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Still the best Husker basketball board anywhere, by far. This is especially evident on days like today. When other boards are in meltdown, with mainly snark posts and trolling, this one has civil basketball discussions. Disagreements are mainly respectful. I learn from the knowledgeable hoops fans on here virtually every time I log on. The hoops knowledge on here is high level. That's not remotely the case on other boards.

Named to both the coaches and media 1st team View full article

Nebrasketball Transfer Wishlist: PG, SG, SF, PF, C Maybe 2x in each position for some depth.

This was a bad roster. Unathletic and can't shoot. Anything else is over analysis. Not about heart or effort. It's about talent. 17th best roster in the league. Had a chance to overachieve, by winning a few of the close games. Ultimately settled about where we should. Good floor coaching and effort had us in the running to get a bid, but we digressed to about how many bullets we had in the gun. A first team all Big 10 guy and total dude, and a guy who was a dude most of the time despite playing hurt, and then problems. Not enough to survive in this league. The portal needs to be much better this year than last, or we're gonna be at the bottom again. Hopeful we do better there this time around.

Folks, enough of the nonsense fire Hoiberg stuff. The fact that we were in NCAA tournament discussions the last week of the season is a miracle with how flawed this roster was. Outside of Brice and Juwan, the rest of the guys would make up an average A10 conference team. We lost 9 games that came down to the final minute/ OT, so we were right there we just didn’t have enough talent to close out games. Berke got hurt at the worst possible time and we got screwed in a few games. Yes, you can blame Fred for the lack of talent on the roster, but overall the transfers simply didn’t play up to expectations. Is that a coaching issue or the players just not holding up the end of their bargain ? I’m not sure. Fred just needs to get some talent and athleticism from portal with Rienk and we might be alright.

Because of all the other things that happen in the game with OSU. We kind of let this achievement slide. I know if he hits a free throw earlier we win and everything is better. But for a guy to just take over games offensively like he has! I will miss watching him play for us.

Partly - but I think the bigger problem was the inability to pass. Juwan broke open on cuts several times this game and we only threw it to him twice. Once he stood under the basket all alone jumping up and down while Sam just dribbled the ball on the perimeter. The thing this team missed as much as anything was the ability to pass. Wooster is average at best and pretty much everyone on the team would be a below-average passer. (Morgan and Meah would both be WAY WAY WAY below average.)

The poor defensive games this year have all started with not being able to keep ball handlers out of the lane. Iowa made a lot of their initial points in the paint. From there, everything opens up and you're not going to keep up with them unless you can score with them. Mix in Brice not being aggressive at all and Connor being ice cold and you have a recipe for disaster. This season really comes down to being atrocious AT HOME against the bottom tier of the league. Against the top 5 teams, we were 0-6. Just not enough talent to match them and most of those were on the road. Against the middle tier teams (6 through 10), we were 5-1. All of these teams are likely in the tournament. Oregon will be a 5ish seed. UCLA and Illinois 6-7 seeds. Indiana and Ohio St probably 10-11 seeds. Also Creighton an 8ish seed. Beat em all. Against the bottom tier, we were 2-6. And 0-4 at home against these teams. None of these teams are even close to the bubble. If you just win a couple of these home games, you're in for the second year in a row and the program seems like it's rolling. This comes down to a couple things. One, just not enough shot makers. Countless times per game, one of Rollie, Morgan, Uhlis, Meah, Berke would catch the ball on the perimeter within the flow of the offense and there was not even a thought of a shot attempt. Last year, in all these spots you had 35-40% three point shooters who would let if fly with confidence. Everything about a basketball team - and especially a Hoiberg team - flows better when shots are falling. This might not be popular, but I think the struggles can also be attributed to player leadership. Really not meant to be a shot at Brice and Juwan, it's just not in their nature. They've even said it in multiple press conferences. As a coach, I'm not sure how you could further motivate your players against those bottom tier teams with a tourney bid on the line. Motivation and consistent fight wasn't an issue last year for the coaching staff. Mast and Allick have the leadership gene. Wasn't an issue two years ago either. Walker and Griesel have the leadership gene. I have no doubt we'll be a better shot making team next year. Having Mast back will help with leadership. Need to find a few portal players who fit both the culture and the scheme.

