Norm Peterson

I was actually going to start this thread before I saw @basketballjones dog bite thread. Interesting coincidence. Anyway, since there's not a lot of action happening in Husker basketball world, I thought I would share some new things I've come across (and feel free to add your own): 1. Tried our very own @cipsucks Nebraska Star Beef Signature Seasoning on smashburgers. Can HIGHLY recommend. Signature® Seasoning - Nebraska Star Beef® 2. Annual gin sale at The Still going on right now. Picked up some Japanese Roku gin. Niiiice. Highly recommend. 3. Tried Blues Hog BBQ sauce on smoked pork butt for 4th of July. Available at Scheels. Highly recommend. Blues Hog Original BBQ Sauce 25 oz. | SCHEELS.com 4. Went to 801 Chophouse in Omaha a couple of months ago and had a ribeye. It was good. It was alright. Nothing to write home about. Picked up prime ribeyes at Costco yesterday, rib cap removed so it's just the eye muscle. Seasoned ONLY with salt. Allowed to come to room temp. Seared as hot as you can get your grill. Exactly medium rare. Do NOT overcook these things. Absolutely blew away the $65 ribeye at the 801. Fortunately for me, someone else picked up dinner at 801. Nevertheless, if you can handle yourself around a grill, buy the good stuff at some place like Costco and grill it yourself and save the money on dinner at an Omaha steakhouse. I have YET to have one of those guys beat what I can do at home with a steak. Not "new" so much as "recently reinforced." Highly recommend. 5. Elote (a/k/a Mexican Street Corn) is THE BOMB. Highly recommend.

The results of my earlier "what will it take for Hoiberg to keep his job" poll were depressing enough. But when you contrast those results with the ones above so far, it's even worse. You'd have thought off-season staff and player changes would have moved the needle in a positive direction as far as fans' expectations, but, alas, no. In my earlier poll 3 months ago, about 60% of respondents thought we'd be .500 or better, with roughly 13% believing we're an NIT- or an NCAA-caliber team. Fewer responses in this poll, but, now, only about 46.5% think we'll be .500 or better, 3.6% thinking we'll be an NIT qualifier, and exactly zero percent thinking we'll make the dance. I suppose some of it depends on how you ask the questions, but still ...

This is so clearly fake news, I personally won't believe it, regardless who reports it, until UCLA is playing roundball in Lincoln, Nebraska in January. Until then, you guys are all being had. Suckers.

Y'know, instead of the usual "chemistry is better than last year and the guys know we have the talent to win" or similar pap, I'd love to see one of these pundits write, "The players know there's a lot of skepticism among the fans, and big talk going into the last few seasons has basically fallen flat. They know they have to prove it on the floor for fans to start believing in this program again and they want the fans to know, heading into the season, they're all working hard to control the things they can control, and if success eludes them again this year, it won't be for lack of effort."

Sure, Robin. Translated to what? Translated to Mandarin Chinese? I'll wait to see them show it on the court.

Schrodinger's Scrimmage. It both did happen and didn't happen.

Let's say it all breaks our way. And I'm not saying to assume that Keita shows up looking like a lottery pick or that Griesel winds up Piatkowski 2.0. Let's say just all the stuff that is reasonably possible breaks our way. What do you think our season win total would be. Then again, we are Nebrasketball and we basically never get all the breaks or even most of the breaks and sometimes it feels like not even some of the breaks. But if we do get some breaks but only a "Nebrasketball" amount of those breaks, then what? Then where do you put our season win total?

If Keita is the player he was billed to be when his juco team won the juco national title, he would definitely have a shot to be our starting center. Biggest question is whether he's recovered from injury. He's listed at 6'11. His length would give us a legit rim protector. He's able to create his own shot inside. He appears to have solid shooting touch out to at least 15'. Granted, in all reality, I think Walker is probably the guy. He has the advantage of experience. But how would you play Walker and Gary in the same frontcourt? It's like Walker and slightly shorter Walker. I think one of our best hopes for the season is that Keita ends up being the player we hoped we were getting.

Guys, April Fools Day was 3 months ago. Knock it off.

Speaking of unrefined but high end motor, kind of reminds you of the Shelby Ford at Le Mans, huh?

