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Boy oh boy do I have an interesting story to share with my fellow Nebraska basketball diehards - especially ones that follow recruiting and have done so for several years. This morning, I left the worlds largest sportsbook at the Westgate Las Vegas and was Uber'ing it back to the Las Vegas airport for my return trip to KC after 4 days in Vegas. As we drove by the Thomas & Mack Center, I commented to my girlfriend, "Hey, UNLV played there last night against Boise State." I knew that because I had money on UNLV -3 (and they won by 4 in OT). As we drove, for some odd reason, I thought to myself, "I bet Boise State flies commercial and we see them at the airport since its 9 AM and they'll want to get back for classes." I kid you not, we walk into the Southwest terminal and right there in front of us - like LITERALLY in front of us - is the entire Boise State basketball team. If that was the end of this story, it would be cool enough on its own. But it gets WAY more random and small world from this point forward. Two TALL Boise State players are walking in front of my girlfriend and I as we board the escalator to go through security toward Gate B. On the backpack of the player in front of me I see the name, a name I haven't heard in 5 years, and it all flashes back to me. DAVID WACKER WAIT, I thought... How do I know that name? Then I remember reading about him on this very website and how Nebraska hosted him on a recruiting visit before he chose to attend Boise State. I had literally forgotten he played there until that moment. I had to say something, so I say "Hey David". He looks back unexpectedly (because why the hell is this random mid 30's guy talking to him). I say "Didn't you almost go to Nebraska?" He lights up and says "Yes!! I had a great visit there." And then we end up standing in line together for 5 minutes as we head through security. I asked him many nonstop questions and he asked me a couple. Here were interesting things I found out. 1. He LOVED his visit to Nebraska. Commented how cool the football game was and that everyone was so nice. Said the fans were diehards and awesome to him. 2. Craig Smith was the reason he almost committed to Nebraska. He noted "It's a good thing I didn't choose there because he left after like what would have been one year for me." He noted how he's now at Utah State and how cool it was playing against him this year. He said Craig was AWESOME. 3. His parents were really excited about the Nebraska offer and kind of steered him that way. 4. He said he ultimately chose Boise State because he wanted to win a conference championship and that he knew that would be very difficult in the Big 10. He then said, "But don't get me wrong, Nebraska can still get in the tournament every year. That's the great thing about the Big 10. But I really wanted to go to a school where I had a chance to win the conference championship." Found that an interesting mindset. He asked me a few questions about Coach Miles, the current state of the program and seemed surprise by the demise. He asked what I thought the issues were and I told him. He didn't say much but listened intently. He was shocked when I told him Nebraska is the only Power 5 school to never win a tournament game. He said he had no clue. He was an EXTREMELY nice kid and a lot of fun to talk with. I am cheering Boise State on from here on forward as he finishes off his last few college games. I thought I would share this to A. Show how small world it was that I would end up randomly seeing him without even thinking about him all these years later. B. Show you an example of what at least one recruit looks for and thought of his visit. C. Tell you that he has a very positive opinion of Nebraska and enjoyed his visit. Anyone remember him? Hope you found this interesting to read. Dave

Wow, Sometimes there is a lot of hate on this board... I don't think anyone on here knows as much as some of you think you do. Just my humble opinion...

Whew, the removal of Lue gets us a step closer to everyone's goal on this thread in retaining Miles. Disclaimer - the statement above was not written to incite anger, bring about the use of pitchforks, or cause anyone to question my intelligence. My intelligence is questioned daily from my wife so no need to have anyone else pile on here. The statement should be considered a joke.

Is there a way to mute people here? I'd love to read people's insights or opinions (even those I don't agree with) but the personal barbs seem unnecessary and add nothing to the conversation. I'm half expecting someone to Jordan Caroline their computer screen in a minute here. There's a way to disagree while being civil. It's awkward and unappealing to read otherwise.

This a thread about coaches you think should be on our inevitable list of replacing Tim Miles. Whether or not we're damned as a program is almost any other thread here.