In a vacuum, I get that missing the call on the out of bounds with 3 seconds left where we're down three or missing a FT in regulation are reasons we didn't deserve to win. I get that we've blown a bunch of games this season to put us in this position. I'm still mad about having to eat the bowl of dogshit with the catturd on top on a game that was so poorly officiated that anyone who watched it and wasn't a Nebraska fan could see it.

I hate that not all teams make the B1G tournament. It takes a lot of juice out of me personally in gearing up for March Madness. Even in years where we absolutely sucked, likely weren’t going to win a game… there was still that “what if” hope. That “we’re back to 0-0 record” type of thinking. I don’t even want to watch conference tournament week now.

Reading through other message boards.. it's a weird time in history when Husker fans are ecstatic to go 6-6 and make a bowl game against a pretty soft schedule, pumping up the football program as much as ever, but want to fire the basketball coach after the best three year run since '97-'99.

Thank you. Always an emotional day; but again, thank you for being a Husker.

In the last 14 seasons only 6 players on teams with losing records have been named to the B1G 1st team. Brice is the only one to be named to both the coaches and media 1st teams.

Several points on this. Missing the BTT should definitely be cause for concern and dialogue not just amongst the fanbase but hopefully within the AD's office. Results have to matter. However, the results this year are definitely being viewed in a vacuum. The Big 10 has an unbalanced schedule. Fred, or someone on the radio (Kent or Jake) mentioned the other day that our league schedule was 2nd hardest in the Big 10. I will trust this at face value and perhaps someone has a resource to support or debunk this. Anyways, practically speaking, we did not finish 16th in the league. We finished tied for 12th with 5 other teams. Because we lost too much to teams at the bottom of the standings, we lost on the round robin tiebreaker. If our league schedule was amongst the hardest, some grace has to be given while also recognizing that we did a crappy job of not beating the teams we should have or at least not winning nearly enough against those teams at the bottom of the standings. Hoiberg should be reflecting and addressing on why we couldn't beat the teams we should have at a higher rate or close out/win more of the one possession games. Calling the season an abject failure is very extreme. Is it disappointing to miss the BTT? Yes. Were we a missed shot against Michigan, or a made shot from Minnesota, or a double OT ref-screw job against OSU, a non-Berke rolled ankle, or a 15 point lead not pissed away against Iowa from having a good season? Yes, very likely. The margins between a very frustrating/disappointing end to the season and having a good and perhaps a special season, were exceptionally thin. The breaks did not go our way this year, some self-inflicted (Essegian missing a wide open three against Michigan, Brice missing the FT against OSU) and others were just a calamity of bad luck or shitty circumstances. We've made progress as a program the past two years. Next year is a big year for Fred. I have faith and I'll be ready to be hurt all over again in November.

Please provide the data Upon further review, I couldn't help but notice this post you made 14 months ago... "Brice Williams is the biggest waste of a scholarship I have ever seen" GBR

shouldn't have changed the court, obviously

Anyone can transfer anytime and we're just buying guys out of the portal along with an occasional high school transfer. The thing where you extend a coach 5 years to 'show commitment' is an out of date concept.

Watching Nebraska high school girls basketball championship weekend just underscores to me what a disadvantage NU WBB is at in terms of in-state recruiting vs. other Big Ten schools. I can’t think of another state in Big Ten country that produces less Big Ten-level girls basketball recruits than Nebraska does. And yes, I get that we have a smaller population base than all those other states in our conference but we produce a lot of Division 1 high school volleyball recruits. I guess at the end of the day, girls volleyball is more deeply woven into the fabric of our state than girls basketball is or ever will be. Feels like any athletic girl in our state with any kind of height gravitates to VB over BB.

