Chuck Taylor

Good assessment. One difference from our previous transfers: They were coming into an unsettled roster and didn't cause disruptions. What happens when you bring in someone like this and take away playing time from Ed/MJ/Jordy and then he leaves? Copeland's a good player, shows up on NBA draft boards, could be a guy who gets us over the top. But he also could be detrimental to team chemistry. Staff will have to make the call, but I'd guess they'd take him.

that's very often the case.

Man, thanks for this. Love this song.

The style of play thing is big for me too. I thought the Molinari hiring was smart at the time to establish a defensive identity. His recruiting has been superb. But if you look at his long history of coaching (Bradley and Western Illinois), this is exactly how HIS teams play. Good defense, completely suckass on offense. TM, on the other hand, had a KenPom 35th ranked offense in his last year at Colorado State with lesser talent, so he knows what he's doing. I have no idea of the dynamic on the coaching staff, how much practice time is given to D vs. O or whatever, but I think something is stunting our progress on offense.

Here's the dilemma: do you play the more gifted offensive players and let the defense slip? You might get more production but also more blowouts, which could cause confidence to slide and less buy-in. On the other hand, the freshmen might develop quicker. It's a tough call. Right now, we might be losing but we're competitive. I get what TM is doing, but the decision gets tougher after each close loss. btw, Jordy is not better a better player than Patton. Good grief. Patton was a focus for our defense and got in foul trouble. Jordy was an afterthought to CU and had his best game of the season.

The way they sag in their man and play screens encourages outside shooting. Really has the same effect as a zone anyway. The bigger item to me is who they double and if we can find an open man out it. Ed will get doubled for sure, since he's the biggest threat inside and he might have trouble passing out of trap from Huff and Patton. Not sure anyone else is going to rate a double team.

Watson vs. Watson is a great matchup, might be the key if it leads to foul trouble for one of them. The most interesting one, though, might be Ed vs. Huff. Ed can bully Huff inside and get him in foul trouble, but Huff can pull Ed away from the basket and make him ineffective on defensive rebounding.

I think it has to do with lack of bench production, then trying to find the early rhythm again later after starters are back and the opponent has adjusted. I don't think it's a mental thing, like nerves, overconfidence or laziness.

If you think it says that he's just a really low level, no-star player, then what does that say about our evaluation? What it really says that he was completely off the radar because of his early commitment. This entire process for Aguek is very unusual, the combination of the early commit and then the cutting of ties after summer AAU season. It's not a process that translates into what ratings services do. He might well end up at UNO, but I also wouldn't be surprised if he got better offers if somebody thought he was a good fit. He's not a good fit for us.

I agree. This a losable game and the priority is to win, not build depth. Play the young guys against Southern and Gardner-Webb, unless they prove they deserve more PT in practice.

Interesting that our offense/defense has flipflopped the last few years on KenPom 2016-17: 127 offense 46 defense 2015-16: 87 offense 116 defense 2014-15: 264 offense 28 defense Overall, looks like our profile is a good defensive team. Guess last year was a blip.

Freshman ppg through 7 games: Jordy 2.6 Horne 2.3 Roby 2.3 Through 7 games last year: Watson 8.6 McVeigh 7.1 I'd argue last year's team was better at this point, but it's debatable so let's call it a wash. Conclusions: (1) We might have overestimated the abilities of this year's freshman class (2) Miles had a more veteran team last year and was willing to live with more freshman errors (2) Glynn and Jack are better players than any of this year's frosh (4) or the coward's way out: too small a sample size to draw conclusions.

To paraphrase Yogi, we don't have deep depth.

No, I mean us, the board. The team seems to be fine.

Is he talking about us?

Maybe there's something wrong with me, but I'm not upset with where we are. If nothing else, we've figured out who are go-to players are and what kind of team we need to be. We're not going to be a high-scoring offensive machine, but we can definitely play high-level D. (Here's a scary stat: only 3 guys on the roster are shooting over 40% on FG.) As for the new guys, Gill hasn't shown much but the freshmen have had their moments and just need to build their minutes. Good news: much room to grow. Bad news: I don't think we're going to be that much fun to watch this year. We're going to win by grinding, not by raining 3s and dunking.