I’m an Aggie fan. The Nevada players and coaches are in the wrong. It started with the coaches getting into an argument. The Nevada players then tried to run into the Utah state tunnel to start a fight with the Utah state players. When the truth comes out Nevada will most likely be in some trouble for the poor way they acted and were allowed to act after the game. That video shows the team after they tried to go brawl with the other team. Videos are out there. No proof of anybody touching any players, that is just was is assumed by the media. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

This is nothing personal, Ron, but I am so sick and tired of our fanbase making this job seem so much harder than it actually is. This state has produced two NBA Draft picks in the last three years, one of the all-time leading scorers in NCAA Division I history who will be on an NBA roster most likely next year, and a guy who is starting on a top-15 team. I didn’t have to go back more than three years to find a handful of great (not good, great) players. We recruited none of them seriously. Our arena is is one of the nicest you will find for any college anywhere, period. AND it is consistently full despite the team never being very good. We pay our coach like we’re a top 25 program and get nothing close to that in return. History and tradition might scare away some on the surface, but anyone who steps foot in the facilities and PBA would immediately not care about that. I can promise you recruits DEFINITELY don’t care. If it wasn’t already obvious, the one shining season we had this decade was clearly spearheaded by the guy who is doing it at Utah State now. Sure there will be many coaches who say “Nebraska, shoot, no way. No one wins there.” But do 5 minutes of research and you’ll realize it’s not that bad. Hell, Creighton wins year in and out 45 minutes up the road and they probably just put themselves in some brackets today, despite having a “down year”. We don’t need someone who necessarily has ties to Nebraska. But I think we do need someone who KNOWS what it’s like here and has been here and knows it’s actually really great place to coach. Turgeon for example knows what Lincoln and PBA is like (even though he has ties here, I’m just saying, he’s a guy who could be intrigued rather than just saying no way).

Craig Smith is making $600k at Utah State and that tops out at $750k. His 5 year deal is worth 3.5M which is what he'd make here in about two years. You'd have to think being paid a lot of money to coach in the B1G would counter Miles getting fired here. It would be disappointing if we hired Smith not because he's not a good coach but because it means we struck out on everyone else

It's refreshing to know how easy it is to win in basketball at Nebraska. You just need a guy who isn't outmatched on the game strategies, understands analytics to overcome the lack of talent, and can recruit or have a staff that excels at it. It's that simple. I think I found a picture of our next coach:

Nicea deserved to be on the All BIG defensive team.

With all due respect, royal, it appears that if someone disagrees with you, they have poor reading comprehension skills, or are unable to grasp what you are talking about. I think that may be what is causing some annoyance. Just the way I'm seeing it.

Just checked the final big ten standings on the Big Ten website and they had us with a 10-8 record. Maybe they also thought we got screwed by the Wiscy. timekeeper. Sure it will change momentarily.

We have to win the first to get to Butgers though.

We couldn’t have asked for a better tournament draw. Illinois or Purdue can be beaten. Rutgers, defensively will give us plenty of issues if we handle the ball poorly.

Well, coach Lue hired Erick Strickland and LeBron as his assistants, and the entire Duke recruiting class transferred to Nebraska without having to sit out. We won all our non-conference games and opened the Big Ten with two victories, both on the road, against Michigan and Iowa. Fran McCaffery threw every chair from his team's area onto the floor to protest ... well, we're still not sure, but he's suspended for the rest of the season. Bronny James is seeking to graduate from high school in a year, so he should be on the team by 2020-21. Oh, and Lunardi has us in the First Four Out group.

Some players reach their full potential earlier than others. That could be Watson. Although, he is having a decent season this year. Mostly non-conference. Palmer has never been a good outside shooter. The problem with Palmer was when we lost Copeland, the lane became clogged. No one could spread the floor. He shot 42 % from 2 before the injury, and has shot 32 % from 2 after the injury. Allen is inconsistent which goes with playing full time for the first time. Big man have not developed very well. However, Ubel had a good senior season with Miles. He turned it into a good career overseas. Roby went from little interest from schools to a potential first round NBA draft pick. Andrew White went from a little used player at Kansas to an NBA player. Morrow has regressed at Marquette. Why do we have this narrative that Miles is a terrible coach? Terrible coaches don't take a team who hasn't been to an NCAA tournament the previous 16 seasons, and take another school to their third at large bid in program history. Terrible coaches don't finish with a school record 13 wins in a power conference (no matter how down the conference was according to sources). He is a good coach. It just didn't work out for him here.

