HB

Feel free to keep piling on football, which cracks me up when this board does that, given the life long futility in basketball. But if it makes you feel better, pile on football. If you want to make the "one or 2 baskets from" argument, that can be done with football. One catch (Neyer), one throw (Raiola to Linderman vs. Illinois), bad calls (Ohio State). Face it, basketball went backward this year, and football went forward, from the previous seasons.

Ultimately who cares about the opponents' records? We finished 7-13 in conference and didn't even make the conference tournament, 17-14 overall with a bunch of patsies in the win total vs. a winning record and a bowl win. Maybe in some hyper-technical sense you can try to make that sense, but in the big picture, failure vs. progress.

We need to remember that there are 2 pools to pay players going forward. One is the $20-22 million the University can pay players in all sports. The other is NIL. Nebraska will pay the maximum amount allowed and has it funded. The question is how it gets divided among the sports. NIL is unlimited. So revenue sources to the University won't affect what we can pay an individual basketball player. Until they clamp down on the wild west, the teams with big NIL will thrive.

You're being really kind to Connor.

No way. We didn't make a conference tournament when 15 of the 18 teams make it. Abject failure. No other way to describe it. Certainly it was described that way when we didn't make the Big 10 tournament in baseball.

On the other hand, it could be stated that with a 37-82 conference record, and not even making a 15 team conference tournament in year 6, it's a weird time that other than some message board fire, there isn't a groundswell to fire the coach. I'm not on the "fire Fred this year" team, but it isn't outlandish for people to be on it.

Yeah, the last 2 year portal acquisition of point guards was a disaster. Gotta do better there. Agents for point guards in the portals will be able to hold us this year.

They already do. But it's the same people getting hit up for football, other sports, facilities, etc. It's not that easy to get enough people willing to write big checks to directly pay players. Wish we had a broader group of well-heeled college sports fans. But it's always easy to tell others what to do with their money.

Most if not all of the donors who would write such a check like Fred, and most know him personally. However, if we suck next year, it all becomes more obvious.

Douche thing to say in the midst of a 5 game losing streak, and 6 of 7, or whatever the hell it is.

Still the best Husker basketball board anywhere, by far. This is especially evident on days like today. When other boards are in meltdown, with mainly snark posts and trolling, this one has civil basketball discussions. Disagreements are mainly respectful. I learn from the knowledgeable hoops fans on here virtually every time I log on. The hoops knowledge on here is high level. That's not remotely the case on other boards.

Brice is a role player? He's a first team all Big 10 guy. How many of those have we had here?

That record never had me dreaming. We didn't pass the eye test even then. And it was obvious we were very poor at point guard. You better be good at the point if you want to be any good in the college game.

0-11 from the field today, 0-8 from 3 with mostly good looks, and can't guard anyone. Not fine as an 8th or 9th man at all. Maybe a 10th man, come in against zones for a couple minutes type guy.

This was a bad roster. Unathletic and can't shoot. Anything else is over analysis. Not about heart or effort. It's about talent. 17th best roster in the league. Had a chance to overachieve, by winning a few of the close games. Ultimately settled about where we should. Good floor coaching and effort had us in the running to get a bid, but we digressed to about how many bullets we had in the gun. A first team all Big 10 guy and total dude, and a guy who was a dude most of the time despite playing hurt, and then problems. Not enough to survive in this league. The portal needs to be much better this year than last, or we're gonna be at the bottom again. Hopeful we do better there this time around.

Yes. Got lucky on Alexis, since we weren't recruiting her early. Didn't recruit Maly among others. A mixed bag.

Doubtful.

But, we haven't been very good at getting the legit in-state girls we do have, Prince excepted. That needs to get much better, IMO.

Anyone know if we are looking at Stevie Harley, a freshman at Bellevue West? Steve Harley's daughter. He posts on the men's board occasionally.

She will play volleyball in college.

You aren't serious with that.

Very respectable performance tonight. Playing our best basketball at the right time of year. Rebounding and some untimely and unforced turnovers killed us. But that was a damn good team we played.

Really good win. Illinois only played 6 players double figure minutes, we may have worn them down. Nissley's offensive rebounds came at big moments. Gets us in the dance for sure. A very good accomplishment after losing Potts.

His misses (lately all of his shots) are just brutal. Just rim-breaking messes. It's hard to have hope watching that. And for those who want to play the ankle excuse....none of that explains that degree of gruesome outcomes with the launched shots. Plus, he didn't shoot it well at all before the injury.

All of those things....not infrequent occurrences. Happens a lot.