Blackshirt83

Scheduling needs to be smarter. We were 11-4 at home and 4-9 on the road. That's 13 road games. Meanwhile no other Big Ten team played more than 11 road games all season except Indiana with 12. We have no buisness leading the conference in road trips.

https://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/page/bracketology/ncaa-bracketology-2023-march-madness-men-field-predictions We might not be that far out. But this has to improve.

Up to #111 on kenpom (unofficial 109) And up a whopping 73 spots to 7th on Nolan RPI... wtf

1. Keita. 6'11" 230 lbs. #1 Juco in Kansas Averaged 50.3% from the field, 72.8 from the line with 17 points 12.8 REB 2.7 BLK and 1 STL per game/40 We need him to be able to get within the ballpark of what he did in JUCO if this team is going to be successful. Not only is he going to need to help out on offense but in order for this team to be close to the defense it will take for this roster to win games he will need to be even better at defending the rim. 2. Lloyd He will actually be a better player than Keita but Keita is more critical to winning in the Big Ten. And the big man can't put the ball in the basket unless someone passes him the ball. Besides our last long armed pg turned out pretty good. 3. Juwan Gary This guy was a star in high school and then he tore his acl. After rehabbing he played pretty well off the bench for a real good Alabama team. He is a very efficient scorer and he is also a good rebounder. Honestly he could easily be #1 but I'm not gonna lie, I would love to have this guy off the bench giving short bursts of efficient scoring, forcing his way to rebounds and being the guy making sure we don't have no multiple minute scoring droughts. 4. McPherson If you're gonna count him I will use him. He is a very talented player who had some serious offers coming out. He redshirted last year so he knows the playbook ,has got his college body and is ready to go. The reason he's not higher is that he is at the position with the most depth and so he may not have the pt to match the others. 5. Kojenets This is the tough one. Griesel, Bandoumel or Kojenets? It could have easily be any of the three but I will go Kojenets just because he has something the other two don't and there is less competition at his spot. Expecially considering fouls can pile up in this league. If he redshirts then Griesel is the next option. I know he's not redshirting.

We averaged 73.3 ppg last year. 4th in the Big Ten. The 3 teams ahead of us won 20+ games. We also had the worst defense by a huge margin. We were-5.3 giving up an average of 78.5 ppg. Other than Nebraska, only Maryland (70.7) and Iowa (71.2) gave up more than 70. If we average 70 ppg on offense that would have been good enough for 11th last year in offensive output. So if we average 70, to have the kind of season we hope for we would have to go from giving up 78.5 ppg to at least 68ppg and really to be safe, about 66. That's a switch from -5.3 to +4.0. I'm not saying it's impossible or that it won't happen. I hope to God it does because it would be amazing.. but in order to do that we would basically have to go from what we were last year to being Wisconsin. We really need someone or a couple of guys to get together and get us an extra 4ppg over your 70. If we can get to 74ppg getting the defense to 71-72 is at least a legitimately good chance. Though again +4 is the dream so giving up 70 and putting up 74 would likely be getting everything out of this roster in this league. BTW not enough credit is given to Rutgers coaches. Last year was a masterclass of getting the absolute most out of a team. They were only +2 giving up 66.5ppg while scoring 68.5. Yet somehow won 18 games and were 2 games over. 500.. If Fred and his staff could do that kind of work here, they would have statues.

I like this one a lot. Not a shooter but for some reason shooting doesn't travel when guys come here lately. Defense and effort travels anywhere and I think a lot of guys on this team will be a lot better with a bulldog on the court with them. Still not seeing anyone who can run the show and am not seeing a lot of 90+ scoring nights yet so defense is gonna have to step way way up.

That hurt. Can't let that happen.

This is awful news. Some people just don't get any Breaks.

Way to completely miss the point of the entire post.

And when Fred's future was in doubt of returning I was defending him. Have you not been paying attention though, there are only two assistants being talked about by basically anyone in regards towards assigning blame for this season, Matt and Doc. And since the ones blaming Doc are irrelevant generally ignore those other to correct their misunderstanding of Doc's role. My entire point in what you are referencing is that noone is talking about the other two assistants. Armon Gates and Nate Loenser. They mostly focus on Fred, who is coming back; Doc, who is irrelevant; and Abdelmassih. So that's also who I was mostly focused on. I just have found it very interesting that other than Fred, who is the head coach deserves the debate; the two "coaches" people focus on most are the one who is not a coach and the guy that has recruited a pretty talented roster. Completely ignoring the rest of the staff. I would have thought other than Fred the coach that I would have most been defending most is Gates. For most of the year the vitriol aimed at Verge was pretty strong. And yet not much was said about the coach whose specialty is point guard play.

In my original post it says when I say you I am referring to the ones in position to actually make the decisions at hand. Not fans on a message board or anywhere else. My fault for not restating that on the reply.

They started making 3's and tweaked spacing a little to open up some lane space. As far as the schematic changes I couldn't tell you. But they started cleaning up the locker room. They started being held accountable for bad shot selection first, it didn't matter how well you were playing or what else was going on, if you took a quick or out of rhythm shot instead of making the extra pass you got pulled. As a result you got more flow, less hesitation to pass to certain people and led to more assists, better shots, less turnovers and less black holes dribbling all over nowhere. You also saw a more focused and structured atmosphere from the second They left the locker room, significantly better defensive effort and intensity on the boards. All of which combined led to the ball going through the hoop and confidence and trust getting strong. I know they made a few changes to some of the offense but I don't know what they are specifically.