When you asked the Genie for the Huskers to be playing basketball late into March so you could watch them… you should have been more specific my guy.

May be totally off base here, but I believe Mast's passing ability will greatly assist a guy like Connor who was missed on multiple cuts to the hoop this year. If Connor can really work to elevate his defensive efficiencies this offseason, add me into a column of a Keisei Jr to Sr year type jump for Connor. (And no, I'm not saying that Connor will be Keisei 2.0 -- I'm more saying he could make quite the leap)

Given we've spent over $50 million in buying out coaches in the last 20 years, we're certainly no stranger to buyouts. At this particular moment, I think the buyout for Fred is about $12.5 million. On March 31, that number is $10 million. https://nebraska.edu/-/media/projects/unca/docs/transparency/contracts/fred-hoiberg-contract-of-employment.pdf We extended the guy last season and while the end of this season has been a serious of gut punches, it is at least a season that will end in post-season play. Cannot see the University eating this much money for a relatively popular coach who's had 3 decent seasons in a row, as disappointing as those 3 seasons have ended. Can certainly acknowledge this is a low bar. Beyond having the university buyout a coach, you can always have a donor buyout a contract like when someone wrote a check to get rid of Archie Miller at Indiana. I guess my question is that if people think that we're not getting enough NIL money put in towards basketball then who exactly is going to write a check to get rid of very popular head coach Fred Hoiberg? Unless Fred needs to close it down due to health issues, he's easily back for year 7.

Reading this board is my therapy. I can’t imagine going through this alone.

Cazzie’s point above is the bottom line. The west coast schools have substantially raised the bar for competing near the top of the B1G. We have a chance to be as good or maybe even slightly better next year if everything falls right. But that’s just not a good enough trajectory for the top 4-5 any more.

Just need to remember...this last offseason, it wasn't from a lack of trying. But we're going to have to be pretty serious about it this time around.

Keisei had players that could hit him on back cuts. Connor, not so much.

He's talented enough that if Mast is feeding him for easy buckets you could run the entire offense around him like you did with Keisei.

An uninspired 15 point drubbing at home in a must win game to a rival. Lost 12 of 17 down the stretch. What an epic collapse of a season.

UCLA is absolutely destroying Ohio State today. Up by 36 midway through the third quarter. Makes NU's performance yesterday look all that more impressive. Also fun to see an Ohio State team get annihilated!

I would've said something along the lines of "so when the hell are you guys going to fire Kelly Pfeifer?"

Last time we played them they blew us out. this time it was pretty competitive most of the way. I was really impressed considering it's the 3rd game in a row. I hope we don't get the dreaded 8 or 9 seed. 10 would be better.

UCLA humbled us in LA. I hope we have some motivation from that debacle. I don’t expect a victory but I hope we make the Bruins earn it.

