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It's sort of funny to me how people seem to be down a bit on Boogie. I saw a guy who passes like he knows where everyone is supposed to be on offense, was able to hit our bigs for easy buckets, and at least one Sam Griesel backdown on a smaller defender.

I’m not so sure SH isn’t our best defender. He creates havoc on the defensive end, is probably our best passer on offense and shot 40.9% from 3 last year. He isn’t just a feel good story, he’s a feature. I’d probably feel comfortable with him taking a clutch 3 over anybody other than KT. The combined hustle and energy between him and Allick is noticeable. You have to have at least one of them on the court at all times to drive urgency IMO. Tons to love from what we saw tonight. Second chance points via hustle and rebounds will be huge if it continues.

SH had a 3/4 length pass to CJ in traffic that would’ve given Matt Rhule a linden sized wood

We just have to finish Top 4. There’s NO WAY they’d leave out a team who finishes top 4 in this conference!

idc whos on our team they arent keeping hoiberg of the court. played a hell of a lot better than jamarques

And a big old pffft to the notion that if Hoiberg has to play meaningful minutes we're in trouble.

Even with everyone healthy, SH could crack the top 8 Starters: 1. Lawrence 2. Keisei 3. Williams 4. Gary 5. Mast Bench: 6. Allick 7. CJ 8 . Hoiberg 9. Boogie 10. Rice Until my eyes tell me otherwise, I am perfectly comfortable with Sam taking minutes over Boogie. Sam is small, but a much better athlete than most think (IMO he is FAR quicker than Cale for instance, and he is definitely quicker/faster than Boogie). Sam also THINKS the game at a very high level, and as long as he is not completely over-sized, he is a very good defender and creates havoc on that end. I could even see him occasionally getting some of JL's minutes in a pinch, because Sam is probably more of a natural PG than anyone on the team right now.

Not arguing that. Though Hoiberg and Gary aren't competing for the same minutes. It's more so to the posts I saw on here that said we'd be in trouble if Hoiberg was playing meaningful minutes. And I think that is BS. I predicted Hoiberg would end up with the 9th most minutes on the team. If for some reason it's higher, say 7th or 8th, we'll be just fine.

I was really impressed with Allick!

A lot of good takes on the game from everyone. Again, our opponent was inferior, but we did not play down, which has happened all too often in our past. I thought it was a telltale sign of what this team is about occurred with about six or seven minutes left in the game, and up by 30+ points, Josiah dove on the floor for a loose ball. Great effort play. I can see why Fred likes this team. Like last year, they appear to be a cohesive unit that works hard and has an eye on the prize. Here's hoping that we just played our worst game of the year, and we continue to evolve.

This is one of the few years under Fred that we have several good options for lineups. I like the one you have listed but could also see Williams starting instead of Wilcher. I really like having Allick and Mast on the floor at the same time and Gary is also a very good rebounder as well when he is on the floor. In the past few years, it was pretty easy to figure out the starting lineup but not this year which is a great problem to have.

To me, Sam Hoiberg's floor is 'what do we do if Keisei doesn't have it' which is going to happen some games. Also I was so geeked on his 3pt makes that I physically got out of my seat and fired Cam Mack arrows into the air both times.

Did I missed the /s ? If not,

I've been mulling over the question: "When Keisei returns, who sits?" Right now, I'm leaning towards ... PG Lawrence SG Tominaga SG Wilcher PF Allick PF Mast CJ scored a very quiet and very efficient 13 points last night with zero turnovers. What I was picking up about his confidence level and just overall comfort with his role beginning with the Spain trip was confirmed by what I saw last night. Right now, I start him over Brice. Brice gives you better length and athleticism, but CJ seems to understand what we're trying to do and has accepted his role within that scheme. Brice did fine off the bench for Charlotte. That might be where he's comfortable. And, right now, I think Allick is better than the best of what I saw from Juwan Gary last year. He has a high-end motor. He's making all the hustle plays. I don't see what Gary brings to the table that you don't get with Allick. Juwan is a tremendous athlete and competitor. He gets offensive rebounds, but a lot of the time those were off his own misses. It just seems like Allick is a better *basketball* player. That's just my take.

As we often see with a lot of players, being close to home and near friends and family is a draw in and of itself. Whether players see that right out of HS or 2-3 years down the road when they transfer back, it happens all of the time. If Britt really wanted to go to Indiana, and had 0 intentions of going to Nebraska, she would have. You’re not going to convince me that her interest in Nebraska was 0 and the ONLY reason she committed was her parent(s). I’m not saying her parent(s) didn’t push her in this direction or want her to stay in state. Every parent in the recruiting process does. I am saying that her commitment to UNL is not SOLELY because of a parent or parents as a prior post hints at.