If you don't pay for local journalism then the University will do whatever it wants to unchecked.

Hannah Whitish honorable mention Maddie Simon Big Ten Sportsmanship Honorees https://bigten.org/news/2019/3/4/big-ten-womens-basketball-honors-announced-on-btn.aspx

Let's just go ahead and bite the bullet now. Let's hire Bill Walton, hear all his stories about indigenous Utah trees, schedule all Pac-12 teams for our nonconference schedule, go 0.500 every season and be told we're the greatest team in the country, and slowly fall into an existential abyss.

Sadly Ignored in the B1G. (I had a different emoji in mind: 6 over & 38 down) I guess we needed to be a Top 10 class instead of Top 20. Lets go make some NOISE in the Tournament!

Can't win at Nebraska? Nonsense! You're only saying that because no one ever has.

"It is five people folks. It is not that hard to win here. We just haven't found the right coach." Finding the "right coach" seems to be the hard part.

A clean slate doesn't sound so bad to me after this past season. Being 2nd to last in the conf w/o high expectations >>>>>>> being 2nd to last in the conf with NCAA Tournament expectations. Honestly though rebuilds suck, but the good news is in CBB quick turnarounds are possible, I'm looking at Chris Beard, Will Wade, Rick Barnes, Buzz Williams - Not saying it will happen, but a coaching change isn't a death sentence of 5 horrible rebuilding years, you can turn over a roster quickly and a team of freshman and transfers can be successful.

You clearly are speaking to others on here so I won't personally take offense. Let me refresh for you and everyone else as to the brilliance of my preseason predictions: I predicted us to win 24 games, including 10 in the nonconference, making the Sweet 16 and then the University erecting a statue of Miles. As you can see, I completely nailed that non-conference piece. Now, you may suggest that I was wrong about us winning 24 games this year, making the sweet 16 and the statue of Miles. However, I will contend that I'm actually pretty close to being right on all predictions, with the exception of the sweet 16. We will beat Iowa, win 5 in a row in the Big Tourney, and make a run to the elite 8: 15+1+5+3 = 24. I not only know a lot, I'm also good at math. This thread will be deleted on March 29th after we give Miles the standard Iowa "coach for life" contract.

Is it that much easier to win at close by schools such as Creighton, KSU, and Iowa St? Or could it be that we have been laughably bad at hiring coaches? I give Collier/Doc credit...they had to try and build a winner with one arm behind their back. Also, I’m not so sure Doc gets hired if the timing was better. So that leaves Tim Miles who had all the bright shiny new facilities, an improved recruiting budget...and he’s going to likely finish under .500 at Nebraska. As I said previously, he is a guy who is better with the mic than he is a clipboard. We could very well hire another mediocre coach. But I don’t buy that it’s harder to win at Nebraska than anywhere else around this region sans KU.

Bill Byrne offered Self a million dollars per year in March of 2000. Self said no. Was it prudent to fold the tent for the next 20 years and stop trying to get a proven winner? I don't think so. When you have the financial wherewithal that NU has you should be able to fix your coaching issues. If you can't that is probably an indication the wrong people have been in charge. In my opinion that has been the problem. NU isn't cursed. It isn't like they have had a series of Dean Smith's in Lincoln who found the one place they couldn't win. We have had decades of sub par head coaches. The facilities are there ( top 10% percent), top 12 fan base, tons of money and Lincoln is a great college town. Doesn't seem to be that hard of a sell to acquire somebody good. But hey this is just my opinion.

"Synchronicity"? Dammit, Jimmy, there goes my self-esteem for the day already.

Riley came here because he had heard good things about our hotels.

