Norm Peterson

No, he's gotta start a brawl with Creighton players or you don't pay him. Be firm about this. And it's gotta be when their starters are on the bench and he has to get them to leave the bench or it's no deal. Maybe tell him you'll pay him $200 for every CU starter that leaves the bench and walks out onto the floor during the brawl.

Have you considered paying a reserve on the Okie State team some serious beer money to start a bench-clearing brawl in the 2nd half?

So I'm watching Syracuse vs. LSU and Miami vs. Kentucky last night on the SEC vs. ACC challenge thing. And the thought that struck me, just going by the eyeball test, was we're better than basically every team I'm watching in these two games other than Kentucky, and Miami is probably close. And then I check their Kenpom rankings today and see that, yep, Kenpom pretty much agrees. Eyeball test still works.

I think we're pretty good, but I still went with 2-2 because ... 1) That's a murderer's row 4-game stretch; 2) Winning streaks are hard to sustain because you'll have an off-night every now and again and one of your opponents could get hot; 3) It's tough winning on the road even against inferior teams and KSU is certainly on par with us if not possibly a little better, so an awful lot would have to go our way to pick up that W.

Seems reasonable.

Minnesota plummets to 135. Meanwhile, San Jose is creeping up to 115. Penn State is in danger of dropping out at the top 100. We are holding somewhat steady in the upper 40s. A win over Team Voldemort would probably catapult us upward. If we do that, though, we cannot lose to Minnesota on the road. It would waste that bump.

Probably something to do with our shooting percentage. We're finally hitting shots. So many times in the past, the assist was lost because the guy who caught the pass missed a wide-open shot or just didn't take the shot. The passes were there, though.

Adrame fouled out in 4 minutes against North Dakota State last night. It's his 3rd time fouling out in 7 games this season. And San Jose St won by 13, so it's not like he picked up 3 fouls late trying to put the other team on the line to extend the game. So I don't even know how you do that. How does one even pick up 5 fouls in 4 minutes of game time?

I can't remember how I put it before, but it was something like I'm not saying we'll be great, but I do want to see how we stack up. Well, these next 4 games are real "stacking up" games. I think we have the potential to be a pretty good ballclub. We've beaten a couple of teams that were really pretty decent, including Duquesne. We've dominated some of the other clubs. But I'm still not confident how we stack up against our own conference. And I'm not sure the conference schedulers have done us any favors, either. I'd say there are three categories of teams you face: 1) they'll likely beat you home or away; 2) they likely lose to you home or away; and 3) they probably split and each team would likely win at home. So, if you had the PERFECT schedule, you'd not want to waste a home game on EITHER the teams you'd likely lose to home or away OR the teams you'd likely beat home or away. You want to save the home games for the teams in the middle where the winner will probably be the home team. We have six single-play games, 3 at home and 3 on the road. I'd say two of the three home games in single-play are against teams that would likely beat us either place (MSU and Purdue). ALL THREE single-play road games are in the category of "home team probably wins." So, in the single-plays, the likelihood would be that we go 1-5, whereas if you flip the home/away factor and we face Purdue and MSU on the road and get to play Maryland, Iowa and Illinois at home, we might go 4-2. That's a huge swing. HUGE! Unfortunate that the scheduling happened to work out that way this year, but does anyone disagree with my thought process? In any event, these next 4 games will give us a good barometer of how good we *could* be and whether some of these single-play road games could actually represent an opportunity to burnish our resume.

Proposition: Juwan Gary's season-ending shoulder injury and surgery on his non-shooting arm is the best thing that happened to his basketball career. Change my mind. GP GS MIN FG FG% 3PT 3P% FT FT% OR DR REB AST BLK STL PF TO PTS 30 2 9.4 1.6-3.0 53.9 0.0-0.3 11.1 0.6-1.1 52.9 1.3 1.5 2.8 0.2 0.4 0.5 1.3 0.4 3.8 29 16 15.5 2.5-4.9 51.4 0.3-1.4 22.0 1.1-1.9 61.1 1.7 1.7 3.4 0.3 0.6 0.6 2.1 0.6 6.5 17 17 29.5 3.8-8.6 43.5 0.9-3.4 26.3 1.1-1.7 62.1 2.1 4.4 6.5 0.8 0.5 1.4 1.9 0.9 9.5 4 0 22.8 5.8-10.3 56.1 1.8-4.8 36.8 2.8-4.0 68.8 2.5 4.5 7.0 1.0 0.5 0.8 1.5 0.5 16.0