Hoiberg was *quite literally* the best player on the court yesterday. That won't be true very night, but he can absolutely play a big role at this level.

Our injury report last night officially was Lloyd Gary Ulis Keita Tominaga If I would have told you 7-8 months ago we would go into game 1 with that injury report, you would have responded “here we go again… who’d we lose to?” Credit to Fred for not just recruiting depth, but having 10-12 serviceable players ready to go! It hasn’t always been easy for him here and the first 3 years I was pretty hard on him. However, he’s got a product this year that’s going to draw some eyes.

If Diop drains that 3 after that monster dunk, we're talking Naismith Award today.

Doesn’t this belong in our NCAA tourney watch thread? What, no one has started one yet!?!? What are we doing? It’s Nov 7 and we’re undefeated!

A lot of obvious positives. The first half was a thing of beauty in almost all aspects. Some causes for conern: It's just game 1, but the overall demeanor doesn't seem as business-like as last year's group. Not sure if that's necessarily a concern. But on a few occasions we had players complaining to the refs rather than getting back on defense, reminiscent of Fred's first three teams. That stuff didn't happen last year. Eli got bullied on both ends. Not close to being ready for the Big Ten. He plays very hunched over, similar to Breidenbach. Rare for a basketball player to have that posture on the court. They tend to play smaller than they are and short-arm shots in the paint. Eli airballed a layup - fortunately a foul was called, but there was no contact. After his three point attempt was blocked, he gave no effort getting back to contest the layup. Freshmen. Coleman's body language was poor when things didn't go his way. Not a fan of Brice in a ball handling/creating role. It didn't get him into much trouble today, but he doesn't appear to have that ability and it will show against better teams. He can help us a lot in other ways. The offense was much more stagnant without JL or SH on the floor to keep the ball moving. Getting Keisei back will help keep things flowing. Once Keisei and Gary are back, we have a clear top 9. If we end up with an 8 man rotation, right now I'd say Coleman will be the odd man out. He'll have to play differently against Big Ten teams to keep that spot. Regardless, there were many more positives than negatives in this game. Expectations and hype are real high right now and I'm trying to stay grounded.

We are currently projected as an 11 seed on Bart Torvik's T-Ranketology https://barttorvik.com/tranketology.php?

Did what we're supposed to do. Don't care about the quality of opponent many many times in the past we didn't do what we were supposed to do against lower level teams. I'm happy with this dub

What's the sound of a basketball violently bouncing off the backboard, a foot from the rim? "DIOP!"

I love the way Allick hustles for EVERY single rebound!

It was

I'll update Florida A&M's record after there game with the boo birds in Omaha tonight. It's a rocking in PBA year.

So, one thing that kind of surprised me last night was that Lindenwood had a player who is the son of two former Husker hoopster greats, and I didn't see any real mention of it anywhere until @Bugeaters1 brought it up in the game thread. Keasha Cannon was a special recruit for Paul Sanderford and the women's team back at the turn of the century. Her fiance, soon-to-be husband, was a top shelf juco recruit named Nate Johnson, who was a player Barry Collier would have had no shot at were it not for the fact his fiance/wife was committed to play for Nebraska. They both came here. Keasha was pregnant with Nate Jr. around that time and might have given birth to him here in Lincoln. Nate Sr. was an instrumental part of Barry Collier's NIT team in 2003-04 that reached the third round of the NIT and had to beat Creighton on the road in the first round to get there. Nate was that unstoppable guy who, 2 minutes left in a close game when you absolutely HAD to have a bucket, you put the ball in his hands and he could get it for you. Spread the floor, let him go one-on-one, and he's usually going to win. Our last regular season win against Iowa State at Devaney was that exact scenario. The press release from the Sports Info department following that game starts out by describing the finish: "Lincoln -- Junior Jake Muhleisen forced a turnover with 27 seconds remaining and senior Nate Johnson scored the go-ahead basket just seconds later, as Nebraska rallied from three points down with 39 seconds to play for an exciting 68-65 victory over Big 12 rival Iowa State in front of 11,135 fans at the Devaney Center Saturday." It just feels like there should have been more recognition that the son of two former Husker greats was in the house last night. I hope Jake said something to him about having played with his dad.

Same style of play as last year. They just happened to have two of the top 10-15 players in the country to give the ball to. They'll be a mess this year.

We don't have enough frontcourt depth to play Gary at the 3 unless you want to consider Rice or Williams as 4s when they're playing with Gary and a big. I would not. That could change if or when Blaise comes back but a lineup that's 2 guards + Blaise, Gary, and Mast/Allick seems suboptimal to me in terms of spacing.

I was pretty impressed by him also. Only had 3 shots and looked to get his teammates involved pretty often.

