Norm Peterson

@GoBigFred who are your next 3 after the starters?

Man, if there was only some way we could get Kesei and Tibet both here next year. Both are outstanding perimeter shooters. Kesei can dribble behind a screen and smoothly elevate for a balanced shot. Tibet is really quick at catching and shooting accurately. Both have some ball handling skill as well. Having two guys on the floor who are both unconscious shooters, to go with an ultra-quick PG who can drive and dish, would be a really potent weapon.

I like both of these players and would love to see verbal commits soon, especially from Gorener (because he's a 2020 recruit.)

I get what you're saying and I don't disagree with you. In defense of Jervay, however, he was a 39% 3-point shooter in juco ball and over 54% from the floor. He was a high-volume shooter, and sometimes high-volume shooters have to shoot themselves out of a funk or into a flow. And a guy who's used to shooting a lot of balls might miss his first few and then go on a tear. But Jervay doesn't have or hasn't had the luxury of being able to shoot his way out of his funk. Not in the way he would have been used to being able to do at WNCC. Jervay at his best is still a great weapon. I watched a number of his juco games and he could drive the ball to the rim and finish against contact or pull up and knock down a trey. If he's hitting ~40% from 3-point range for us, he's on the floor a lot. For whatever reason, he just hasn't gotten it going and it's affecting him in other ways. I know if I was a college kid and my shot went to shit, I'd have a hard time keeping a positive attitude. I hope he pulls out of it because he still could be a very good player for us. But the way things stand right now, we're undoubtedly better as a team by playing Charlie Easley and Thor instead.

Notably, former Husker Bakari Evelyn, 5th year senior, played 15 minutes, was 0-3 from the field and did not score. That's not far off his average. Easy for me to say, but I think he made a mistake grad-transferring from Valpo, where he averaged about 32 minutes and 10 points/game.

Fair enough. I think the "doom and gloom" is coming from the idea that I was dumbstruck at some of the people on here saying NCAA tourney in year 2 based on either Teddy Allen or Lat Mayen committing (don't recall which.) I don't know. Until we have some players besides Mack that show some all-Conference potential, then our guys are only Big Ten-caliber players in the sense that they play on a Big Ten team. It's still possible. But I'm going to wait and see before I start signing onto the "NCAA in Year 2" crew.

I wish we could somehow merge Kevin Cross and Yvan Ouedraogo. Cross had that throw-down of a dish from Cam Mack later in the game. Next time Yvan's in the game, he fumbles the same pass and it's a turnover. Fred immediately went to the bench (I saw it coming) with about 3 1/2 to play and subbed Kevin back in. He talked about it a little bit on his post-game. Kevin just knows how to make that play happen. But Fred also repeated again that Kevin is 6'6, not the 6'8 he's listed at (which we've all kinda known for awhile now.) Kevin's a bit undersized, but he plays bigger than Yvan. If Kevin had Yvan's size or Yvan had Kevin's tools, we'd have a real weapon on our hands.

I don't think "wait and see" is the same thing as "doom and gloom."

Thor has one of the highest basketball IQs of any player we've ever had here. Examples abound. Some stand out: he knew we had 4 team fouls in the half with a minute or so to play and could force Iowa to waste time inbounding the ball rather than getting a shot at the hoop. Just made sure the foul was on the floor. And you could tell he knew exactly what he was doing when he did it. Thor has made the absolute most of the opportunities he's had to see the floor his entire career here. And he has manufactured a jump shot where there was none, which had to take a lot of work and perseverance. Love seeing that kid have success.

My guess is Nana was gone regardless and Roby was off to the NBA no matter what. I think Miles would probably have used the openings to bring in a grad transfer or perhaps juco big man.

Miles' plan would have had Jervay and Dachon driving to the basket more, and driving lanes would have been opened up with Mika Adams-Woods hitting over 50% from beyond the arc. Looks like Karrington Davis is gradually earning more playing time and making the best of it. He scored 10 points against Missouri. Amir Harris is averaging 10.5 and 7.5 (and 3.5 assists) in 2 games at George Washington so far. And next year, when 2 Rivals 4-stars, Donovan Williams and D'Andre Davis would arrive, we'd probably have a pretty decent team. I think those two are going to be pretty good when all is said and done.

2nd chance points: 12-0 Rutgers Points in the paint: 52-24 Rutgers Fast break points: 6-2 Huskers Rebounds: 48-31 Rutgers Offensive rebounds were pretty even -- 16-15 Rutgers. Defensive rebounds they clobbered us 32-16. Both teams took 63 shots. They hit 34 of them. We hit 20. That's the story of the game right there. You won't win very many basketball contests when you can't shoot for shit.

We DOMINATE in speech and debate. I think I heard we won the Big Ten every year we've been in the conference. So we've got that going for us. Which is nice.

