Norm Peterson

Bohannon San

It just recognizes that titles are somewhat arbitrary. What someone does isn't necessarily determined by what you call them.

25 impact freshmen for the 21-22 season - College Hoops Today Spoiler alert: There's a Husker on this list.

Look at the video above. He's not 250# anymore.

This kid is blowing up, now with recent offers from Illinois, Michigan State and Iowa. He's transformed his body and now looks the part of a sleek, skilled 4. And his work is paying off with the offers he's getting. Don't know if we're still in the running or not, but we just offered his prep teammate, Denim Dawson. (The guy he's practicing with is a 4-star who just committed to Stanford.)

I'm gathering he's a prep teammate of Jaxon Kohler.

Y'know it's kinda complicated searching for a basketball player out there name Denim Dawson when there's actually a clothing company called Dawson Denim. But it looks like he also holds an offer from Iowa. Oh, wait, I'm being told that's *Iona*. Which is almost the same exact thing.

She sounds hideous.

That may be, @hhcmatt, but in the first week of the September live period, he's one of a handful of players the coaches are scheduled to go see. So ...

Prior to 9/11, my military career wound down to a slow, gradual stop. I decided not to "re-up" as it were. Didn't have the fire in my belly. Like Gaylord Perry, I felt like I'd maybe stuck around beyond my "sell by" date and it was time to hang up the cleats. Unlike Perry, I didn't notch 300 wins. I had decided to quit instead of retire. If I stuck around longer, I knew I'd feel compelled to hang around until I got "my 20" and I just didn't want to do that. Your superiors are often assholes in the Army, and the higher you climb in the ranks, the more likely it is that you become the asshole. So, I got out. And then 9/11 happened. And I had a lot of mixed emotions. In some ways it was a sigh of relief and a wipe of my brow that I'd gotten out kind of at an opportune time. If I had waited another year or so, they wouldn't have let me leave. I had a dream last night. I'm not making this up. This really was my dream. I'm in some military school. I know I haven't fulfilled all the requirements for graduation and I'm trying to decide whether I want to approach the cadre and tell them I'm done or whether I want to buckle down and finish this up even though I'm way behind and maybe impossibly behind. And I woke up this morning and realized this was the 20th anniversary of that terrible day. So maybe I still have some unresolved feelings about getting out when I did. Or maybe it was just coincidence I had that particular dream last night. I don't know. This is a particularly solemn day for me for a number of reasons. Not just having to do with the terrorist attacks. But it's 9 a.m. and I just found out the second tower was hit, and now I know this wasn't an accident. #NeverForget

He could be all that. But his best offers are like Xavier, Georgia, Nebraska, and middle Tennessee State. Legit Top 30 guys have better offer lists than that. I’ve watched some of his tape and I wouldn’t take him over Chucky Hepburn who was maybe top 130.

In the state of Georgia?

According to whom is Chase Clemmons a "Top-30 junior"?

Adam Finkelstein on Twitter: "Prospects… If you don’t see the coaches you think are recruiting you today, it is probably because they are seeing someone else. If you don’t see them in the next couple of days…they’re not recruiting you." / Twitter

Just sayin. Aden Holloway, 2023 Point guard - Rivals.com Five ️ PG Aden Holloway is NEXT UP at La Lumiere - YouTube

We should probably pay more attention to this kid. Jacolb Cole (2023/G-F) at The Circuit with the Houston Hoops - YouTube

Boy, I'd be willing to bet Doc will continue to do the defensive scouting. He'll probably come up with the game plan. He might not be on the floor coaching, but I wouldn't be surprised if he was in the film room running through things with players/coaches. Breaking down an opposing offense and figuring out how to defend it is his forte and to whatever extent he's able to continue to do that, I would bet he's all in.

Whenever I look at our schedules it always seems like the Big Ten schedulers never do Nebraska any favors. And then I think, well, it's the Big Ten. How's it going to be any easier? While it's true that Penn State and Minnesota are both picked at or near the bottom of the league and we only get to play them once, it's also true that Purdue will be picked near the top and we only have to play them once. Same with Michigan State. Only play them once. We get Northwestern twice and Iowa twice. And Rutgers twice. So that's pretty balanced, I guess. It's a brutal first 10. It's an especially difficult finish given that three of our last 4 games are on the road. So if we need a couple of wins to solidify a spot on the bubble, the league certainly isn't making it easy for us to get those wins at the end. On the other hand, all five of those last five are against teams that are not likely to finish in the top third of the league and good chance they're all in the bottom half. First 5 games, you probably hope to steal 1 win. Second 5, it'd be nice to grab 2 wins. Third 5, we better grab 4 wins (make hay while the sun shines.) Last 5, you probably want to win at least 3. That would get us to 10, and we'd probably need a couple of road wins to do it. Let the games begin.

About talent, I recall having a brief argument on Twitter a couple of years ago with a guy who was unimpressed with the job Hoiberg had done putting together a roster in his first few months on the job. I challenged the guy about that statement and pointed out that Hoiberg had basically filled an entire roster in roughly 30 days. His response was there was no star power. No impact players. And so I took another look at the roster and, by gum, he was right. Oh, but c'mon, we have a couple of the best juco transfers in the nation along with a guy who was a double-figure scorer at Marquette. Yeah, OK, good luck with that was kind of the reply. Two years ago we started a 17-year-old French kid at center because we had no alternatives other than Kevin Cross. Our 3-point sniper didn't pan out. The juco kids were underwhelming at best. And the Marquette transfer (by way of some Florida school) was really pretty good but didn't have a lot of help. Last year, we upgraded the talent in some areas, but still had some huge, gaping deficiencies in skillsets. This year, we've upgraded talent again. And we've closed some of those gaping deficiencies. I don't, for example, see a guard on the roster this year who is likely inept at shooting. Last year, we hardly had any guards who were *ept* at shooting. We haven't lost ground in any area compared to a year ago. Both of our best bigs, for instance, have returned. I expect both will have improved over their Covid-year selves. And we've added some depth. I'm not yet prepared to say how much progress this will mean in W/L record, but I am prepared to think we should be headed in the right direction.

I was just going to say "don't let the 4- and 5-stars fool you." All of our 4- and 5-star players but one are freshmen. Only one of those freshmen is likely to start, meaning we'll only have one 5-star and one 4-star seeing big minutes. Still, that's pretty good and better than a lot of teams.

Looks like Illinois squeaked out another FG to make it a 1-score ballgame. Was the game played in Ireland or someplace like that?

The point was the scoop and score wasn't on our defense. The defense played well enough to win last week. Add up the points that Illinois' offense actually earned and our offense should be good enough to outscore it.

I feel like we are every bit the equal of this Fordham team. We have a chance at this one. Go big red!