One big disagreement. Josiah starts at the 4! I think we will see Gary swing between the 4 & 3 positions. CJ will swing between the 2 & 3. If Blaise ever makes it back, he and Keisei may be the only two players married to their positions/roles.

Yep. Not the athlete Walker was nor does he have his wingspan. He caught a pass that I believe Walker would have flushed on a guys head, and as soon as he went up I was like, "ope, not that kind of athlete haha." But he also knocks down beautiful top of the key threes, has crafty post moves, is super physical, and always has his head up to pass and screen. The guy who didn't impress me much with his rebounding instincts was Diop. Didn't seem to know when to time his jump to high point stuff while also boxing out. Also didn't seem to have great instincts on blocking shots - there were some pretty basic ones I would have hoped he would have at least contested, but he stayed grounded. Got one good block. Stuff to work on, I suppose.

In the sober light of the next day ... There was lots of good last night, to be sure. A whole lot of good. Some great. That's pretty well been presented upthread already. So, a few of the negatives I saw: Rienk is not a very good rebounder in traffic. He had trouble finding the ball and hanging onto it when he was in there fighting for a board. And he's not getting quite as vertical as I would have hoped. I'm going to ratchet down my rebounding expectations for him for the season. Not trying to diminish the things he did well, of which there were many. Brice struggled finding his role on offense. He's kind of a streaky shooter. Second half, I think he was really trying to assert himself offensively in the first five minutes and I do believe he took our first four shots of the second half and only connected on one of them. They were running that side weave action and he declined to pass a couple straight possessions and tried to go iso on the defense to not very good effect. He needs to let the game come to him. There's a lot of season to go. Eli getting that 3-pointer swatted should be a wake-up call to him. This ain't intramurals, baby. This isn't high school or junior college. This is D1 basketball, and every team we play is going to have better athletes, night in and night out, than he faced in high school. So, he better learn what an open shot looks like if he's going to get zero elevation on his jumper combined with that low release. Sixty-six percent from the freethrow line isn't gonna cut it. At one point, we were 18 of 24 for 75%. We finished 19 of 29 for 66%. Beyond that, man, we saw some really good basketball last night. Some of those runouts would not have been runouts in past years. If you saw some of the drills they were running at the open house, you could see those drills put to practical effect last night: Heads up, looking down the floor, finding guys out in front, getting some easy buckets. One pass sailed and we failed to convert, but we really put pressure on their transition D. I would say this is a team that checks a lot of boxes. Clearly the most competitive roster we've had under Hoiberg. Not saying they WILL make the dance, but I certainly think they COULD.

There was a ton to like about that game. 1. One of the craziest things was that it wasn't like "talent" was the difference in that game. Lindenwood played maybe one of the more selfish, lazy, uninspired basketball games I've ever seen. We gapped that game in the first half because we played harder, took better shots, chased rebounds, played team defense, and ran. Then of course, talent took over when it needed to. Just blows my mind there's D1 coaches out there who allow that type of product. 2. "Sam Hoiberg won't play like that all year, once we go up against the likes of "Maryland" he'll settle back down." "Wait? What's that? He did WHAT against Maryland the last time we played them?" 3. I'm kind of interested to see a line-up of: 1. Boogie (knowing he needs to be a distributor not a scorer) 2. Tominaga 3. Williams 4. Allick/Gary 5. Mast 4. Our bigs: I don't know how he'll look against B1G competition, but Mast seemed "as advertised." Different in way than Walker, but alike in many other ways. On Josiah Allick's dunk, he was the last guy behind the ball and was the first guy to the rim. Something we have been missing for A LONG TIME. Ernie Ziegler doesn't get a lot of shoutouts here on this board, but it is very clear what he is teaching his bigs, and he's teaching it well. I like the High-Low additions we are clearly going to focus a little with Mast and Allick. Diop does some stuff, guys... Exciting and bright future for that young man. I loved how all of our bigs chased rebounds and were super physical, clearly a point of emphasis. 5. Rough night for these guys: Eli Rice, Jamarques Lawrence, Our team at the free throw line. Rice looked like a freshman. JL looked like he wasn't 100% sure what his role is or will be. Gotta shoot better than 65% from the stripe. 6. I was impressed with how well our offense seemed to flow this early, with this many newcomers. Clear that the staff cohesiveness and them settling on a system is paying major dividends. Can't wait to see us operating even more decisively and explosively. 7. Our defense.... man that's gonna cause some people some frustration if they aren't able to hit baseline and midrange jumpers. Dang we fly around as a unit and rotate well.