Rutgers has this sophomore kid who's 6'11 and has a 7'7 wingspan. Did I mention he's a sophomore? He shoots jump hooks just the way @Dean Smith described them. His touch is deft enough that he was able to hit 9 of 13 shots, all in the paint. Some of them were dunks, of course. But if he got within 10 feet of the rim, he was pretty effective with that little jump hook. He also had 14 rebounds and a couple of blocks. I don't think he had to chase anyone on the perimeter. Our guards were horrid from 3-point range. Our big men were worse. So, if we have a big man sitting at the end of the bench in a sweat suit who can knock down some threes next year, it'll be an improvement over anything we have right now. We'll see. I kinda like what I saw from the Rutgers kid. It would take a lot of threes to make up for 18 points and 14 rebounds.

I agree. They have a lot of pieces. And they did this to us while missing their best player. And also keep in mind they're a very young team. The guys who killed us tonight were three sophomores and a junior. They had size. They had length. They could shoot the fricking ball. Good team. I hope they do well this year.

Can someone explain for me again the whole thing about how we don't need a traditional big man, we just need a 3-point shooting stretch-4 type because their big man will have to chase our 3-point-shooting stretch guy around the floor when we're on offense and they'll end up subbing in a smaller player to do the chasing anyway? I'm kinda hazy on that one right now.

Are you serious? I think our most talented roster in a very long time was Watson, Copeland, Palmer, Roby, Allen. I haven't seen enough of the sit-out transfers to really assess them, but their stats coming in are not very promising. And the current group of potential returning players would have to take a step up to get to bad. I might need to sit some of these discussions out for a while until we see something definitive, one way or the other. Which basically won't happen until next November. I'm usually the uber-optimistic guy and I'm not seeing right now what others must be seeing. Even under Barry Collier, we never sucked as badly as we suck right now and our $380,000/year recruiting assistant ain't getting our foot in the door with top 50 talent, except the one on our doorstep. So, I'm just gonna take a step back and leave it at that for a while.

@75unlgrad it's absolutely more fun being optimistic. And I'm usually that guy. But this one's tough for me because we return a lot of guys on a team that, right now, is for lack of a better way of saying it, horrible. Here's what we know of next year's roster. Tell me who, among these players, will be all-conference. When you say "Depth of talent is considerable and appears to be at the BIG level" I assume you mean more than just capable of being on the roster of the 14th place Big Ten team, right? PGs (pick 1) Mack SGs/SFs (pick 5) Burke Green Banton Thor Allen Stevenson Arop Bigs (pick 2) Ouedraogo Walker Cross Mayen

Appears Lat's fallen out of the starting lineup. Monday night, he only played 19 minutes and scored 5 points and committed 5 turnovers. Marial Mading started in his place. Hopefully this is just a temporary thing. A third-year player who spent 2 seasons in the Big 12 shouldn't be struggling to find minutes on a juco team during a transfer year.

I'm in wait-and-see mode right now. I see some good pieces on the roster as well as some potentially good pieces (Banton, for instance). But where's that JPJ guy who, when it gets down to crunch time and you absolutely have to have a bucket, can get you one? I think we need to be a considerably better 3-point shooting team and I'm not sure what known pieces for next year's roster are going to change that situation significantly. Right now, we are at best a mediocre shooting team. We will be bottom dwellers in the conference as long as we remain a mediocre shooting team.

There are some full length videos on youtube from his junior college this season. I think four full games around end of Nov beginning of Dec. Just search Chipola College basketball and you'll find them. I watched about 10 minutes of a game against South Georgia and Lat makes a pretty strong, aggressive drive to the basket for a left-handed dunk for his team's first basket (so you won't have to watch long to see it.)

He only averages 9.3 points per game, which, for a junior college recruit, doesn't seem like a lot. But he's shooting 40% from beyond the arc, 46.5% from the field, and 82.4% from the line (!). He has more assists than turnovers. Perhaps most significantly, he grabs 8.1 rebounds per game. He does a lot of what you want. He might not score a lot, but we have other scorers on the squad. What we need is a guy who rebounds well and who's capable of hitting that pick-and-pop 3. And this guy can do both of those things. On paper, I think this is a good pick-up.

He's a solid rebounder who hits for better than 40% from three. Both of those are things we need.

Brian Carr anyone?

Be interesting to see, wherever he ends up, if he gets a waiver to play immediately next year. He sat out part of his sophomore year due to injury and that would, I believe, give him a medical redshirt. But then he played in a few games this season before entering the portal. If there's not a new injury to sideline him for the season, I don't think he has a Copeland-esque waiver opportunity. Instead, he's in the same basic boat as Shamiel Stevenson. But will they treat him the same?