I never understand why so many people think it has to be some coach or person with some sort of tie here. Why does it have to be that way? Find the best person who can recruit with assistants and can develop that talent. Its crazy to say that paying a coach $3M would put that guy in the top 15 in the country of salaries above some pretty big names and proven winners. Hope they get this hire right. I'm all for Turgeon, Sampson, Martin, Matta, or Marshall

Not at all. Just a sickening reminder of ‘what could’ve been’

Well my source says that you are all nuts!!

The Wofford coach has been there for like 20 years. Maybe that is what we need to give whomever the coach is.... Time. Unfortunately, I don't think our fan base is patient enough

Fair enough, but I'm guessing they didn't all obtain that history in the first place with a bunch of guys from their own states. We got 99 problems, but in-state talent ain't one. (OK it is one of the 99 problems, but it's not close to the top of the list of problems if you ask me.) Until we actually start signing the best players in this state and losing with them, we shouldn't be whining about our lack of in-state talent. Creighton has been doing just fine with Nebraska kids sprinkled in here and there every year. Treshawn Thurman (6'8") had a good career going at UNO and then transferred to Nevada. He is averaging 7.8 points and 5.7 boards. You can't complain about lack of in-state talent when you don't even attempt to get the ones you do have.

It's not that hard to win here despite the fact that the last, soon to be 4 coaches, where not able to do so. Brilliant! Can't make this stuff up.

Agreed. I have been a fan since the days of Slippery Joe Cipriano. The one thing NU has never tried in basketball is paying enough to get a quality coach. It is time. If Kansas State and Iowa State can win in basketball so can we and probably at a much higher level with the right guy.

If Minnesota wins we are a six seed playing winner of purdue-Illinois. If Michigan St wins we are a seven seed playing Purdue. Minnesoa leads by about 10 now.

At the time we lost at Wisc. I thought it may come back to haunt us but boy did it turn out to be a huge loss possibly keeping us out of the WNIT. I still think there is no way to pull off that .7 second last shot with an accurate time keeper.

So Nebraska?

No. It’s the coaches job to find a way to win. Even if that means a Navy Seal motivating the team. Ask John Cook how that worked out... National Championship run...

I actually really like Heady. I'm about as much of a homer as they come, but I think he's actually very fair. I've never gotten a biased feeling from him. Sipple on the other hand...well, you guys know what I think of him.

Not arguing with your choice, but he's paid to tell you what you want you hear. He's never critical, because he's paid not to be.

Washut is the best and it's not close.

