Norm Peterson

2017-18: PG Watson (jr.) SG Gill (sr.) SF Palmer (jr.) PF Copeland (jr.) PF Roby (so.) Bench: Taylor, Jordy/Duby, Allen 2018-19: PG Watson (sr.) SG Allen (so.) SF Palmer (sr.) PF Copeland (sr.) PF Roby (jr.) Bench: Harris, Akenten, Chan/Heiman

Doathlon, what are we going to argue about heading into the year this year? We could do something Isaac Copeland again and keep that theme going. I predict he'll be a senior this year. I'm pretty confident about that. Feel free to disagree, however. ?

That's a refreshing quote from a player's perspective. Hope it's accurate.

It definitely wasn't when he was a freshman. He worked a shit ton on it during the offseason between his freshman and sophomore years. As a sophomore, his shot looked improved tremendously. And the results were he went from shooting 20% from three as a true freshman to shooting 40.5% from three as a sophomore. There are still things he needs to work on, like speeding up his windup and release. There's a lot of wasted motion in there, which eats time. But, at 6'8", he's getting that shot off against most college players he'll face. Especially if he can add a dribble drive that will make bigger players respect his ability to put it on the floor.

I agree with Dimes and I am sure Roby knows this. He's a capable ball handler in the open floor, but when he puts it on the floor to try to take his defender off the dribble, he's not as tight with the ball and controlled as he should be. His shot ain't bad but it could be better, and I'm sure he's continued to work on it. But driving the ball and getting to the rim against defense is clearly where his game could improve the most. I think Roby might have one of those Webster-esque increases in usage. I posted some time ago about the number of attempts that will be available with the departures of Taylor and Gill. Had to do with the fact that Glynn wouldn't need to shoot it any more often than he did a year ago but just at the rate he did as a sophomore in order to jump his scoring productivity into the mid-teens. I don't see Palmer or Copeland taking fewer shots, but neither do I expect them to take a ton more than they already were. Someone has to absorb the increased opportunities and I think Isaiah is probably that someone.

I'd be curious if one of the armchair head coaches could explain to me what you do to coach around Aaron Williams, Sr. DB from Atlanta. He was thrown at 10 times, gave up 10 catches, committed 4 penalties of which 2 were declined. One because they scored a TD on the play in spite of his holding the receiver. I'll hang up and listen.

No. He was 19-19. But he left behind a mess. Just like Doc inherited a huge mess from Barry Collier. And just like Miles inherited a mess from Doc. Those are still losses hung on the coach at the helm at the time, but this is where we get into people calling reasons "excuses."

The eagle has landed.