All three schools listed are normally in the top 15 and among the top contenders in their conference. All three have good coaches. I can see Britt taking a hard look at these schools. Yes maybe the parents wanted her to go to a school they think will allow more success on the court. I also think we need to look at the teammate part of this. Look at the VB team. The 5 freshman have played a lot together and have become good friends before even coming to NE. So maybe Britt was leaning toward Indiana and we have Kennadi to thank for her coming to NE. I have no idea just happy she is coming. As John Baylor often says, "There is more wood to chop".

A lot of talk about SH tonight. Honestly, I see SH getting minutes this year and it isn’t a knock on anyone or a bad thing. I see Sam being the guy who plays when someone rolls an ankle, the guy who plays when someone is out sick mid-season, and the guy who will step in when someone is having an off night. We’ve got enough cupcakes this year for two Thanksgivings. Looking at T-Rank above, we’ve got a better chance at losing to Duquesne than Oregon State and neither are close to being a toss up. So expect to probably see 10+ guys through the Creighton game. Let’s get 4-5 games for all 10+ and we will have a better idea of who the big 8-9 are going to be.

I’m glad we COULD have a 10 player rotation, even we only end up with an eight player rotation. Extremely rare to make it through a season without injuries, and we have players who can step up when it happens.

Hahahaha when's the last time we got to argue about which player is getting minutes over which player?!? This is so much more fun of an argument

Tominaga was draining threes during pre game and looked normal to me. Was even bouncing along to the music at times. The biggest thing that I liked is we kept increasing the lead and didn’t have a “we let the opponent get back into the game or go on a sizeable run” that we have allowed so many times against pre conference teams. Allick was a nice surprise. Looked stout, active, hustled, and had better fluidity than I imagined. He’s gonna be a factor on both ends. He looks like a taller version of his sister with his hair. Or his sister looks like a smaller version of her brother…. Mast is a tall presence that hit a nice top of the key three and also had a better post up game than I was led to believe. His off the ball movement was good as well. Will definitely help us. Hoiberg was much much better than the stats indicated. He impacted the game so much defensively. Had a lot of deflections and steals and factored into some opponents turnovers. He was also assertive offensively and his shot looked fluid. Biggest difference is he’s playing like he belongs. I actually think he takes a lot of Rice’s minutes as the 4th guard next to Lawrence, Tominaga, and Wilcher. JL had a couple of nice threes but also missed a couple of layups that he would’ve made last year. I agree with a previous commenter- it did appear he was pressing a bit. But he will be fine. CJ looked like CJ, although I felt like he had a bit more confidence and comfort out there tonight. Will withhold my full assessment of Brice because he played out of position for a while. When Mast and Allick were out he would play the 5, his shot was off tonight but I still have high hopes for him. Rice looked like a true freshman. Had the ball knocked out of his hands on a couple of rebounds and forced up a few contested shots. Still, 6’8” is 6’8” Boogie is a poor man’s Bonzi Wells. Ok, probably not. But he did all right and he had some good moments. I’m sure he’s still finding his groove playing a pass first role. Cale got some good minutes and does show some potential out there. He’s pretty heady and he frankly looked more comfortable to me than Rice did. Halftime performer deserved a bigger crowd. Made a 6 minute non stop jump rope routine look super easy. Did acrobatics and jumped rope. 99.7% of that arena would’ve needed oxygen and a wheel chair after that routine… Be back Thursday…..

Add Keisei and Gary and you’re at a 10 man rotation. I don’t think we’re going to play a 10 man rotation. Add those two and he’s not in the top 8. Minutes should be limited for Hoiberg and Rice. Both of them are ok players. We simply have 8 better players then those two and that’s a good thing.

We’ve got some BIG Boys who can Mix it Up down low. Forget about looking good “off the bus” we’re gonna push some people around.

What's the sound of a basketball being violently thrust through a rim? "DIOP!"

BirdsontheBat: I join 12Dozen in asking why not answer FastBreakers question instead of just sending a haha? I mean that is QUITE an assertion. Seems like it should be somehow supported.

13 Made field goals; 10 assists.

Here is the box score. https://storage.googleapis.com/huskers-com-prod/2023/11/06/BrHMmNCAuT733BTlajpHNwocWslze7EO9TqWdCAh.pdf

Rather than respond with a haha emoji, why not answer Fastbreakers question?

You're right that's was more me paraphrasing. It was something to the effect something bad had happened ergo we're in trouble. Realistically if he were to "take" anyone's minutes it would probably be CJ's if he has one of those slumps like he's had before. But I don't think that happens. I think he ends up with the 9th most minutes. And if we have to go deep on our bench because of foul trouble or *gulp* injury it's comforting knowing we got Hoiberg ready and waiting. It's a great problem to have and a problem I can't really remember having before.

There are so many good dance songs...