Really easy. I defend Matt because he's the one getting all the blame. Unless you count Doc getting some of it. Which should tell you everything you need to know. If the other assistants were getting the blame I would be defending those guys. Maybe not as staunchly, because I think Matt is the most important assistant we have and aren't going to get anywhere close to being better going without him bringing in the talent he has. You could replace either of the others, and it would have to be a big upgrade downgrade to make a huge difference. And I don't expect it would be either. But I would be against making any staff changes. If you want Nebraska to be a legitimately good basketball program, we need to be quiet, ignore the media and let these guys have 5 years of freedom to make and fix mistakes. This will be a top 20 program at the end of it. If we don't ignore the media and the bad parts of this process, and continue to call on the athletic department to make stupid decisions that handicap or flat out chop the legs out of the coaches (like forcing the firings of key assistants and forced schematic changes) Then Nebraska will continue to be a terrible athletic program. * The term we isn't necessarily us here it's colloquially the ones who have a role in affecting the decisions being made in the athletic department.

He can absolutely be scrutinized. But my issue is that he's scrutinized like it's his job to do everything, recruiting and development and coaching. We have a headcoach who doesn't recruit, he only wants to focus on coaching, yet we want to run off the guy actually doing the recruiting. I defend Matt because I see the talent we have. I see it was horribly managed, there was little accountability for bad effort on defense or bad shot selection, for not boxing out etc, to put it mildly. That changed and we look like a completely different team. With the same talent. As if the only one who actually did his job prior to last week was Matt. If you want to say there's holes in the roster, that a second set of eyes should be overseeing his choices or that the other coaches should be helping more, I agree. Gates is a very good recruiter. Use him. Doc is a very good talent evaluator, use him. Have those guys help evaluate and prioritize targets, But you don't get rid of the guy that actually gets those guys to commit. Here's why I defend Matt. College Basketball is 95% recruiting. Expecially now that you have to constantly recruit your own guys because they can just hit the portal if they aren't happy. So we're paying Hoiberg 3.2M a year and he isn't doing the part of the job that requires the bulk of a coaches time and effort. And that's okay because what he does do is valuable and he has Matt there to recruit for him. But take Matt away and he's a really good NBA assistant coach with no roster to coach. And again if Matt is bringing in the entire roster and is the only one any of them listen to then we're paying 2 guys around 300k each to do what? That's my issue. It's all bullshit. That isn't happening. If it was the team would have walked out not walked into Ohio State and beat them convincingly. I back Matt because he's the one getting all the blame and I know the talent we have and I know how good this staff and these players can be if they dial down and do the dirty work. The talent has been here all year, the recruiting coach did his job. Where are the other two? Why are they not getting any blame? - This has perplexed me all year as on the court for much of the year the team looked utterly terrible and even possibly uncoached at times. The only good thing you could say was that they at least looked like D1 athletes, really bad D1 athletes. But Matt looked like the only one who looked like he had actually showed up to work in the off-season. Only because there were actually guys on the court and he was the only one recruiting players. And yet Gates and Loenser were getting a free pass. Hell more people were mad at Doc than either of the guys who were making 300k and unlike Doc were actually you know. coaching. But if they were I would be defending them the same way I have been defending Matt. Gates and Loenser are really good coaches and I wouldn't change either one because of this season. If Hoiberg wanted to make a change because he needs to bring in a coach with a different skill set then fine. But he's not going to just make the decision to fite his only recruiter when the roster he constructed has the talent to beat everyone on the schedule if everyone else does their job. I have said multiple times that I would completely disregard this entire season and wouldn't fire anyone. There were several issues that needed addressing but they know where they screwed up and would fix them. They already have fixed several of them. Much faster than I expected in fact. But enjoy it because if they did indeed force Hoiberg to fire the best recruiter we have then it's not going to last. You don't fire people unless you think you can hire someone better to replace them, we aren't hiring anyone else who is bringing these guys in and none of our other coaches are either. You want to finally have a legitimately good basketball program at Nebraska? Quit messing with shit, leave these guys alone, give them a 5 year window (including this year and last year)to try things out, fail a few times and fix their own mistakes and you will have a top 15-20 Basketball program. Not season, program. Do stupid things like fire Hoiberg (luckily our AD wasn't that dumb) Fire Matt (I hope he's not this dumb) or force them to do something stupid like change their style of play and Hoiberg will be gone in 2 years and Nebraska basketball will continue to be the laughingstock of D1 Mens Athletics.

If true it completely takes the hope of turning things around a massive longshot. Like I said several times, bringing Fred back is the correct move, bringing him back and cutting his legs off at the knees is pointless. Just a more high profile, significantly more expensive repeat of the Tim Miles era. You all just saw what these players were capable of the other night.There's reasons it failed but the solution isn't to replace the guy who built it. And it's absolutely not to replace the guy who got the groceries. It's fixing the ones setting the menu. - Fixing not replacing. Or do you want to blame Matt for the pregame warm-ups too?