Norm Peterson

But if you maybe wanna know why we're sitting here at 0 for the league, fast forward to about the last 10 minutes of this: Thoughts, y'all?

I'm not convinced that anything that happened 20-30 or even 40 years ago has much to do with where we are as a program RN. I did not support firing Tim Miles, but even I had to concede that Fred Hoiberg probably represented an upgrade. It looked for all the world like a can't-miss hire. We should be in the top 4-5 of the conference RN. We shouldn't be even discussing bubbles; we should be discussing seeding. How we wind up where we are today is baffling to me. But those games decades ago don't affect where we are today. A perfect storm of events converging in time 3 years ago wiped away all that history: Bulls fire Hoiberg halfway into the season; there happen to be deep connections between Hoiberg and this town and this school; Miles' team struggled and he's let go; and we go after a big-name coach the likes of which we otherwise would have had no hope of landing. It should have worked. Why it hasn't has nothing to do with Dave Hoppen blowing a knee and everything to do with things going on in our program at this moment.

Too soon, man. Too soon. I'm having flashback nightmares RN.

Oh, believe me, we know.

I would rather a coach quit for greener pastures than get fired. Montgomery might have eventually moved on, but I have a very strong view that our program would have won its first NCAA tourney game with him at the helm. And that would have put us in a better position with the next coaching hire.

I wasn't sure we could take him seriously after he recruited a tiny point guard to Kansas State named Bean. (Well, Beane, but you get the point.)

I could make a case for any of the options listed. Look what Mike Montgomery went on to do, for example. He would have come in at a time when our athletic department was humming. Football was nationally relevant and we had a strong basketball following and a still fairly new Devaney Sports Center. The rest of the Big 8 outside of Kansas was respectable but not insurmountably, mind-blowingly good every year. Even Danny Nee managed to be fairly midling within that conference setting. Our program did not, at that time, have the national reputation for futility it now has. We had a great opportunity to bring in a quality coach. And Devaney had his mind set on Nee for some reason.

I know people who know people who say you're wrong about Majerus.

I'm afraid to like this post. I wanna like it but I also wanna not like it. Sad truth is I've been thinking some of the same things. I don't know how getting Trey back really helps in the areas where we're hurting. Is he going to rebound the hell out of the basketball? Is he going to light it up from beyond the arc? I'm not sure I agree that Derrick Walker is the only one who appears to care. I think Keisei cares. I think Verge actually cares, but his approach to how to close the gap at the end of close games involves the delusional belief that he can break his defender down off the dribble and readily get inside and score. Alonzo Verge basically abandoned what was working for the first 35 minutes against Illinois to go all hero ball the last 5 minutes when the game slipped away. And I don't think that's because he doesn't care. I think Kobe Webster cares. A lot. A hell of a lot. I think he wants to win more than he wants individual stats. But he lacks some of the individual play-making ability that gets Verge on the floor. But, yeah, this whole "look at me I got a meaningless dunk at the end of a loss" stuff has gotta go.

In the modern history of Nebraska basketball, which decision involving a coaching change turned out to be the worst? And not necessarily that we had a bad outcome, but that the option we didn't choose looks like it would have been better. Place your votes and give your explanations. If you would have chosen an option not listed, make your case. Go.

With the way our season is going, Jimmy, I think you can be quite confident this thread would NOT have ended with those last few posts.

Dana Altman was gonna get fired at Kansas State and quit to take over Creighton. He moved on to a Power 5 job at Oregon. Tom Crean got fired at Indiana and he's now at Georgia. Rick Barnes was fired at Texas and wound up at Tennessee. Just off the top of my head.

To me, being "serious" about a suggestion doesn't mean being so rigidly and inflexibly committed to it that you can't zig when zigging is called for.

Reading about the secret extension has earned you a convert.

That speaks more to the quality of our hires. Dave Van Horn was lured away because he was REALLY good. Would love to have our hoops coach lured away rather than fired and never coach at this level again. Do you have any idea what Dana Altman's record was at the juco he coached at before he was hired as an assistant at Kansas State? In ONE year, they went from winning like half a dozen games to winning more than 20 (if memory serves me.) I mean, the turnaround was immediate. And compelling. And lo and behold ... Finding the next Dana Altman might take a little trial and error, which is why I say you almost have to hire with an expectation the guy will probably fail and move on in 4 years. But, in the event he catches FIRE, like a Bob Devaney, you can renegotiate and pay him handsomely. Just don't saddle yourself with a huge buyout that insures you won't be able to extricate yourself from an untenable position in the event he fails catastrophically.

Buy an insurance policy from Lloyds of London that, in the unlikely event we have to pay this out, they'll cover it. They'd probably charge us a premium commensurate with the risk of something like $20/month.

Part of having a good rule is knowing when not to apply it.

