past month has been more encouraging than I expected. Really love that Fred is able to keep his guys on the level and has them seemingly ready to play their best ball at the end of the year. This is what winning programs do. Now, if we can just figure out a way to win a few more games in January... Before I start, I want to take you back to January 8th for a moment and let you see how things have progressed: Ken was pretty nails on the regular season finish even back then. We did flip that one win (which, if I'm honest is probably Iowa). Rutgers did their best impression of Nebraska circa 2019, rising to unusually lofty heights but then have the season completely fall apart after an injury to a single player. Will they recover next year? Their recruiting class says probably. Wisconsin remained a strange duck all season, and I still don't know what to make of them. Still...F Wisconsin. Tim Miles has done an absolutely remarkable job at SJSU. Some of that of course needs to be credited to Omari Moore but still I think Tim deserves a ton of recognition. Taking a team from #336 to #93 (one spot above the Huskers at the moment) in just two seasons is damn near miraculous. The Spartans earned a bye but have Nevada as their opening opponent in the MWC tournament, possibly the worst matchup for them. If they do manage to win, then it's likely San Diego State. So it will be a tough slog for them. At any event I hope Tim does manage to get himself on the radar for a higher profile job opening this off season. Finally Grant McCasland. Well @Norm Peterson, I guess I'm sorry to say it looks like another year is going to pass without us bringing him on board. I hope you're okay with that. But even still, he got the Mean Green to finish second in CUSA and up to #46 in KenPom. As far as the Huskers and the Big Ten, well I gotta say we are going to be entering the off season with a lot of momentum and possibly more optimism for the future than we've had in a long long time. Like to see that. Also, after starting the year with the historic bottom feeders PSU, Rutgers and Northwestern looking like championship contenders, we're seeing that the normal cream has once again risen to the top. Maryland, Michigan State, Illinois and Indiana prove once again that it's hard to knock the elite off their perch. Love to see Wisconsin down there slumming it with us, only 6 wins since January 3rd against 11 losses. But sure, they're a bubble team. That's today's KenPom update, lotta catching up to do and sorry about that. But anyway...Here we go! KenPom rankings as of 3-06-23 ======================= B1G (9-11): 6. Purdue - L, L 20. Maryland - L, W 28. Michigan State - L, L 30. Indiana - L 32. Illinois - L, L 35. Iowa - W, W 38. Michigan - L 42. Rutgers - W 43. Northwestern - L 50. Penn State - L, W 57. Ohio State - W 72. Wisconsin - W 94. Nebraska 222. Minnesota - W, W Non-Conference (7-4): 283. Maine - W 314. Omaha - W ---Gavitt Games--- 88. @St. John's - L 321. Arkansas Pine-Bluff - W ---ESPN Events Invitational--- 51. Oklahoma - L 33. Memphis - L 212. Florida State - W ---B1G/ACC Challenge--- 172. Boston College - W 12. @Creighton - W 18. Kansas State - L ---Battle In The Vault--- 209. Queens University of Charlotte - W

As long as we keep the defensive assistants in tact we have to four capable three point shooters out there damn near all the time. Have been thinking about this a lot of late. Just didn’t have the stones to bring it up out if respect for how hard those two played. I do think bandoumel would have eventually started shooting like had throughout his career. Assuming our results wouldn’t have been a too much better with them, which is pry a safe assumption, we will start next year in a much better place as a result, Especially if Tominaga were to come back.

I think what bothers me the most about it, is Fred had to figure out what he had two times this year. He had 3 new starters and no Walker to start the year - once they were clicking the beat Creighton on the road. Then loses 2 starters and has to reconstruct his lineup and once they start clicking again beat Iowa on the road. That type of change is not conducive to blowing teams out and you might drop a clunker or two - but the NET in no way captures how good we became once Fred found the right formula. It’s obvious the NET is rewarding beating the brakes off bad teams over winning close over good teams, but there is no bad teams in the B1G, we have no opportunities for crushing crap teams.

In the twelve seasons since joining the Big Ten, we’ve played Iowa home/away in eight of those seasons now. In the four seasons we just played a single game against Iowa, we won one of those games.

We finished AHEAD of Wisconsin & THE Ohio St. Love it…!!!

Wow. The world is wild. I don't know the whole situation in Lubbock, but my first reaction is that "The Plantation" man is still alive & kickin' in eastern Omaha.

It was almost FOUR years ago to the day that Thor & 5 other Huskers beat Iowa on OUR Senior Day affectionately known as “No Quit” Sunday.

All Hummel did was mention he was 3-16 from 3 his last couple games. But Fran and his children are triggered with the slightest comment.

Watched many of the H. S. state tourney girls games. Was impressed by the "B" final. Both Elkhorn N and Skutt were really quick defensively. Both rteams are class A competitive. Class A Millard S, and Lincoln High had some quickness too. .........Maybe play fast and play hard are a better description. Seems like the H.S. game is going in that direction. I know obviously ...H.S. and college are two different games on many levels. The point is, at times, they looked like they played faster on defense, than our Husker Women. Just an observation, maybe way off base, but reminded me of some of the defenses of some upper level B1G teams.....and others of course.

Let's hope he's just a Creighton fan and not dead. Or better yet, a dead Cr.... (OK, I better not go there.)

Honestly, there’s nothing you can do about Clark except just count down the days until she graduates and leaves Iowa. She’s simply on a different level than everyone else. (And it makes me sick to have to say that)

Had the pleasure of driving while this one was happening. But that meant spending my afternoon with Kent P and Jake. There were so many quotes that were great. Two that stick out were a “sit down Fran” I believe or some variation of that late in the game… possibly after Hoibergs charge. The other happened after the game when they were doing a chiropractor ad. Jake said something like “the Iowa fans are hurting” and Kent says “Does a chiropractor help hurt egos?” Lol

For all the crap we give wilcher around here dam he stepped up when we needed it

It's always nice to Meyers Leonard a team like this.

Need Robbie Hummel to challenge Blaise Keita's ankle so we can get a rebound and win this game