I've been trying to think of a way to say this without getting lit up here, and hopefully I can come close with this. A few premises to start: a. Last night was a debacle of epic proportions. b. No one factor is 100% to blame -- there's plenty that goes into it. c. Miles, no matter what you think about what happens on the court, is a genuinely good person. Those shouldn't be super groundbreaking, and I hope could be accepted by everyone here. So when I propose the following, please remember that I don't put 100% of the blame of last night on it -- it's simply a factor, albeit one to think about as we move forward. As Dan Dakich was going on about how the players on the bench didn't deserve to be in the game (something I happen to agree with), I kept thinking back to an interview that Nick Bahe did with Jake Muhleisen last year. (In fact this morning I went and found it to make sure I was remembering it correctly -- it's linked here, if you want to hear it for yourself.) In it, they discuss one of the potential side effects of a cycle of one-year contracts and "ultimatum" years -- the way it changes how a coach CAN coach. When it's a "win now or you're fired" situation, for better or for worse, it changes the way you handle your locker room as well as the way the locker room responds to you. They gave the hypothetical that if James Palmer was "slacking off", Miles doesn't have the ability to exert discipline when it comes to playing time, because he's forced to play the best players at all times to give him the best chance of winning so as not to be fired. (And let's remember that while he may have a buyout parachute, he is well aware that his staff does not, and as a good person, that would weigh heavily on someone and potentially affect how they operate -- if not for themselves, for the benefit of the staff they brought here.) So last night Miles finally exerted some discipline. Several here have posited that it's too little too late, and they wish he would have done something like that sooner. I'd agree -- except that I can understand why that didn't happen. Last night there was finally nothing left to lose -- that game was pretty well decided by halftime, at least with the trajectory it was on with that set of players, and without a win, aside from winning the Big Ten Tournament the NCAA is pretty well out of reach. Prior to that, it's a little more of a crap shoot -- maybe it works and you save the culture and the locker room and light a fire under the guys. Or maybe it doesn't, and you lose. (Miles has alluded to this being an issue in other areas as well, most notably with his regret over allowing Jordy back -- something he admitted in that Goodman podcast he wouldn't have done normally but went against his own instinct due to the pressure both to win now, and to not lose more players who you might need to win.) It's a more prominent risk, where last night the risk was pretty well mitigated. Again -- this is not to say that a multi-year extension means we don't lose last night. But it's also maybe somewhat disingenuous, or at least unrealistic, to remain mired in the same win-this-year-or-you're-fired pressure cycle (not just once, but three years straight), and expect that to NOT change the way Miles is able to coach. If you think the one-year extension was the right call, you can't be surprised if the locker room gets away from Miles, or hold him 100% accountable to that. Without the ability to enforce any kind of discipline -- because discipline is a risk that may cost you wins, and you need wins to keep your job both for yourself and your staff -- it's tough to keep a group of 18-22 year old dudes locked in and functioning at the required level. We have the benefit of hindsight, so we know we lost those games anyway; in the moment (or the days leading up to it), is it such an easy call? If you know that James Palmer or Isaiah Roby or Thomas Allen or Glynn Watson can give you 15 points in a hurry if they turn it on, and you need those points, it changes how you play them even if they're off -- because they've shown they CAN turn it on at any given time, and so benching them becomes a lot harder to do. Maybe the culture is broken, and of course to some extent that falls on the coaches -- but it's also yet another example of how this administration set up another hurdle for the team rather than clearing it. Maybe I'm putting too much thought into this -- it IS just a game -- but I also tend to be the type to try to pull back from a situation that isn't going well, and try to analyze more about what went wrong in an effort to fix it for next time. In this instance, while there's certainly more that can be expected of the players and coaches, I do think it's reasonable to peel back another layer and ask what could make it less of an issue next time around -- and that's one area I've seen maybe alluded to slightly but not explicitly stated (where everything else has been discussed extensively), so that's where I'm chiming in and hoping to not get destroyed here for saying so.

Might want to look in the mirror and get out of your world to realize that many people on this board have a similar view as you about the coach, but they're choosing not to make every single post on this board about how much they hate Miles and want to see him get fired and move his family out of Lincoln. I'm sure you've got some good perspectives on hoops other than beating the same drum about the inevitability about a coach. How about we talk about those things instead? Otherwise, just join the other handful of people who only visit this board and comment when things are very down in the program.

I totally agree with this in that the job is based on your performance. But …. the thing that bothers me is that it was a 7 year contract and 7 year build and I feel like we undercut Miles in years 6 and 7 with the one year extension. I suppose you can blame having multiple athletic directors, but I would be wary as the next coach being told to come in and build your program. I get that we have great facilities and fan support and should expect better results, but in a 6 year time period we went to the dance and tied for the second most wins in school history and then we shot the puppy. I have resigned myself to the fact that a change is likely coming, but man I would love to see a team next year with Roby, Allen, Heimann, Burke, Green and Mika Adams Woods next year. I would love to see Miles and what I think is a super staff in Lewis and Gates reenergized to hit the recruiting trail with a fresh extension. Next year is already setting up to be another run at 20 wins and a tourney berth if we don't blow it up. After a while winning seasons, the bubble, tourney berths become the norm and then we step up from there. I am worried that this time we actually hire our John Groce.

By the way, for the most part, HB has been a strong supporter for Coach Miles. He also provides great insight/information to this site. He has been through the fun, that is Husker basketball, longer than most of the posters have been alive. So, before you criticize the person, go in through the archives and take a brief look at his body of work. As far as his brief take on spelling, once again, if you have been around this board, you will note that there is a lot of good natured ribbing about spelling, use of semi-colons and the like. It is ongoing and nobody is sacred. Just saying...

I can tell you who wasn’t. Tim Miles.