Leaderboard

BTW this is how I felt trying to explain that...

Here's why we are much closer than may appear: we have an active and effective Athletic Director in charge. Before Trev Alberts stepped into that position, I saw an interview with Bob Stoops talking about Nebraska's football travails. He said the problem is at the top of the athletic department--that no team and coach can do it on their own. Such observation seems particularly apt for Husker basketball: --Remember the non-support (if not active undermining) from the top for Tim Miles? --It may be that Fred Hoiberg was not undermined--but there was no active support or direction either. When Trev Alberts arrived, he began providing direction for both programs from day one: resulting in the firing of one coach but active support for the other. Early returns on Trev Alberts's leadership are this: both programs are heading in the right direction and building steam.

Jud Heathecoate had that "I'm going to war against Xerxes' doo. Or "I'm gonna protect this last Guttenberg bible"; either way.

Penn State's pitch: Look at all those empty blue seats! You'll never find any empty blue seats that are prettier than that! And if you happen to lose those empty seats don't get mad at you!

He can get buckets for sure but volume shooter, no defense, and culture of losing. Think we’ve seen that before.

I kinda hope we prioritize key guys on successful teams again over the stars on unsuccessful teams.

I refer to it as 'skunked back hair'

Going out of conference, Jamie Dixon would like to enter the conversation with his Pepe Le Pew do:

They're full on scholarships so the more transfer portal guys they add, the more it means someone else would have to leave

Kansas will be out for revenge. Plain and simple. They're at home. A tough place to play in any event. We'll need all hands on deck and at full go.

Only thing worth discussing for next few months.

We need to at least match last year's talent on the roster pre-injury. The talent this past season murdered Creighton. I think that's a pretty good barometer. It was probably an NCAA bubble team. Get the same type of talent (TEAM dudes who are serviceable athletically and tough) and we should have the philosophy in place to go to work. Our system on both ends appears to be pretty forward thinking. The defense requires a lot of intelligence and hustle and the offense only really requires one or two mismatches to work well.

The portal gets a bad name for guys moving up for a better offer somewhere else, but the vast majority of players are looking to move somewhere to just get on the court. Denim and Oleg aren't going to end up at P5 schools, they'll be at a MAC or Valley school.

I gave you an upvote for linking to a scene from the second greatest movie of all-time (Braveheart is #1, duh).

Something I have preaching about for a while.

So it sounds like Big Ten officiating, while it might help the conference blue bloods stay at the top of the regular season conference race, hurts the conference in the post-season when the players/teams that are used to getting all the calls are no longer getting all the calls and can't adjust. Poetic justice.

Seems like most Big Ten teams play 17 home games, 11 away and 3 neutral. We played 15 home, 13 away and 3 neutral. Rutgers played 20 home games. Some power conference schools don't play any non-conference true road games. We have a great homecourt advantage and need to use it.

we have a local product portal entry.

