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?

Because firing him right now puts the athletic department in a position where putting any money into hiring a new basketball coach is going to get weighed against using it to hire Frosts potential replacement. So waiting until after the decision to fire or keep Frost is made means that if Fred is still in the same position next year, the maximum amount of resources can go towards hiring a new basketball coach. Plus it removes any possible doubts and any narrative from espin that we fired him after just 3 seasons. The stuff I said about each season so far? Easily works on a bullet point next to a talking head vomiting out the old Nebraska fans fire coaches too soon narrative... which would actually have been true, again.

This makes no sense. Just last season Nebraska was a disciplined, tough team that played really good defense. They just couldn't score enough and didn't have anyone to take the shots to win games late. They got dismissed early because they lost unexpectedly early in the noncon to Nevada by 3 points and got blown out by 8 straight ranked teams to open conference play. But it turned out that Nevada was pretty good and by the end of the year Nebraska was too. Despite missing a month of the season and playing a crazy schedule where they weren't even allowed to practice between games. Their last 4 weeks, outside of one blowout loss to 8th ranked Iowa they lost by 3 against Penn State, were not outmatched and actually looked good in a 15 point loss to #2 Illinois, beat Minnesota, blew out Rutgers, lost a 1 point heartbreaker to Northwestern and almost upset #11 Penn State in the conference tournament before losing in the final minutes. So it was a fluke at ISU and lthe end of ast year and what happened in the first year and this year is the real thing? That's what you're going with?

Oh my God. Someone actually gets it? Well said. I also want to see what Loesner can do with some of these guys with a more normal year of practice and development. He's supposed to be pretty good at developing players.

I didn't mean do literally the exact same deal. Just adjust the contract instead of giving up on the whole administration. The extra year is a way to adjust the cost of the deal to an equitable degree that Hoiberg would agree to a lower provisional buyout favorable to the university. You give up nothing to get what you need to keep him while appeasing the correct people, give the university a little flexibility and give Hoiberg a performance based way to be made whole again.