I'm similar to this, but I have ... 1. Griesel -- veteran, steady leadership in a guy who will probably have the ball in his hands a lot. 2. Keita -- we need him to be the player we think we are getting, ie, someone who can score efficiently down low against D and draw double teams. 3. Bandoumel -- maybe Trey 2.0 with a better shooting touch. 4. Gary -- Offensively unrefined, but high end motor. 5. Lloyd -- completely agree, appears to have highest ceiling on the team. Hope his body holds out/holds up.

I realize at this point this is a wild-ass guess and we're doing this mostly sight-unseen, but you have some degree of reputation to go by. You kind of know what our primary needs are. Just rank your top 5 newcomers to our program. A newcomer, BTW, is anyone who hasn't logged minutes in a Husker uniform before this season. And this can be based on what you think or what you hope or whatever metric you choose. And for those who need it, here's the list: 2 Ramel Lloyd Jr, 6'6 G 3 Quaran McPherson, 6'3 G 4 Juwan Gary, 6'6 F 5 Sam Griesel, 6'6 G 10 Jamarques Lawrence, 6'3 G 12 Denim Dawson, 6'6 G/F 15 Blaise Keita, 6'11 F 25 Emmanuel Bandoumel, 6'4 G 33 Oleg Kojenets, 7'0 F (And, yes, that's a long list of newcomers and what it means is that we only have 4 scholarship guys returning who've seen minutes in a Husker uni. So the newcomers are going to be *really* important.)

There's a part of me that thinks our shooters would have better looks if we had a guy inside who was offensively efficient enough to draw double teams. It seems like when we're racing our arses off to close out on shooters because we had to double the opposing post, that's when we get drilled for those long 3-bombs. If Keita can be that kind of offensive force inside, I think our shooters will stand a chance to light it up from outside. I think we have a couple of guys who can do it. Not nearly enough and not nearly well enough, but a couple of guys. Enough to keep us in some games. In order to get out of the cellar and into the conference top ten, having a guy who can force our opponents to double him would really help. In my humble opinion.

I think this is pretty spot-on. Seems like Griesel and Gary could be role players for a great Big Ten-level team, good players on a good team, and stars for a poor team. If they're your stars, you probably have problems in this league. But we'll see.

Bart Torvik's computer is smoking crack.

What will it take for us to climb out of the conference cellar (dead last)? What will it take for us to climb out of the bottom tier (into the conference top 10)? What will it take for us to climb into the top half of the conference? Do we have any players who, in their current positions, are good enough at their spot to get us in contention for an NCAA tourney bid? If so, who are those players and what would we need to have to build around them to make that happen?

I appreciate their optimism.

OMG. 25 yrs old and died of natural causes. His was a great story. He climbed up out of the gutter to become a great player. So sad. So so sad.

In other words, he looks more like Wisconsin. Or, if he had some crazy, misshapen head, Iowa.

That has not historically been a good career move for players in this program.

Where's Keisei?

I was yesterday years old when I learned that Tim Robbins was in the original "Top Gun."

The biggest problem is that NLI (National Letter of Intent, not to be confused with NIL) signing day is before the season gets going and we have to sell them on our last year's resume. So, if we have a *really* good '22-'23 season, it won't happen in time for the '23 recruits to see the progress. We'll just have to sell '23 recruits the same stuff we've been selling fans for the last 3 years.

There are great players for sure. I'm not convinced it's great basketball. Well, check that: it is great basketball but it's very formulaic great basketball. Analytics have been the downfall of, like, creativity. It's all pretty formulaic now. They all want shots at the rim or 3-pointers and so offenses are designed to create those types of shots and, really, only those types of shots. Gone are the days when defenses had to defend the entire end of the floor from the hoop to beyond the 3-point arc and everywhere in between. Gone are guys who excel at the mid-range game. Gone ESPECIALLY are the guys who owned the lane and would score with their backs to the basket. Bill Russell wouldn't find a home on a modern NBA roster. The second-coming of Wilt Chamberlain would be a role player at best. Now, granted, modern passing is crisp and precise and they do a lot of things with off-ball stuff to get shooters open looks. But it's all just a little less interesting than it used to be, and I miss that.

I was expecting ppl to say "aw, man, Norm, stop chugging the Kool-Aid, blah blah blah."