Norm Peterson

The college basketball forum is probably the spot, but then few ppl would actually see it.

So, let's say you're a highly sought after transfer kid who grew up in Nebraska and you're now in the transfer portal with your pick of a lot of places. Do you go ... a) to a local program where the head coach has won an average of 8 games per season for the last 3 seasons; OR b) somewhere else? I don't feel like I'm in any position to judge Baylor Scheierman's choice here. We need to earn the respect we want. Start winning some games and we'll start landing players like this. Until then, we really have no business complaining that he didn't pick us. Hell, I wouldn't pick us at this point.

First 13 Husker possessions of the '21-'22 season, game 1 against Western Illinois, through first media timeout. Possession length/Player/result 13 seconds/Alonzo Verge/missed jumper from opening tip 19 seconds/Bryce McGowens/missed layup following WIU made shot 4 seconds/Trey McGowens/missed layup following Trey McGowens steal 7 seconds/Bryce McGowens/missed jumper following Bryce McGowens defensive rebound 10 seconds/Bryce McGowens/2 made FTs following Alonzo Verge defensive rebound 3 seconds/Bryce McGowens/missed 3 pointer following Derrick Walker defensive rebound 13 seconds/Derrick Walker/missed layup following Bryce McGowens defensive rebound 7 seconds/Bryce McGowens/made layup following Bryce McGowens defensive rebound 17 seconds/Alonzo Verge/made layup following WIU made shot 15 seconds/Alonzo Verge/missed jumper following WIU made shot 9 seconds/Bryce McGowens/missed jumper following Derrick Walker defensive rebound 7 seconds/Derrick Walker/missed 3 pointer following Alonzo Verge defensive rebound 15 seconds/Derrick Walker/turnover following WIU made shot Average possession length: 10.7 seconds Points per possession: 0.46 (Average possession length for possessions in the first half ending in shots by Bryce McGowens: 9.35 seconds) It was in that first six minute stretch of the first half of the first game last year that I concluded this could be another really crappy season. And it took 27 more games before they started to look again like the team that throttled Colorado in the first 30 minutes of that earlier exhibition. So, I'll just sit here and be cautiously pessimistic that Hoiberg can pull a rabbit out of the NIL hat. He has not shown a deft touch so far at getting egos and competing financial interests to blend into a cohesive, functioning unit.

The start of this last season, almost the very first minute of the first actual game, was my "oh shit" moment that the season could go pear-shaped. The Colorado exhibition was promising. Ball movement looked really good for about 3/4 of the game, and we got up big on a team that was expected to do some things in the PAC However Many. But ball movement damn near stopped from the opening tip against Western Illinois as two guys who probably had pretty lucrative NIL deals took turns at having the ball stop in their hands. The possession was going to end with a shot by whichever of those two guys got the first touch after the first pass. And nothing happened. No consequence. Nobody got yanked. We didn't see two guys sit for a stretch and get told to get with the program. And it took 27 more games to get things straightened out. Yeah, Chuck, I'm with you. Not a lot of confidence. Strictly a "prove it on the floor" approach from me this year.

Another set of problems with NIL that I don't think we've really talked enough about: 1. It just feels kinda dirty that your team (regardless of which team you cheer for) went out and bought a roster. 2. You instinctively know that there's a strong, positive correlation between the size of the NIL deal and your chances of landing any given player. So, you also understand, therefore, that players are making decisions based less about relationships and loyalty to a particular institution and more about being mercenaries to the highest bidder. 3. The portal is going to be active with players looking for better NIL deals. 4. You don't get a better NIL deal by being the blue-collar, lunchpail kind of guy who gets floor burns from diving for loose balls. Think about that. Think very hard about that. Think about incentives and how people respond to incentives. This NIL stuff, in a lot of ways, presents a perverse incentive. 5. It's going to be more difficult than ever for coaches to manage a group of players whose individual goals will necessarily not align exactly with the team goals of group cohesion, team success, and working towards a group goal greater than any one player. So, a prediction: We might be looking at some crappy basketball, but at the end of the game, one team still has to win. The coaches who can best manage all the egos and get their players to buy in are going to have more success than some of the coaches whose boosters will have produced some of the better NIL deals. Therefore, go out and find a couple of studs and try to reel them in, but you better also find some guys who just want to win.