Where there is a will there is a way. I understand that the Ath. Dept can't "directly" give money to the athletes or NIL collectives. But there certainly are indirect ways he can help facilitate the money getting to the right collectives and players, and whether he likes it or not, that is not a huge part of his job. I am just a random dude on the internet, but I will go ahead and list a number of ways that I think Trev and/or the Ath. Dept. can facilitate money to NIL and the athletes: 1. First, your statement is not 100% accurate. It has been previously reported (and repeated in the article I linked), that the latest media contract requires the media company to set aside more than $2 million for NIL payments to NU athletes. We can play the semantics game, but that sure sounds like Ath. Dept. money to me. And if they can require $2M, why not $5M or $20M for NIL. If I recall, I the total contract value is in excess of $300M over 15 years. This means that the $2M designation is less than 0.7% of the total contract for an Ath. Dept that is already flush with cash. The AD already has more money than it knows how to spend, but it could only muster a paltry 0.7% for NIL? Admittedly, the terms aren't entirely clear. If it is $2M per year, then that is better because it would be a total of $30M, thus 10% of the total, but I don't see any indication that is the case. And if so, why not? The AD is flush with cash from the BTN media deal, the ticket sales, the donations, so honestly, if permissible, it should funnel ALL of that $300M to the NIL. I guarantee you that would buy some nice championships in both football and basketball. 2. Trev obviously has considerable influence over donors. The AD is raising money for a $150M facilities upgrade. Why not have the Ath. Dept. use its own cash for the facilities upgrades and ask those same donors to instead donate to the collectives? This is essentially a way for the AD to legally "wash" the donations to NIL. 3. If part of the PlayFly media contract can be set aside for NIL, can part of the BTN contract also be set aside? What about the Pepsi contract? What about the Adidas contract? What about other contracts? Has this been explored? 4. Required ticket donations go the UNL foundation. The recent OWH article indicated those donations amount to about $23M per year. Can the foundation give money to the collectives or NIL? Has this been explored? If no, can the "donation" requirement be changed so that the donations go directly to the collectives or NIL? Has this even been considered? Maybe its not permissible, I don't know, but maybe it is. These are the types of things that should be researched. 5. Other schools have started using "in-house" fundraisers for NIL. NU has not. Why not? These are five ideas off the top of my head on how to facilitate more money to NIL. With more time and research, I'm sure I could come up with more ideas. Some may work, some may not. But where there is money, and where there is a will, there is a way. Now it is up to the AD to figure out how to make it happen.

Won’t be an easy game at all. Kansas likely hasn’t forgotten losing at PBA in December. Wasn't the KU gave the game where Allison Weidner got hurt? No, I’m not saying her injury was the result of anything a KU player did. Allison was just making a great hustle play on defense, and fell out of bounds and collided knee first with a very unfortunately-placed cameraperson’s chair underneath the hoop. I only bring it up because the apparent severity of her knee injury put a damper on the satisfaction of NU winning that game.

Lemme ask you a question about NIL. I understand Trev and the coaches can't be involved in decisions about how to spend the NIL money. BUT can Trev do anything to recruit donors? Can he, for instance, call up Howard Hawks and say "thanks for your commitment to NU football. I know you like Creighton hoops, but it really helps our football program if we're perceived as having generally successful programs across all sports, so please allocate some of your wealth to our hoops program, too"? Or does the NIL thing have to be completely and totally separate from the AD? Also, does anyone know who's kicking in the money to Creighton's NIL program and whether they're donating to ours also or just to theirs?

Next up, Jayhawks. The Nebraska women's basketball team will travel to Allen Fieldhouse in Lawrence to take on the Kansas Jayhawks in the third round of the Postseason WNIT on Thursday at 6:30 p.m. (CT).

"Sit down, Norm!" was truly a Husker fan favorite... as long as NU won the ballgame, that is.

Same conference as Fairleigh Dickinson.

ADs, coaches, systems, culture, all play a role in the success of the program. But this is a new era. It is the NIL era. Let's say a high level recruit (whether HS or through the portal) has been offered by Nebraska along with a number of other P5 schools. If that recruit can get $100K to play at another program, why would he come here to play for $40K? Especially considering NU has no history, no tradition, no record of winning, no guarantee of going to the tourney, etc. The only possible reasons are possibly (1) playing time, or (2) really likes coach Hoiberg and the coaching staff. But if that recruit has multiple offers, it is likely that he can find another program where he could get playing time and more $$$$ and he likes the coach. On the flip side, NIL may just be the golden ticket that could finally help NU attract top level talent. If NU can offer a recruit more money than the competing teams, then it might be able to attract talent it otherwise never would have been able to secure. But this is the big if. I have no idea if NU is doing this, other than Shatel's article a few months ago saying NU's NIL is not as robust as Creighton's NIL. If NU really wants to rise to a new level, we can't just be "close" to other schools with NIL. And honestly, we probably can't just be "even" with other schools. If we are even, then the recruit defaults to the "other" things like tradition of winning, opportunity to go the tourney, etc. We need to be "better" than the other schools. NIL is the one aspect of recruiting that NU can actually control and can win in recruiting pitches. NU can't change its past moribund history, but it can change it's current and future level of financial commitment. And frankly, the dollars required shouldn't be an issue, the NU Ath. Dept. is flush with cash. There was a recent article in the OWH talking about how much the NU Ath. Dept. was bringing in. I believe it is 6th in the entire country, and that didn't even include the additional "donation" dollars going the foundation. NU has more money than virtually any other program in the country. It is Trev's job to figure out how to get some of the money to the players/recruits to upgrade the talent to the necessary level. https://omaha.com/sports/huskers/nil-could-be-just-the-beginning-for-college-athletes-and-nebraska-is-preparing/article_93b953b6-c4e0-11ed-8b3e-7f10267e1622.html It is a no-brainer to make this initial investment now. Husker fans are extremely passionate and loyal. If we spend money to bring in players, the program will easily recoup that money through attendance and fan support. Plus, once we use that initial investment to upgrade the talent, and then start a tradition of winning, we may no longer have to out-bid the other schools because we will be the up-and-coming program that everyone wants to play for. An significant initial investment now could pay dividends for decades to come.