And we have 7 wins. And 7 players shooting 35% (rounded) or better from 3-point range. Four at 40% or better. Four guys averaging between 14 and 16 points per game. Our portal post is averaging a double-double. Our portal SG is shooting almost 42% from 3 and over 90% from the line while posting a 2.4:1 assist/turnover ratio. Our portal native Nebraskan is putting up darn close to the numbers he posted a year ago as a starter at New Mexico in 6 fewer minutes per game. Our SG-converted-into-a-PG has dished 23 assists to only 10 turnovers on the season, and zero turnovers in the last 3 games. What we didn't find in the portal we seemed to have found within our own numbers. It'll be interesting to see what we do on Sunday, but it looks for all the world like all of our major roster needs over the off-season have been addressed. This just has the looks of a team that's going to win some games this year.

Jamarques deserves some love for sure. His shooting is still coming around, but he's over 71% from the FT line compared to last year's 38.7% rate. I knew he was better than that number from last year. I knew that would come around. What I love to see with him is how fast he pushes the ball up the floor in transition. His handles appear to have improved significantly over last year. He's making good decisions and he's dishing the ball without being selfish. Which is what we wanted from a PG. He's a guy who actually has the speed and handles to challenge defenses going to the rim. He just needs to finish better. His 3-point shot needs to start dropping a little more consistently. But if you look at just his 2-point shooting in the last 4 games (the first 3 were rough), he's hitting over 57% on his 2-point shots. That's really efficient. And in those last 4 games, he's also dished 16 assists, grabbed 14 boards, and only turned it over 3 times. And his defense remains on point. Cutting him some slack on those first 3 games while he's trying to settle into a new role, and it looks like he's becoming the PG we hoped he could become.

How so? There are whole threads on "old friends" who transferred and Huskers in the pros who are no longer current players. A lot of people really liked Tim Miles when he was here, thought he gave us his best, and wish him well.

Well, first of all, I always think it’s OK to talk about next year. Having said that, it was @basketballjones’ fault. He started it.

At which positions? Returning players with starting experience: 6-10 Rienk Mast 6-6 Juwan Gary 6-7 Brice Williams 6-5 CJ Wilcher 6-3 Jamarques Lawrence 6-2 Sam Hoiberg Exhausted eligibility: 6-7 Josiah Allick 6-5 Boogie Coleman 6-2 Keisei Tominaga So, maybe grab 1 each at the positions of the guys we're for sure losing?

Sorry, thought I was clicking on the Fullerton game thread.

I should hope so. Cal State Fullerton is low 200s in Kenpom. If we can't beat them at our house, we better abandon all hope of reaching any kind of post-season.

Woohoo! We jumped ahead of Michigan after they got their butts kicked by Texas Tech!!! But we stay at 7th in the league because Ohio State handed it to 17th-ranked Alabama.

He pointed out the fickle nature of the sweater vest fanbase. I got no argument with him at all on that score.

I don't understand your post. Seems like there are more fertile grounds for casting aspersions at Team Voldemort. This seems rather understandable.

After beating Michigan, and entering the top 25, Memphis is getting absolutely manhandled by Villanova by almost 30 points right now. Does this maybe drop Michigan below us in KenPom?

Kind of a tough weekend for Creighton football fans.

To say John Bishop rubs me the wrong way would be like saying Mt. Everest is tall or the Pacific Ocean is big.

Up to #42 this morning, having not played anyone. Others losing in front of us or teams we've beaten doing well?

The coach was trying HARD to get T'd up. He was out of the coaching box and the ref was ignoring him. His assistants were trying to pull him back and he resisted them and kept jawing at the official. Eventually, the official was like "OK, you want a T, I'll give you a T."