I'm going to copy and paste from my latest reply in the "What we thinking" poll. Coaching: Might I suggest that the NEXT time we hire a coach, we do the following: Don't go all-in with an expensive name; Find an up-and-comer with the EXPECTATION that we'll (probably) have to fire him in 4 years; Don't pay him Sweet 16-level compensation unless he wins a Sweet 16; Minimal buyout; Pay him $650,000/year with ENORMOUS incentives: make the NIT? You just earned an extra $300K reach the NCAA? That's a cool million WIN an NCAA game? That's another million CONSECUTIVE NCAA appearances? Add $250K Sweet 16 appearance? Another million After 4 years, if the MFr hasn't earned any bonuses, his buyout is WAIVED Then, bring in the next guy. Wash, rinse, repeat. Don't saddle yourself with a $20 million buyout for a guy who is producing the fewest wins in a 3-year stretch of any coach in the modern history of the program. We're better off swapping out coaches every few years until we find that guy who actually catches fire. And then, once he does, THEN pay the guy a King's ransom. Recruiting: OK, so then recruiting. I'm really not excited about 5-star NBA, one-and-done talent. I want quality kids who will work hard and represent for a good 3 years. I don't want a 5th year senior transfer running point. I want a kid who's been with the program for 3 seasons running point. I'd rather have 5 guys in the top 75-150 range who will be here for the long haul and have very limited NIL brand appeal. Not that we won't swing deals for our players, but I'd rather have a kid who's more concerned about his team winning than his brand winning. And I suspect you get there more with some 3- and 4-star kids who'll stay for 3-4 years than with a 5-star prima donna (as opposed to a pre-Madonna) who's here to bank one year before getting paid in the NBA. Now that I see what that's all about, I think I'll pass on the next one. So let's use the money we saved on paying a big-name coach to get our boosters behind the recruits our up-and-comer coach targeted and bring in THOSE guys. At this point, with NIL being what it is, the money we save on coaching salaries can almost directly go into player acquisition. Find an up-and-comer coach who can actually coach, and that would be money well spent. Thoughts?

After finding out that Moos secretly extended Hoiberg and now his buyout is $18.5 million, I'm struggling to come up with an analogy that captures what I'm feeling. I shorted game stop and now I'm stuck waiting for the price to go down so I can get out of it at a loss and there's absolutely not a frickin' thing I can do about it? Naw, that ain't it. An abusive relationship? No, I won't go there. I decided to go on a cruise and we hit bad weather and we're at least a week until our next stop, I have the worst seasickness imaginable, and I absolutely cannot do anything about it but ride it out? OK, maybe if the cruise was another year instead of another week. I mean, financially, we're stuck. By any reasonable metric, this is a coaching tenure that probably ought to end this season, but we can't make it happen because someone who's no longer even here committed us to a deal we haven't the financial wherewithal to get ourselves out of. Just effing stuck. Effing effing stuck. So, we have no choice but to sit here and eat this shit sandwich and bide our time until the buyout diminishes enough that we can scrape together enough nickels to be done with it. Might I suggest that the NEXT time we hire a coach, we do the following: Don't go all-in with an expensive name; Find an up-and-comer with the EXPECTATION that we'll have to fire him in 4 years; Don't pay him Sweet 16-level compensation unless he wins a Sweet 16; Minimal buyout; Pay him $650,000/year with ENORMOUS incentives: make the NIT? You just earned an extra $300K reach the NCAA? That's a cool million WIN an NCAA game? That's another million CONSECUTIVE NCAA appearances? Add $250K Sweet 16 appearance? Another million After 4 years, if the MFr hasn't earned any bonuses, his buyout is WAIVED Then, bring in the next guy. Wash, rinse, repeat. Don't saddle yourself with a $20 million buyout for a guy who is producing the fewest wins in a 3-year stretch of any coach in the modern history of the program. We're better off swapping out coaches every few years until we find that guy who actually catches fire. And then, once he does, THEN pay the guy a King's ransom. He, that there's the analogy. They've kidnapped the MFing King. And we have no choice but to pay the ransom. Alright, another bad analogy. OK, so then recruiting. I'm really not excited about 5-star NBA, one-and-done talent. I want quality kids who will work hard and represent for a good 3 years. I don't want a 5th year senior transfer running point. I want a kid who's been with the program for 3 seasons running point. I'd rather have 5 guys in the top 75-150 range who will be here for the long haul and have very limited NIL brand appeal. Not that we won't swing deals for our players, but I'd rather have a kid who's more concerned about his team winning than his brand winning. And I suspect you get there more with some 3- and 4-star kids who'll stay for 3-4 years than with a 5-star prima donna (as opposed to a pre-Madonna) who's here to bank one year before getting paid in the NBA. Now that I see what that's all about, I think I'll pass on the next one. So let's use the money we saved on paying a big-name coach to get our boosters behind the recruits our up-and-comer coach targeted and bring in THOSE guys. At this point, with NIL being what it is, the money we save on coaching salaries can almost directly go into player acquisition. Find an up-and-comer coach who can actually coach, and that would be money well spent. Done.

I'm not pissed they lost to Illinois at home. I'm pissed that, if they'd played like a team and given the kind of effort all season they did in the first 30 minutes of this game, we'd maybe be 11-6 instead of 6-11. That's what pisses me off.

Quick, what year was the first strawberry shortcake doll released?

We’re 5-10 from beyond the arc but <42% from the floor? WTF?

If in doubt, or you get beat on a play, foul Cockburn.

I’m among the 5,000.

While I am happy we have a halftime lead, I wanna make it clear I am under no illusions that we have much more than a snowball’s chance of winning this game.