Fullbacksympathy

Pretty dang good.

Well put!

Yep both very calm, confident kids for sure.

Coaching tennis at NWU. Castor is a good coach and his kid is special. Jordan is a good student last I heard to boot. I really think NU would be silly to not give him an offer. He's only a sophomore. I agree that he's likely done growing but so is Chris Paul. He's that sort of crafty. I think his game would translate just fine. He was JUCO-calber in middle school just because of his court IQ, imo. He has plenty of athleticism too (can dunk at 5'11"), but his court awareness and ability to control pace is crazy. Zerek has really shined this season. Happy for him. I can't speak to his grade issues but I know for sure there's no bad blood with LNS. Just not enough basketballs for he and Jordan to have the spotlight they deserve as PGs. Zerek is a freak athlete, but more of a straight up scorer, and I'm not sure that will translate to D1 as well. It's all moot if grades are a problem. If he cared about football someone could make him an NFL corner but that ship has probably sailed.

Much deserved for the best offensive player in the conference.

A lot of downers in this post game chat considering we just handled a top 20 team and are firmly on the bubble in February. We don't have any bad losses this season. Some alarming blowouts, sure, but no devastating resumé losses. We also have some very good wins. Illinois will stay Top 25. Creighton will play its way back in to the Top 25 because their conference sucks. Beat Oregon and we're talking seeds again, IMO.

Agree. Wisconsin didn't miss and we've been competitive in a couple of the prior losses. I'm still optimistic. The main thing I'm seeing is a lack of urgency to close out. It's not necessarily the coaching or that players are wildly out of position. It's that we aren't anticipating swing/skip passes fast enough and then running them off the 3pt point line. It might work better for us to at least try a small ball lineup with Berke at the 5 to give us more shooting and speed on the perimeter. Worster Connor Bryce Gary Berke ^^^ this group can at least close out fast enough, and Worster helps a lot on the boards at guard in addition to being a great defender. I love Sam as an energy guy, but even despite being a coach's dream defender, his length is a liability on closeouts and p&r switches. Morgan and Meah are both fine at the 5. I don't like any of our bigs at the 4 due to a lack of defensive footspeed. I'd have Gary there and spot him minutes with Gavin. Rotate Sam and Ulis as necessary for the guards. Play the hot hand at the 5 among the three bigs.

We’re a real PITA to play. This particular roster is exotic. Very long, deceptively athletic, and smart. It’s likely the best FT shooting team we’ve ever had. Just wanted to shout out Morgan who was a friggin dude this game. He and Sam were awesome. Brice didn’t shoot well against UCLA’s elite defense but he got to the line 12 times and made 11. That’s what pros do. Also, I’m not sure anyone could watch Connor’s play and not see an enormous improvement defensively. Being able to hold his own makes us almost unbeatable if he’s shooting well. Hell of a win. We should be ranked.

Yes. Our length on the perimeter is insane when Rollie and Brice are guarding the 1-2 at 6’5 (with weight) and 6’7”. Add Juwan who can also guard 1-5 and is a bully with 1-2 physical trees helping and cleaning up the glass and they are really tough. Rollie also rebounds well and puts a ton of pressure on defenses in transition as a result. He hasn’t had elite TO:A but it’s still decent. Having kids like him is sort of like having a power running game in FB. It doesn’t show up in the stats but it tends to wear down opponents. Our team has been elite at getting to the line and making FTs. Their defense is as good as any NU team I’ve ever seen to this point in a season. MSU is a very similar team to us with a little more in the front court. Terrible matchup. But we’re definitely going to be a team no one wants to play because it will be ugly so often. Fine by me.

Turns out Brice’s calm demeanor has just been a mature, hard working, all around quiet winner this entire time. Ho hum 32. Kid is special. My favorite play was near the end when Gary got switched on their quick little guard. The kid drew JG into (what he thought were) deep waters, JG stayed with him step for step and sent his shit into the stands. This was after his tip in over the trees and his clutch 3. He ended the game about three times. Meah is really figuring it out. Berke didn’t score much but had 9rbs and 3 steals. Defense was an absolute clinic despite the terrible officiating. Morgan needs to wake up defensively. Essegian needs to get on Sam’s S&C program. Good defensive team win overall though.

Yep. My favorite coach outside of Fred is Izzo by a mile. He has an even grittier team than normal this season. We learned a lot from them in that asswhooping. Love how they’ve responded.

Refs were clearly out to get us, yes. Always happens in the tournament. We stayed focused defensively. The refs couldn’t keep Hawaii in the game.

Phenomenal defense for the win. Don’t really care how ugly it looked offensively. We kicked their ass by 12 in the second half because they couldn’t score. Hawaii had 5 assists and 15 TOs. 41% from 3 to their 25% 90% from FT to their 67% 38 points in the paint to their 26 10 assists to their 5 8 steals to their 4 4 blocks to their 1 12 TOs to their 15 Lunch pail, Nate Loesner win. Let’s go.

That was a textbook blockout.

Another friggin 30 piece for Brice. Anyone remember when we would get our asses kicked by Hawaii every single time we went out there?