Norm Peterson

So, Sallis is 7th on his team in minutes this year at just over 16. His offensive numbers are fairly pedestrian. He is dishing 4.25 assists/40 minutes. For comparison, Griesel is dishing out 4.1 while playing 33 minutes per game. So, respectable assist numbers. His 3-point shooting is also Griesel-esque at 30.8 compared to 31.4. You gotta figure Gonzaga is recruiting over him. You gotta figure he knows Gonzaga is recruiting over him. He's not putting up NBA Lottery Pick numbers, for sure. He probably doesn't want to continue to ride the pine even if it's for a ranked team. Maybe there's a chance he'd be looking for a fresh start and thinking he could make his mark at Nebraska. I'd take him, I guess.

I get it with Walker and agree -- and have said on this forum -- that he's special. But I assume your other unicorn-level skill set guy is Griesel. What do you see him bringing to the table that cannot be duplicated by some other portal option? Is it just his length at the PG spot? He has great length. He has great decision making. He's good at driving to the basket. But he's not a very good perimeter shooter. We might take a step down at that spot next year, but I don't see him as irreplaceable. Also, we have a 6'6 wing sitting out this year who has some mad skeelz, IMO. So, while we're losing one unicorn, I'm hopeful we'll be gaining another one. And let's be clear so there's no confusion in the peanut gallery: I am not saying that he's going to be all-Conference or anything. But I do think he'll be a better shooter/scorer on the wing than what we've been rolling out all season. So we might take a step back in one spot, but hopefully a step forward in another.

Kelly Hill's sister played basketball when she was coach.

Early in the fall, he was struggling picking up the offense. Then he got that going but was still lagging on picking up the defense. By the time the season rolled around, he'd made good strides in both, but perhaps he just thought he needed more time. Sometimes people (perfectionists, for example) want to wait until they feel like they are ready. Perhaps he's one of those perfectionists.

If you're in a town that has a style of barbecue named after it, then you can debate which one is the best representative of that style, but any of about 20 to 30 joints are going to be able to produce some top notch smoked meats. I have a buddy who's a member of the KC Barbecue Society and he's done some competition cooks. He and I went to Q39 once and everything we had was first rate. Absolutely first rate. I've been to Joes and it's good barbecue but I also had their smoked chicken gumbo and that was a big mistake. Total waste of the $5-6 I paid for it. The burnt ends were good, though.

Truth.

No, respectfully, it's more than that. The first three years, you saw 3-4 guys trying to run the system and 1-2 guys just doing their own thing. Both on offense and defense. This year it's like there's more of a cohesive whole. Both on offense and defense. And when you watch them play -- I mean, honestly, the first couple of games, the defense looked sketch. But since then they really have picked it up. And offensively, you're seeing movement without the ball. Synchronized movement. Like they're doing what they're supposed to doing. And you're getting the opposing defense reacting and having to move and shift and we're getting open looks. Now, oftentimes we're not pulling the trigger on those open looks, but that's an issue for the portal this year.

He doesn't need to redshirt in order to transfer. If we thought he was leaving, we'd have an incentive to burn his redshirt just to have another warm body. Our incentive for him to keep the redshirt is if we think he's going to stay. He's running the scout team and gets to portray each opponent's featured offensive player. I bet he's pretty good at that. And, as Fred says, he's learning each of our conference opponents, which can only help him.

This year, we are outrebounding our opponents by an average of 1.1 boards per game. Last year, we were outrebounded by our opponents by an average of 7 rebounds per game. That's an 8.1 rebounds per game swing last year to this year. And when you watch the product on the floor, it's like you finally see what this thing is supposed to look like. And it's like, yeah, I can see how this thing could work if you upgraded the talent just a bit. So, see what we can snag out of the portal and cross your fingers that it's what we need. Chances seem to be as good there as whatever coach is behind door #3.

As of right now, I am firmly in the "let's give Fred another year and see what he can do" camp. I don't care how the rest of the season goes. We've lost, to season-ending injuries, 40% of our starters and 37% of the minutes from the team that beat Iowa. I thought that team could reach the bubble. I defy you to find a D1 bench outside maybe the top 25 that could absorb that kind of sudden demand. Let's not even engage in any coaching change talk. Let's just not even do it. If a coaching change happens, fine. But I see no good reason to hash and rehash that with every inevitable loss throughout the rest of the season. Based on this year's resume through the point of Juwan Gary's injury, I'm willing to give this another go and see where it takes us.

I love BBQ.

The argument for getting rid of him is fairly obvious. The argument for not getting rid of him is: 1. Oh, man, not again, we just did this in football. 2. If you can look past the injuries, it does appear there is some momentum building. It's probably worth seeing what he can do with another trip to the portal. 3. Swapping name plates on the basketball head coach's office is a strategy that hasn't panned out so maybe ride this horse a little bit and see what happens. 4. Oh, would you look at the time. I have another meeting with the committee deciding how wide to make the seats in the east stadium. Gotta go.

You know what would make this somewhat of a moot issue? That's right. Grant everybody 5 years of playing eligibility. There. I said it. Again.