Virginia Tech is a good measuring stick. Not a great team, but definitely a good resume win on a neutral court. Added benefit: Great game if you love screaming at the opposing coach, he's a complete tool.

We really only had two main scoring options last year. Right now it looks like we have four. I know everyone likes to see the freshmen play, but I like how we're limiting their minutes. Smaller rotation = more solid play.

So that means the guys with shading have the green light from outside? (rim shot!) Nothing more than a suspicion, but I'd guess Miles has told the newcomers to prove they can play defense and rebound before they start jacking up 3s.

I mentioned this on another thread, but Rutgers is not a disaster this year. Beating DePaul doesn't mean much but watch Rutgers play. There have some good pieces, they're healthy this year, and they now actually are coached. They're still a bottom feeder, but they'll upset somebody this year and won't be a walkover. (How's that for an endorsement?)

This! Who we have and haven't offered is water under the bridge, as far as I'm concerned. The greater point is that local kids should be part of our overall strategy. I think when MIles and Doc both arrived, one of the first things they heard was, "You have to go out of state to recruit because Nebraska doesn't have any talent." So I just don't think they saw any sense in putting the resources into it. I think our recruitment locally really doesn't involve much more than following up when some local coach calls them and tells them to give a kid a look. The basketball scene, in Omaha especially, has changed. A lot more athletes are skipping football now, and AAU play has increased exposure. You can see how many more kids are getting scholarships now to lower level schools. There's not a giant dividing line that says, "he can only play in the Summit League." There's a lot of grey area, and some of those kids could find a role on a Big Ten team. I get that this isn't a cauldron of bigtime talent that will take you to the Final Four, but we're just trying to get to the dance. Roster stability is incredibly valuable. Having a couple local kids improves your chances of having four year players who can contribute in a big way by their senior year. Giving a marginal out of state players a scholarship usually means more roster turnover. I don't think we have a strategy locally and have not established many strong ties with local AAU or high school coaches. The main point with dragging Thomas and Patton into the conversation is that we didn't put the work into figuring out if they could play. I suspect we gave Arop a scholarship too early because of the embarrassment of missing on those two. We didn't do the work on Arop either. I love this board for its (relative) lack of negativity, so I didn't post this earlier but there were people in the basketball community who were surprised that NU offered him so early. His reputation at that time was that he was a terrific athlete but lacked fluid motor skills. They weren't down on him, they just were surprised that somebody would offer that early before he showed he could develop high level basketball skills. Maybe it was just talk from some local magpies, but I heard it nevertheless. I know everyone thinks we have bigtime talent now, but really all we've done is edge over the line into Big Ten level. My fear is that when we get to next year, when we could be ready to make a move, we'll be battling depth issues because we'll lose another couple kids after this season. I think we could have made a move this year if we had a couple of experienced seniors on the team, and there are probably a couple of Nebraska kids currently on other schools' rosters who could have provided that. I don't want to play the "well, who would you trade off the roster?" game. It's a joke for anonymous message board posters to do that, as if they have any talent evaluation skills. I'm talking about an overall strategy: Build roster stability with a couple local kids you can count on. And what I'm saying is that we're not putting the resources into finding out who they are.

I'll be honest, I questioned the wisdom of this game when it first appeared on the schedule. But after watching the bench during the Sac State game, this was just what the doctor ordered. Starting 5 looks good, really need to develop a solid rotation. Don't sweat the crowd, like somebody said, this was essentially an exhibition.

I realize foul trouble might require it, but otherwise I would not play Ed at 5 again. He'll be a solid 4 by season's end but will always be a shaky 5 because of his size. He has confidence now, not worth messing with it.

I'm going to claim Round 1 in the debate.

I was really impressed by the efficient 3-point shooting. Tai, Glynn and Jack were the only ones who put them up, and our percentage was good as a result. This could have been a close game if we'd had a bunch of people jacking it up from outside.