The Polish Rifle

Don’t get me started on that nonsense.

Gotta love that range. WV who should have been in the tournament. Colorado who won 3 conference games.

UCF, Boise and WV looking in. Could end up being a decent bracket. I still think with opt outs you’ll have a couple teams who obviously don’t belong.

Robin just reported it appears Ohio St and Penn St opting out of the crown as well. If the crown does end up finding enough teams, it might be a sad field…

Just know some thought we might see our freshman.

We can’t play the redshirts without burning this year, FYI.

Creighton (9), gets an 8 seed who was projected as a 5 seed and is 45 min from campus…ouch!

With how poor our offense looked this year, I found it odd our two X’s and O’s Assts are defensive guys. Howard kind of seems like the odd man out.

Another fun Nebrasketball memory, getting bounced in the B1G tournament by 2-17 Minnesota and thus missing the NIT as well.

I think the value of non big dance, post season tournaments are for young teams and new coaches. We have an established coaching staff and our 25/26 nucleus will be out of the portal. I think the time spent on this tournament would be better served hosting potential portal targets.

0-2 vs Q3 at home….there is your entire season.

Moneyball for college basketball. Pay proven pieces, find cheap production. For a team that can’t spend like the Yankees (or Duke) playing big money for guys like Meah isn’t a luxury we have. I know it won’t translate as well to the B1G, but watching conf tournaments this weekend - it was crazy how many all conf guys teams like Drake and UC San Diego have that were plucked from D2 - I’m sure they came fairly cheap too.

I’d like to see that situation go differently this offseason. I’d rather Fred spend on a proven all conf player than spending a lot of money on multiple fliers (word is Berke and Meah are a combined $1M, Griffiths probably cost a little too for zero impact). Also not all on Fred, if we are at the table with some big boys and need to up our offer, we need to bump our NIL pool to make it happen. Adding Chucky (or someone similar) to this years roster would have been worth an extra mil.

How much?

And in 2 of the past 3 years we’ve finished in the bottom 1/4th of the league. I understand it’s an unpopular opinion here but I think Fred struggles with roster construction, and feel we’re more than likely going to have a bottom 1/4th roster again next year. Fred himself said he “f’in hates recruiting and the other stuff”, that’s pretty much all that matters in CBB today. At ISU he had Otz who I think was perfect for doing the stuff Fred hates. As current staff is constructed I don’t see them able to build a great roster with NIL constraints. Not saying fire him, just healthy bit of skepticism going into what could be a make or break season.

I’m sure he is well liked and hits the links with donors from time to time. But Rhule seems like the type that will grind away for an extra dime. There’s also human nature of giving attention to the shiny new toy. Fred’s been here for 6 years, we’ve been bad to okay - hard for me to believe donors are lining up to donate to basketball NIL.

That’s negotiable. Iowa this year is a perfect example. NIL funds for Fran dried up. Devries and McCollum will demand a level of NIL investment and I’m guessing donors will line up to back it. Fred seems like a good dude but I can’t see him being the “rally the donors” type like Matt Rhule is.

Kyle Neptune out at Nova. Crown is gonna have trouble finding teams with a lot of their target teams hemorrhaging coaches and players.

I’ve seen too many people see the high end number quoted in that article and conclude no coach could ever win here. The high end numbers are the Duke, UNC, Indiana money. We aren’t going to compete with that - like wise our expectations are no where near theirs. Our NIL goal should be middle of the pack in the B1G, seems like we are close if not already there?

So a top 25 team costs roughly $5M. And we are roughly at $3M? That really doesn’t seem that bad. Revenue share will get us closer. Have Rhule go ring boosters doorbells with Fred and you’ll get an extra $1M by the end of the week.

Ben Johnson seems like a good dude and a decent coach. Impossible to say it’s a good/bad move without knowing what’s going on behind the scenes. If boosters said “move on from BJ, hire Medved and we will double your NIL pool this offseason” - as an AD you have to pull the trigger right?

So depressing we’re onto portal talk when p5 conf tournaments haven’t even started.

Rest assured, even if we wanted to, we couldn’t - AD has a number of large projects and burning 18M on buyout isn’t an option. Sadly, my gut says we’re having this conversation for real next offseason.

Quarter system and they go first week of Jan to mid June for winter and spring quarters. That’s a brutal stretch of school. Good call, hadn’t realized they go this late!

Drawing Florida was tough luck for Nebraska and OSU. As of today Florida now has played 36 Q1 games, 5+ more than 2nd place Tennessee. They have 17 Q1 wins, and a 19 RPI. Basically a 1 seed metric wise, but on the 3 line.