Norm Peterson

Good point. And I did forget him.

I'm tellin' ya, we better not lose Lawrence. That kid has proved himself. Dawson gives GREAT energy even though he's low-skilled and raw. But he's such an athlete. Put them in the mix with Ramel Lloyd and Keisei next year and it's a decent nucleus to build around. Breidenbach has some skills and teams would definitely look at him. Same with Keita just because of his length and what he did in juco. McPherson? Meh. Oleg? Meh. We need a PG and we need a big man or two.

2019–20 Nebraska 7–25 2–18 14th 2020–21 Nebraska 7–20 3–16 14th 2021–22 Nebraska 10–22 4–16 13th With a year in '20 that we're not counting (because I'm King and declared we wouldn't count it.) And I'm just looking at the conference record.

Emmanuel Bandoumel went out in the first PSU game. Juwan Gary went out against Illinois on January 10. It's been four games since we lost Bandoumel to a season-ending knee injury. I was curious how their minutes have been distributed. Before they were hurt, Bandoumel and Gary were both averaging about 30 minutes per game. Before Bandoumel was hurt, CJ Wilcher was averaging 29.55 min/game; in the 4 games since then, he's been averaging 20.75 min/game. So, he's actually lost minutes. Before Bandoumel was injured, Jamarques Lawrence was averaging 10.5 min/game; in the 4 games since then, he's been inserted into the starting lineup and is averaging 27.25 min/game. Before Bandoumel was hurt, Keisei was averaging 20.4 min/game; in the 4 games since then, he's averaging 28.75 min/game. Before Gary was hurt, Wilhelm was averaging 13 min/game; in the 6 games since a 23-minute season high at Purdue, Wilhelm's minutes have steadily declined, and, in the last five games, he's averaging 10 min/game while only checking in for 6 minutes in the win against PSU. Before Gary was hurt, Denim Dawson was averaging 11.57 min/game; in the 7 games since Gary was hurt, Denim has averaged a whopping 28.29 min/game. When Juwan Gary went down, I didn't think we'd win another game this season. After watching this team continue to fight against Purdue, I thought we had a chance to maybe steal a couple. We've now done that with home wins over tOSU and PSU. We still have 4 more *home* games remaining, including a couple against two teams currently in the bottom 4 of the current conference standings. For real. When does that ever happen to us? We have 2 of our remaining 4 home games against teams currently in the bottom 4. And a third game against the current 9th place team. The freshmen have really taken advantage of the opportunity. Jamarques Lawrence, for instance, is averaging 47.4% from 3-point range since he joined the starting lineup after Bandoumel went down. Can't complain about that at all. And those two frosh are showing they can "D" up with the best on our team. Bandoumel was better than Lawrence on D, but Lawrence is clearly the more potent offensive weapon. And I just don't know what you do with Denim. He's offensively very raw, but he gives so much energy when he's on the floor. I would hasten to add Denim scored only 19 total points in the first 14 games combined, but he's scored 25 points in the 7 games since Gary got hurt. Similarly, he had 15 rebounds in the first 19 games, and he's grabbed 31 in the 7 games since. So, his averages since Gary went down are 3.57 pts and 4.43 rebounds. But that's in the same number of minutes, roughly, as Gary who was giving us 9.5 and 6.5 pts and bds respectively. Gary's better, clearly, but Denim is contributing significantly and we've won just as much. So, we've had a few underclassmen really step up their games when opportunity knocked. And a couple of underclassmen who've maybe disappeared a bit. We'll see how the season finishes but this gives us a bit of a window into the future perhaps.

Pikiell's coaching record at Rutgers looks somewhat familiar: 2016–17 Rutgers 15–18 3–15 14th 2017–18 Rutgers 15–19 3–15 14th 2018–19 Rutgers 14–17 7–13 T–10th 2019–20 Rutgers 20–11 11–9 T–5th NCAA Division I Canceled 2020–21 Rutgers 16–12 10–10 T–6th NCAA Division I Round of 32 2021–22 Rutgers 18–14 12–8 T–4th NCAA Division I First Four 2022–23 Rutgers 16–6 8–3

I'll just throw this out there: Before "the punch" Juwan Howard was 56-27 (.675) as a head coach at Michigan. Since "the punch" he's 18-15 (.545). And the trajectory is downward. He's .500 over his last ten. Tom Izzo is 68 years old. Ohio State is barely limping along. Right now, the only team that's clearly better than Rutgers in this conference is Purdue. Not saying those other teams will fire their coaches and go after Pikiell (though they'd be foolish, if they had a vacancy, not to) but I mean he's ascending at a good time in this league to ascend. And if he wants to stay at Rutgers, he's probably in a good spot to have persistent success there.