This is what I've been thinking. A lot. And Kojenets, too. Because, let's face it, Wilhelm is likely as not going to pick up two quick fouls in any first-half action he sees. And there's just nowhere else to turn for depth. Edited to add: Wilhelm is averaging about 6 1/2 fouls per 40 minutes.

Except I didn't say fudge.

We're having a conversation about what we might do with the winnings in the unlikely event we win the lottery.

So if instead it's Traudt and Parker Friedrichsen, and, say, Chucky, would you be down with that?

It's why we got Nate Johnson back in the day.

Here's another interesting little Kenpom tidbit: Temple vaulted all the way from I have no idea where to #113 after knocking off #1 Houston. On the road. #1 Houston. On the road. Temple (at #113 in Kenpom) also has wins against Rutgers and Villanova back when Villanova was top 20. But then they lost to Wagner, Maryland Eastern Shore and Penn. I mean, how do you do that? How do you beat the good teams and lose to the bad ones more than maybe once in a season? I could give you once. I could see Nebraska dropping a game to Maryland Baltimore County the same year we knock off a ranked Texas team. But those are aberrations. Outliers. I could see it happening once. But twice? Even three times?

Speaking of football players playing basketball and vice versa, I always thought Tom Osborne should have recruited Mikki Moore to come over to the football team just for goal line situations. Have your 300# DL line up as a fullback; have a couple of wideouts fade to each corner. But Mikki Moore was 6'11 with really long arms and one of the best vertical leaps on the basketball team. Put him in the slot, throw the ball high like you're running a lob play for a dunk, and make some little DB try to cover him. I always figured it would be fun to watch and at least worth a try.

Washington St from the Pac 12 is 9-11 and ranked #68 in Kenpom. Someone wanna explain that one to me?

Sure. Seems quite reasonable.

Rebooting this thread because we've seen more of these guys: Lawrence. He is shooting about 33% from 3 for the season. Notably, he started off 1 for 6, but since the KSU game, he's been shooting almost 42% from deep. That's pretty good. Always takes a freshman some time to adjust and get his sea legs. He looks like a kid who can contribute. But he's still buried pretty deep in the rotation so it makes you wonder. Dawson. He had a good night against tOSU. He's an eager kid. He plays hard. You want that. He's a terrific athlete. And, on almost no attempts, he's at 33% from deep just like Lawrence. He is, however, only shooting 37.5% on 2-pointers, whereas Juwan Gary is almost 55% on 2-pointers. So the Dawson-Gary similarities kind of end there. Gary. Good rebounder. I would expect him to be a better 3-point shooter with practice. Hope to heck he gets his shoulder fixed. I know who not to send him to for that. Tominaga. Y'know, dammit, this kid is serviceable. Is he going to be all-conference? Hell no. But he sure can be a spark plug off the bench. His defense isn't THAT bad, but his offense is really crafty. If we had another good shooter on the team, our opponents wouldn't be able to get in his shorts so much when he's on the floor and he'd probably be able to open things up a bit better for us. Pray we can find another shooter who can play on the floor at the same time as Keisei. Because RN, we typically only have one shooter on the floor and it's either CJ or Keisei who sub in and out for each other. Breidenbach. I wish he could shoot the long ball as well as Hunter Dickinson. But he can't. Only about half as accurate as Dickinson. And he's still a foul machine. He's really skilled in a lot of ways but it's like he has difficulty putting it all together. Getting bigger and stronger would certainly help. Wilcher. CJ is just over-thinking things RN. He comes out at halftime for warmups just stroking it. But then he gets in the game and he's clearly thinking more than feeling. The shooting stroke is all about muscle memory and feel. The more you think about it, the worse your results. He needs to learn how to block his conscious mind and just shoot the damn ball. He's only 2 of his last 9 attempts since going 3-6 against Iowa. Something needs to get fixed there because he's better than he's been playing. Keita. Who knows. I hear the coaches like him but it's unclear how well he speaks English and not certain how much he understands of the offense. He's hurt now so we haven't seen much lately. Kojenets. He's a long way from being a rotation guy. Has potential, but he has a lot of developing to do. Lloyd. Redshirting this year. Sounds like recent discussion is he's fully committed. I'd love to see him because he's a long kid who can stretch the floor with his perimeter shooting. Rice. This is sort of a Hoiberg stretch 4 kind of kid. He has the ability to shoot the deep ball. He has that range. He could be an understudy for Gary next year and be a starter/rotation guy after that. Him and Lloyd on the floor together with someone like Lawrence who can shoot it would not be terrible as long as we can play defense. So, looking to me like we need to find in the portal: 1. a PG who is capable of distributing but can also score; 2. a big man to replace Walker if we can find one (those don't grow on trees); and 3. a guard/wing who can flat out score. I mean, assuming Fred comes back, he might very well be able to cobble together a roster that could really compete in this league. The kid from Western Illinois who picked Kentucky? Yeah, we were close.

I knew you guys would come through.

Yeah. We're forcing everything baseline, which I don't have a problem with. As long as it's a guy trying to drive to the hoop. We have someone there to stop penetration. But when our closers bite on pump fakes, the shooters will dribble hard to the short corner and shoot a wide-open 15 footer. Repeatedly. I've seen this same thing, game after game in conference. Granted, it's maybe not the highest percentage shot in basketball, but it's probably better than a contested shot at the rim.