Defense?: The most points we gave up in a win was 79 to South Dakota. We gave up 70+ in a win in just 6 of our 17 wins. All other games were in the 50's and 60's for points given up. In our losses, the most points we gave up was 116 (but scored 114 in the double OT games). However, we also gave up 104 in our loss to Purdue. Overall our opponents PPG in our wins was 64.1 and in our losses we gave up 83.5. This team lived and thrived on defense and that's something that we were sorely missing in our losses. When we played hard defensively, we usually won the game. The only games we lost and gave up less than 70 points was @Maryland (3 point loss), Michigan (3 point loss), and Minnesota (2 point loss). The Scott Frost Effect?: We were absolutely terrible this year in one possession games and also games decided by 10 points or less. In one possession games we were an AWFUL 0-6. While we did win some games that were within 10 points, our final record of 6-9 just isn't good enough in that category. So games that were decided by more than 10 points, we were 11-5. We just couldn't make plays in close games to close them out. This brings me way back to the beginning of the year. Maybe the writing was on the wall early? Remember some of those early games where it was probably way closer than it needed to be and we'd end the game on like 7-0 or 11-0 runs to make the score look way worse than it actually was? Yeah well in conference play, those things didn't happen. B1G teams didn't lay down and die for us like some of those other teams and that killed us. The Role Players: Usually when they stepped up, the role players quite literally would make the difference. We could always count on Brice to get his and Juwan to usually do his thing. But this ship went as our role players went most of the time. Essegian-- Our record was 10-5 when he scored 10+ points and 7-9 when he scored under 10 points. When Berke got going scoring... we were 4-1 in games he scored 10+ points. The role players scoring also eliminated the NEED for Juwan and Brice to score in bunches. In games where Gary scored over 20 points, we were just 2-6. Weird stat, but we were also just 4-6 in games where Gary scored under 10 PPG. So when Gary was in his sweet spot of 10-19 PPG, we were 11-2. We were 2-1 when Brice scored over 30 PPG, 4-3 when he scored between 25-29 PPG, 4-3 when he scored between 20-24 PPG, and 7-7 when he scored under 20 PPG. PBA Magic: Whatever happened to our PBA magic... it really killed the vibe. For the first time in a long time, we had a solid road/neutral record. One that would have gotten us to the dance had we taken care of business at home. We finished the year just 10-6 at home, but that record is inflated with our cupcake games. In games against B1G competition, we finish the year just 4-6 including two Q2 and two Q3 losses. Win half of those and you're dancing. We'll finish the year with a pretty nice 7-8 road/neutral record. That'll play every year. That road/neutral record will get it done in the committee's eyes as long as you take care of your home court. There is probably more, and we'll have all summer to hash it out. But we were close. A lot closer than the end of the year situation of not making the B1G tournament may show. Change just the Iowa game at home and we are the 12 seed, we're playing NW with a chance to be very much in the bubble conversation on Wednesday. But... we lost, and now we sit at home and see if Ohio St/Indiana will dance. Should they dance, we're likely locked into the Crown invite as we have to accept being one of the highest NET schools left out.

PG?

You know it's the offseason when we're arguing about which of our mediocre programs was less medicore.

Great debate about the basketball and football seasons. But I'm over here like...

Point Guard is Priority ONE

Only needed to hit on role players last year and couldn't do that. This year we need studs

It would be idiotic to fire hoiberg. Do not let two bad games against Minnesota and Iowa to end the year make us go nuclear. We needed more shooters. It’s impossible for us when we have 3 guys out on the court who can’t shoot from outside the cylinder.

Keisei Tominaga Junior Year - 13.1 ppg/1.6 reb/0.7 assists (66 total makes from 3 @ 40% clip) Connor Essegian Junior Year - 10.7 ppg/2.8 reb/1.1 assists (70 total makes from 3 @ 39% clip) I think we have collectively been too hard on Connor this year. Yes, it's frustrating when he's not making shots as that is his role but he did pretty much what Keisei did his junior year, minus some of the charisma. He's already better than an 8th/9th man and hopefully with a good offseason he makes another jump.

Gutting to watch Juwan walk off the floor like that.

While we mostly felt this game was going to be a loss, I am glad we showed what happened in LA was not who we really are. It was also was fun to watch OSU get smoked by them yesterday. But agree we need to work on what is now a new standard in the B1G.

Omaha's already clinched the Big Dance due to the Tommies of St. Thomas being ineligible for the NCAAs as they transition from D3 to Div. 1. Since Omaha won the regular season Summit League title, they're "in" the NCAA tournament. The two teams will still play tomorrow for a Summit League tournament championship. Congrats to UNO!

Markowski is going to leave a huge void in the middle. I think we will miss Rimdal, who had courage to go to the bucket and at times was a slick passer. Bozan has to get tougher and play defense but may take a big leap between her freshman and sophomore season. Getting a good post in the portal would be my number one request. Potts, if fully recovered will give us consistent scoring, rebounding and leadership. Can Weidner recover by October? Let’s get a win in the NCAA’s in a couple of weeks.

After losing Potts & Weidner early on, it's a really nice accomplishment to have EARNED a 3rd NCAA in the past 4 seasons. GBR