Dang...that hurts my head.

They are (if you're talking about the Torvik list). Oleg -0.2 and Dawson -0.9. You have to expand the list at the bottom to get to them or sort other ways.

Heading to Lawrence.

Kansas just beat Missouri 75 - 47. It was never really in doubt. KS looked much better than the team I saw go to triple OT here in the pre-season. Also, it looked as tho that game, in Lawrence, was very well attended thus putting in question Lincoln being selected as the site for the NU-KU 3rd round game.

Another day another dude

Very much do want. But probably a Wisconsin lean.

Huh? Perhaps I missed his reasoning for leaving Notre Dame?

We reached out to Battle

Scheduling needs to be smarter. We were 11-4 at home and 4-9 on the road. That's 13 road games. Meanwhile no other Big Ten team played more than 11 road games all season except Indiana with 12. We have no buisness leading the conference in road trips.

I was at the game and it was great. One interesting lineup that we had towards the end of the first qtr was Maggie,Issie,Sam, Kendall M. and Jaz. They played together for about 5 minutes and went on an 8-0 run. Then Sam got hurt. Looked to me on replay it was either a high ankle sprain or possibly an achilles injury. The rest of the team really stepped up. These are good minutes for the younger girls as we advance and continue to practice. Looks like Kendall M. will be starting going forward. Great opportunity for her. Teams keep getting tougher. The most reliable player on our team right now is Issie. She is playing by far her best basketball this season.

I haven't read all the takes, but boy, did we play a nice game. Good win ladies!

Lucky bastard

Wait your wife talks to you? Mine just sighs a lot and rolls her eyes.

That’s just what progress is though. If Fred has post season success from here on, it’ll be stated be built it from scratch. Record his first 3 seasons, and records season 5 and on, will be split screen comparisons at every marquee game. You don’t succeed a Nebraska basketball coach who was fired and have instant success. It just doesn’t happen.

Can easily replace Andrew White with Mikki Moore unless you're planning to do one a special Mikki one that's just him on the 9 NBA teams he played for

It's a basketball player, not your best friends ex-wife

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1WdE6qi-CEOv4VGqbmTGwdcG1-fXpYboYkJR-EzhHdts/edit#gid=0

at this rate Ben Johnson might have to enter the transfer portal too

I like him as a player. He also seems like a good kid watching his demeanor on the court and the sidelines. I’d be happy if he was interested

I wouldn't be upset.

Not to derail too much, but Hoiberg is a proven P5 coach, Frost was not. If the decision is to dip into a coaching search, then choosing a P5 assistant and mid-majors head coach would be just as much of a risk as finding another Frost. I'm still on the Trev train right now. He's shown more initiative for this program than a few ADs before him in this short time. So whatever decision he goes with, that's fine by me. But I'm sure he's been thinking two steps ahead since he had his last performance review with Hoiberg.

54% of opponents since Hoiberg has been coaching have been NCAA Tournament qualifiers. Under Miles it was 38%. That makes a difference.