Pikiell will get hired by someone else before too long. Too much success to stay at Rutgers. Although, they're becoming the biggest name on the East Coast, so maybe that's reason to stay.

I don't think jucos. They take too long to develop. I think it has to be portal players. Hopefully with more than one season to go.

Watch this highlight video and fall in love. Here is your PG who CAN score, but who also distributes. And he's a DAWG.

Also, if I'm not mistaken, he stopped off in Hampton, NE, home of the Hampton Hawks, on his way to Lincoln to watch our game. Is there a Husker connection there somewhere, @cipsucks?

I was skeptical that he was a P5 player until I watched the highlights from his (small school) team's win over Tulsa Memorial (large school) in the Tournament of Champions championship game. He is both skilled and athletic. And, on top of that, he has that dawg mentality. He shoots really well off the dribble. Best thing for us is he watched Keisei scoring on the same kinds of action that he scored on in the championship game. He would clearly be able to visualize himself doing that on our floor.

The starting lineup that beat PSU had only 2 seniors. PSU's starting lineup had 5.

I'm confused. On the one hand you're talking about how we don't have hyped recruits. On the other hand you're talking about being burned by players not living up to the hype. How about this: We did pretty well in the portal last season despite a poor record. We have more to show this year AND we have some promising young talent on the roster and getting minutes right now, more than we did last year, to build around.

CJ's problem is mental at this point. He comes out at halftime and drains them one after another. He's one of the best halftime shooters I've ever seen. He doesn't seem to know how to tap into muscle memory when the action goes live.

I didn't go digging for this. It was in a "similar content" list below one of the current threads. Curious, though, how you'd answer these questions now, two years in.

Yeah, well, his next spot is going to be one foot in Utah and the other foot in New Mexico, nothing but the bottom of the net.

Keisei lends new meaning to the basketball term "Four Corners."

In fairness, I don't think this is a double standard. Both coaches get fired from their current job. He's hoping Mickey gets another job soon, a 2nd chance, and he's also saying we should be willing to take Beard, another 2nd chance. He's not saying Texas should have kept Beard and that we needed to fire Mickey. If that's what he's saying, then it's a double standard.

No. This game was well-reffed because, with 2 minutes left in the game, neither team was in the bonus and they had the luxury of being able to foul Derrick Walker to put him on the line for a 1-and-1 as soon as he caught the in-bound pass. The front of which he promptly missed and they got the rebound. So the strategy worked.

So they better be good this year because their next two off the bench are both freshmen.

Just some context for some of the gems you can find in the portal with a little digging and some good fortune: Jalen Pickett was an unranked 3-star on Rivals who committed to Sienna out of HS and played there for 3 seasons before transferring to PSU. He now leads PSU in points, rebounds, assists and steals and is in the running for conference POY. Andrew Funk is averaging over 40% from 3-point range for the Nittany Lions this year. His junior year at Bucknell, he shot just 26.9% from 3-point range. Three of PSU's top 4 scorers are players they picked up through the portal. Two of them just last year. They have 4 more home games and a road contest against Minnesota to get to .500 in the league and a possible NCAA tourney bid. Last year, they finished the regular season with a record of 12-16 with only 7 wins in conference.

Yeah, me. There was one possession near the end of the first half where they decided they needed to get an open look from 3 for either Lundy or Funk. So initial ball movement, pass to the corner, guy drives baseline, kicks to the top of the key, one extra pass beyond that to a wide-open Lundy on the wing, and he nails it.

Yeah, you're probably right. The way that clip was put together made it seem like they were talking about Keisei. Apparently they weren't.

Just occurs to me, I didn't see the whole broadcast, but maybe they were referring to one of the PSU players. The clip makes it seem like they were talking about Tominaga, but the way the clip is spliced together, maybe they weren't.

I'm just going off of what they said on the broadcast, which was included in the clip I posted above. Kugler said Keisei, at more than 3 made 3-ptrs/game, leads the Big Ten in made threes. I didn't fact-check the statement; I only repeated it. Go to the :50 mark of the above clip and you hear Kugler say "big time 3-pt shooter averages over three made per game, LEADING the Big Ten." That's an exact quote. I can't vouch for the accuracy of the comment; I can only vouch for the accuracy of the wording of the quote. It's what he said.