I think the biggest fallout that's going to occur from NIL is fat cat boosters are going to write checks directly to players and not to programs. And the consequence of that is going to be that, if you didn't have the foresight to upgrade your facilities recently, you better hope you can get by with just a new coat of paint and a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the remodel of the head coach's office. Because all the money that would have gone to facility upgrades is now going to go to TV ads for the latest recruit pretending to like the local Buick dealership. Fortunately for us, our stuff is still pretty new and the things that we're building now are (hopefully) already funded.

Let's say hypothetically, Mathis is getting $1.2 million from NIL to play here next season. Just throwing that number out there hypothetically. Do you think any program would get their foot in the door to even have their relationships and culture considered if they were south of 7 figures? But when they talk to the mom, do you think she's going to say, hey, it was a sweet deal from the highest bidder? Or do you think she's going to talk about, hey, we really liked the place and it looks nice and the folks there were good to us when we were in town?

So, I mean fit obviously matters to some extent. But I suspect fit is a distant second to money as a consideration when it comes to where recruits are going to be committing in the age of NIL. Which leads me back to Matt A. Not saying he is or was a bag man, but it seems to me that NIL has done to bag men what streaming services did to Blockbuster, which is to put them out of business. You don't have to hide it anymore. Now, you can do it openly. So, the whole profession is basically out of a job. And as far as being an assistant, now the most important attributes an assistant could possess would be identifying talent that maybe other programs have overlooked, and then helping to develop those players so that programs can maximize their talent level without having to pay as much for it. And it seems to me that combination of considerations leaves Matt A sort of out in the cold. He's not useful any more. What he could bring you before is either a) no longer unique or b) no longer as valued. So, him and his BFF mutually agree to part ways. And I guess that makes sense to me. But it didn't really hit me until a couple of days ago, when I heard about some of the numbers being thrown around for players here at Nebraska, that this rule change may have just rendered his role here moot.

Maybe Matt A. was a bag man. Maybe he was really good at establishing relationships. Does any of that matter when the money is now out in the open and players are looking for the best NIL deal rather than who picked up the phone and called them the most and told them how wonderful they were? There might not be a better example than the one Handy just described. In what world is it an advantage to have someone on staff like Matt, an assistant coach whose only responsibility is recruiting, when players now seem to be picking schools based almost entirely on who offers the best NIL deal?

Discuss amongst yourselves.

Is that a deadline to commit or a deadline to enter the portal? As I understand it, the consequence of missing the deadline is that you sit a year. But what does the deadline apply to? Thanks

Grant Winstrom would approve this lineup.

That'd be good, too.

What? No reaction at all? Not even a "it'll be hard for him to initiate our offense when he's playing for Kentucky"? This board has lost a step. I hope the rookies look good or we may have to make some off-season trades.

Baylor Scheierman

I'm solidly in the "prove it on the floor before I'll believe you can do it" camp.

Basketball-speak for "she has a great personality."

Doc "was not allowed to be on the practice floor this year." I'll repeat: Doc "was not allowed to be on the practice floor this year." Some on here need to eat some crow and perhaps maybe even apologize for taking a dump on some others who were right about Doc's role all along when they were abundantly and aggressively wrong.

So, I think the results are kind of interesting: 73 voters participated as of this moment ~48% think Fred has to at least break even to keep his job an identical ~48% think this team is probably about a .500 team. In the category of what Fred *has* to do, it's about evenly split (18-20) between those who think the win threshold for Fred to keep his job is more than .500 vs those who think it's less. But the real interesting one is that, in terms of predicting what Fred actually *will* do, about 3 times as many people think we'll fall short of .500 (28 voters) as think we'll exceed .500 (10 voters.) So, it appears the conventional wisdom is that, if this team breaks even next season, Fred probably gets another year. (I'm sorry, but that's an embarrassingly low standard in a year 4 that follows 3 straight losing seasons.) BUT, while we aren't expecting him to have to clear a very high bar, the fans who voted are tilting strongly in the direction of doubting he can do it. The lack of confidence that we can reach even a paltry, break-even record is eye-catching. I mean, yeah, about 60% think we will. But nearly 40% think we won't. And that's a lot. A lot of sentiment that we won't be able to clear even a low bar of a .500 record for the coach to see year 5. Wow.

Poetic.

Oh, no. Not even remotely. I'll explain when we have ~50 votes.

What do you think must happen? What do you think will happen?