See, this is what happens so much among fans. Someone might take a superficial look rather than a deep dive and say we should be better than 0-6. Which means fire the coach, because it's his job to recruit, develop, strategize, plan, prepare, etc. And if the Win/Loss record isn't what you think it should be, then the coach should be gone. But if you take that deeper dive and say, well, hold on here, there are some good things going on and some near misses and some issues beyond the coach's control, etc., then you hear "you're just making excuses." To this day, there are people over on the Rivals board bashing hoops supporters over EVERY BIT OF GOOD NEWS THAT COMES DOWN THE PIPE: "No excuses this year;" "Can't wait to hear the excuses this year;" etc. as though they expect something bad will happen even though no games have even been played yet. I read those comments and it just blows my mind. As of this moment, it seems like the people who have been on the side of giving Miles additional time have been vindicated in their position. Can you imagine where we'd be if we'd have canned him at the end of the last year or the year before that and started over with a new coaching staff? We'd have someone else at the helm starting from the bottom on the old 6 year plan. We sure as hell wouldn't have national analysts picking us among the top 20 teams in the country. So, Frost, let me make some excuses, OK? 1. He doesn't control weather. No one can say it's his fault we didn't play against Akron. Play that Akron game and your guys get some game reps against a team we almost certainly would have beaten. But the experience would have been invaluable. Play that game and we start out 1-0. 2. We were beating Colorado until Martinez got hurt in the 4th quarter. True freshman playing his first game in quite some time (due to HS injury -- did he miss all of his senior year?). That was the most obvious attempt to injure an opposing QB I've ever seen in a college game, by the way. If EITHER we have a warm-up game against Akron OR Martinez doesn't get injured, I think we win that CU game and get a little momentum going. That puts us at 2-0. 3. Sophomore walk-on QB starting his first game against Troy. We spotted Troy a 17-point lead and lost by 5. Does that happen if we have Martinez playing? Who knows? It's at least arguable that Martinez makes the difference in that game. And Troy was supposed to be one of our toughest home foes going into the season according to realtimerpi.com. Get the winning started against Akron, we probably walk off that field 3-0. 4. Michigan is a buzzsaw and now you have negative momentum going against you. Frustration leads to people doing stupid things they wouldn't otherwise do. And that leads you to … 5. Purdue. Martinez was 25 of 42 for 323 yards and 2 TDs. Good numbers. Especially for a true freshman QB in his 4th game. We got on the scoreboard first. We outgained Purdue in total yardage. We hung 28 points on them. Defense just couldn't stop them when we needed to. And, as HB pointed out above, we kinda have a shortage of impact players on the defensive side of the ball. 6. Northwestern. It was just their day. Did anyone think we were going to win after they picked up 2 4th-and-tens in their penultimate drive? I think if we'd gotten that first game in, we're probably 4-2 right now. Maybe 3-3 at worst. But, with losing, the frustration builds. And it takes its toll. It's that negative momentum. If you've never experienced it, you maybe don't understand it. When you're losing, you start forcing things and trying to do too much in some cases. And losing can reveal the bad character of some players that winning would conceal. You maybe find out who some of the quitters are or which players have bad attitudes. So, games upcoming that we would otherwise win, we're more likely to lose just because we've been losing more than we wanted to or ever thought we would leading up to this point. That's just a fact. Argue it if you want, but any coach in that situation is going to face a challenge. I think it happened to the hoops team a couple of years ago when some players just plain quit on the team down the stretch. You could see it happening if you knew where to look. So, anyway, half a season is not nearly enough time to give the coach to see whether he's going to be able to succeed here or not.

Would if I could fine one.

OMG FIRE THE COACH!!! (Isn't that how this game is played?)

Dare I say it? cough cough the next Isaiah Roby cough cough

SF Bryce Hopkins (Illinois Wolves) Hopkins was definitely undervalued in our initial 2021 rankings and will see his stock boost inside the top 10 overall with his play in July. The Fenwick small forward has strength on the perimeter and can really score it. Also proved to be a versatile defender checking both posts and perimeter players. https://www.prephoops.com/2018/08/july-stock-boosters-2021-prospects/

By the way, with this kid's ball-handling and growth projections, it's good we're in on the ground floor, because he's not going to fly under the radar for long.

Here I was feeling guilty for not at least posting a link. I'll go one step further now and post the chart.

Oh, c'mon, as dad jokes go, that was pretty decent. Using a Wikipedia link to prove Kansas isn't a unicorn? Man, tough crowd.

No, it's not. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas

Never say never. When we're up 25 on Seton Hall at the under-4 timeout, I'm betting we'll see a lineup that includes more than 2 players not in that group.

Are you absolutely shitting me? Why have I never heard about this?

Miles said something like "We have 4 players that anyone else in the league would take; that's not always been the case." No, Tim, that's NEVER been the case. Possible exception would be a window of about 4 years in the early- to mid-90s. Otherwise, "not always been the case" is a huge understatement.

Which "Big Ten head coach" do you suppose said this about Iowa?: Where they win: “The state has a lot of dogs named Carver. There’s no doubt that Iowa is the state school. It’s also easy to get kids into school, and keep them in.” – Big Ten head coach

Guessing he projects as a 4. As a freshman, he was 6'5" and built kind of stout. Based on CDC growth charts, he could easily grow another 3-4 inches before he graduates and start college at 6'8" or 6'9". With that frame, I could see him 6'9" and 240# as a college sophomore.

Out of 28 ballots, only two had us outside the top half of the league. Only 5 ballots had us outside the top 5. Sixteen voters -- a strong majority -- had us in the top 4.

It would be interesting to be a fly on the wall when Jacobson is in the game. Guessing he'll want to go into beast mode against his old mates.