HB

Good card, Dave. Fair to all involved.

NU 64 Kent State 61

Another positive: Sample's free throw shooting. She was 6-6. No way that happens last year. Her form on the throws looks completely different. Credit to her for working on that in the off season. Perhaps with her chronic injuries, that was all she could do. We don't win that game without excellent free throw shooting by the whole team.

T's three was amazing. She's a neat girl; glad to see her have some success. Not sure we win if she doesn't make that. And it wasn't exactly the shot I wanted in that situation. Never happier to be wrong!

Great win. Loved the defensive adjustment in the last 8 minutes where we ran a guy at the driver. There was some coaching going on....yet not overcoaching. We played more "free" down the stretch than the Valpo game and made some plays. Foul trouble, point guard in a lot of pain with his hand injury, backup point with a torn patellar tendon riding the bike for 10 minutes, bad calls--overcame it all and got the W. Very nice; important to enjoy each and every win, the effort, the toughness. Happy Thanksgiving to all.

And Menke IS a threat to shoot? If anyone knows the old joke "Death or Bonga Bonga", this query sort of reminds me of that.

Very interesting approach by Erstad in this class. He clearly is going for mid western and northern guys rather than scour the warm weather locales seeking overlooked guys. I don't doubt he will get tough, hard-nosed players who will relate to his approach; waht will be interesting is whether there will be enough talent. I expect him to get back into Canada, which worked well for Van Horn early in his tenure.

Tulane-63 NU 57

Row 6, good report. What I find frustrating is that our choices for post players coming off the bench are someone who can't practice nor play extended minutes due to a chronic foot problem; someone coming off of back surgery who is not strong enough to play in the paint against good competition; and Simon, who is undersized and limited in what she can bring to the table. It would be a shame to waste a fantastic senior point guard and an All-American talent in Hooper because we don't have ANY depth in the post. I just can't fathom how Connie didn't sign a post player in last year's class, which included only Theriot, and belatedly Murren. We knew then that Williams' foot would always be a problem, and what we had with Maurer and Simon.

Everyone is pretty inpatient. The fact that he only played a minute might have made sense in THAT game. We've played 3 games, in which we had a chance to win. That isn't going to be the case often this year. One of those games (UNO) we played a team that had no decent bigs, so we weren't fighting size. We can get him some experience down the line. We don't need to worry about that early. With only so many chances to actually win a game, I would hate to lose one making sure we get more minutes for a guy who doesn't look very ready yet. But proclaiming the non-redshirt decision a good or bad move after 3 games is a bit early. We will need more size in conference. We may need to put a body out there. There will be many a blowout in which we can get the guy some minutes. Not redshirting Mikey Moore--now, THAT was a mistake. And that's with the benefit of hindsight. But the circumstances were totallly different, and I don't know that Serg will ever turn into a Mikey. Give it time. I suspect the coaches are in a better position to make a good decision than us.

Play him. No brainer.

Happened with Meredith. Not Compton. He was a straight redshirt.

Feel bad for PSU coach. It's SO hard to make it at bottom feeding program in a tough conference. He goes out and gets a stud, and this happens. Perhaps the overs line just went up from one for the dear 'ol Huskers.

There you go again Norm, with that loin girding talk. Seems you may be a bit obsessed with loins at the moment. Since we are talking about men's basketball, that is quite troubling!

Yes, a very good sign, in my opinion. Very happy with everything I am seeing out of Miles so far. Plus, he makes it fun.

Which makes the rest of us very sad as well.

It's way to early to issue the distress signal, but it doesn't seem like a few key players did much to improve their games over the offseason. Perhaps that was because they weren't healthy. Maurer had major back surgery, so it is understandable that she isn't ready to go. She has a ton of work to do on her strength and her game. Laudermill is obviosuly out of sync with what Connie wants right now, as her minutes have been hard to get all year. Cady is in a bit of a sophomore slump, and is still struggling at the line. Hard to fathom Connie couldn't recruit one post player to provide inside depth, knowing we had a nucleus returning to have a great team. She could use another shooter also; we often have lineups where 2 players can't shoot it out on the floor at all, and that makes it hard for Hooper and Moore to get good shots. Our 3 point percentage has been ridiculous so far.

Speaking of hangovers, one "hangover" from the Doc regime that is apparent is the lack of shooters. Hopefully Miles will remedy that through recruiting. It is so hard to run an offense when the defense doesn't have to guard 2 or 3 guys. So when we struggle to get the ball inside or finish, fans should understand how hard that is when teams can slough off of guys and clog the paint. UNO was daring our guys to shoot. Flat out didn't guard a couple of them with every lineup we had on the floor--but most noticeably with Rivers. Makes it hard on everyone else. It would be great if Shields can shoot; haven't had a chance to see him do it yet.

NU 67 UNO 55

With all due respect, Sergey's skills and Jorge's are not in the same galaxy. As for the decision not to redshirt him, it's easy to be a critic on the sidelines, but Miles has to to find enough bodies to even get a team on the floor this year. Sergey's a bigtime project, but he's bigger and thicker than Kye, and obviously if Kye was as good MIles plays him and redshirts Sergey. MIles is at practice every day and probably knows what the deal is. He also may have a feel as to whether redshirting him is a good long term thing for either player or team. Hope it works for the Sergster, but red shirts don't guarantee someone will be a contributor down the road.

I agree the bar is set low, but it's for a reason, not just to cut Miles some slack. We had 3 walkons on the floor at the same time in a close game against a decent opponent. Winning under that circumstance was indeed a real coaching and playing triumph, not just a perceived one.

Way way way a pipe dream. But I like the old CWG firing on the optimism cylinders!

I disagree about the timeouts. I remarked after the game it was nice that Miles had timeouts in the last 90 seconds. Doc had gotten SO predictable with his timeouts. Every single close game the last couple of years he started burning them at the 4 minute mark on each offensive possession. It didn't work; we didn't score much of the time with the set plays, and we lost most of those close games. Occasionally we couldn't stop the clock or avoid a turnover on an out of bounds play becuase we were out of timeouts. This was at least a refreshing change from the predictability of the old approach.

There's probably a reason Rivers was hesitant to take the ball to the hoop. His offensive skills are not good. He probably has some awarenes of the fact, thus the hesitance. He can't shoot, dribble, or catch the ball (bad hands). Norm, he ain't going to hit those shots very often for a reason--he's a very poor shooter. Having recognized all of that, he will help us this year. He's a good, long athlete. We're better with him playing 20-28 minutes then if we didn't have him. He will makie some plays with his effort and athleticism, and he helps us defensively. It would be nice if we could put 4 shooters on the floor with him, so not having to guard him away from the basket isn't as big an issue. Problem is there are often 2 or 3 non shooters at a time on the floor, which will make Talley have to earn everything this year.

If we finish 13-17, Miles isn't coach of the year, he's coach of the century.