Why is it dumb to fire Hoiberg? We fired Tim Miles after 7 years despite winning 13 big ten games and making the NIT. Hoiberg was considered a homerun hire, so much so that he was given a massive buyout so nobody would steal him away. With an amazing staff and one of the best recruiters in the country and a fantastic defensive assistant. That's what we were told right? (If you don't want to read this entire thing there's a short synopsis at the end. Skip to that if you want the summarized version. Year 1 he inherited a roster with 13 departures. Inheriting 2 guys. One ofwhich was a basketball player.) And though he wasn't hired until Miles coached all the way through the Big Ten Tournament and the first round of the NIT it was OK because this first class was just a stepping stone class. They were going to get plenty of time to build the team over the next few years. Right? Lol. Despite the short timeframe and huge numbers that 1st class wasn't awful. Banton, Walker, Cheatham and Stevenson were all at worst decent enough transfers and at best legitimate NBA talent0. And just like that in 1 off-season this staff already brought in as many NBA draft picks as Miles did in 7 years. Getting the 52nd ranked class at Nebraska is really impressive. Expecially considering the timeframe and need to essentially recruit an entire team in a few months. At least they inherited some star power to ease the transition. I kid, Thor ended up being a legitimately solid player and great team player. But when he's the headline of your returning roster, you're not exactly being handed the keys to a Ferrari. The non transfer class, less good. Green, Mack, Arop, Oedraogo, Curtis and Cross wasn't a good class. Some were talented and some really good even but the headline was Cam Mack. Every one wanted him, none thought we would land him. Every coach in the same position would take the him. Unfortunately you can't recruit the player and opt out on the mother. They won 2 conference games and we're not very good. But it wasn't all terrible. There was optimism that if they could recruit that level of talent in that situation they would do well once they got a real recruiting season and in a few years they should be pretty good. But it was going to take a minute as they were starting from absolute zero. Returning basically nothing from the previous staff and having to borrow players from the football team to get enough healthy players for the Big Ten Tournament. Then Covid hit. Burke got suspended and transferred, Green transferred, Mack, Cross, Curtis, transfered. Some were just bad fits but covid played a part. McGowans and Webster transferred in, so did Lakes and Mcgraw. 50% isn't bad. Would have been nice if Lakes' shooting transferred with him. A small class. Teddy Allen, Lat Mayan, Edwardo Andre, Elijah Wood. Would have been a perfectly solid class if Teddy was not Teddy. Unfortunately everyone knew what you were getting into with him. Most programs stayed away. Nebraska might have too if he wasn't a boystown kid playing with the cougars of Western Nebraska Community College and we weren't starving for a playmaker. Second time in a row rolling the dice on a talented kid with red flags. 0-2 and a team and ball killing disaster. Maybe The last one was a risk absolutely worth taking. This one? I don't know, but imagine if they passed and he figures things out and became a star point guard somewhere, say LSUwhere he leads them to an out of nowhere national championship, goes pro and ends up starting the super bo.. I mean NBA playoffs. They started with a nice 50 point win against a completely overmatched Mcneese team only to fall flat on their face losing 66-69 to a Nevada team that at year end wasn't a horrible loss but at the time it was a shot right in the solar plexus. They looked better in a pair of wins against the Dakotas. Then came the trouble. A covid cancelation of the Florida A&M game saw a schedule of losses against No. 9 Wisconsin No. 19 Michigan No. 25 Ohio State No. 17 Michigan State Following that the Purdue game got canceled due to Covid. This resulted in a month long shutdown of the Nebraska program. Half the team, roster and coaching staff ended up with covid. They finally resumed play with a game on the road against Michigan State on February 6th. They would end up playing 14 games over the next month finishing March 7th at Northwestern. Somehow they ended up winning 3 games despite barely getting to practice and losing Teddy Allen in the middle of all that. Most of the time the first time they went over scouting the next team was during pregame warmup for the game against the team they were preparing for. Despite being worn out and playing an 11th ranked Penn State they nearly pulled off the upset just running out of gas in the final minutes. *the ncaa decided that the 2020-21 season would not count towards eligibility. However along with Teddy Allen leaving, Nebraska would get a big blow as Delano Banton would decide to go leave early and head to the NBA. (Can you imagine Banton as a 5th year senior on this team?) Along with those two stars Nebraska also lost Akol Arop Bret Porter Yvan Ouedraogo Shamiel Stevenson Elijah Wood And Thorir Thorbjarnarson Incoming transfers included CJ Wilcher Alonzo Verge Keon Edwards They Also brought in Wilhelm Breidenbach, Oleg Kojenets, Quaran McPherson, keisei Tominaga and Bryce McGowans. A top 20 class and the two higest ranked recruits on record in the modern era of Nebraska Basketball. Nebraska was expected to make some noise though not as much as you would think, only because the conference was pretty deep and talented. So why did it fail so hard? Well the 2nd highest rated recruit on record, Wilhelm Breidenbach got injured early and is out for the year. The two best players who score the most points and demand the most touches do not like each other and let it fracture the team. USUALLY I would say this is on the coaches for recruiting players whom didn't mesh well together. But this was a special circumstance. With covid there was far less player interaction and Verge is a guy who was only available because he got this extra year from covid and decided to transfer very late in the recruiting cycle. There were a lot of coaching, development, recruiting and discipline issues this season. This is a bad team with a lot of issues that plays soft and way below their talent level. But that's the thing. None of these past 4 years were at all typical. We landed one of the supposedly best hires in college basketball. Have the highest recruiting rankings in the modern history of the program .. and people can say they are bad fits and they star chase, but the classes don't really bear that out. There were a few big names that everyone would have signed sure, but it's mostly 3 stars who came from all over the map and a handful of transfers. We remember the failures but forget about the successes, and most of the fails were guys everyone was falling over themselves to get. With two very noticeable and big exceptions. Though even then most people are bringing at least one if not both of them in too. Year 1 Complete roster had to be recruited in a short timeframe. Only 2 returning players and only one played basketball- Thor Thorbjarnarson. Team was not good but they played hard and there were a few bright spots. Covid ended the season with no tournament. Several unexpected losses due to several factors but Covid played a part in many, just not in the biggest one. Burke, Green, Mack, Cross, Curtis all transfered. Year 2 Teddy 5 big ten games against ranked teams followed by a month off where half the team gets covid. 14 games in 4 weeks ending in a near upset of 11th ranked Penn State to end season. Year 3. Late addition of a dynamic covid year transfer derailed chemistry because of expectations changing. Leads to division of the team between the two best players who also were the two shot.callers and decision makers. Lots of errors in coaching, development, discipline, Accountability, recruiting for fit and leadership. That's it. 3 years, not a single one could be considered typical. Starting with no roster the year covid hit was a huge blow, there's been several blows that set them back but despite the look of it right now there's improvement. They can build a good team around Breidenbach next year and start to get back to normal basketball. This was supposed to be a homerun hire and it's been pretty awful but it has also been 3 years of incredibly unique and difficult situations. If this is Duke or Kentucky? Fire him. He should succeed despite the incredibly crazy situation each season has had to deal with that had nothing to do with the basketball program or even the school. But at Nebraska? You can fire them and start over with a new coach and a brand new team next year... Or you roll the dice on the homerun proven coach who's staff has been able to recruit the highest rated players in modern history. Give them a chance to do something for a couple years of typical basketball operations. And hope they can build on what is here and fix the issues that they have control over that have been identified the past couple of years. But if you fire Hoiberg, don't expect them to spend much money on his replacement. They have to pay A hefty buyout and are going to be holding most of their hiring budget for if they need to fire Frost. Enjoy your new b tier mid major coaching staff. Because we might have a football coach to hire and that's what really matters to the guys with the checkbooks. I'll be over here hoping they are smart enough to do with Hoiberg similarity what they did with Frost. Add a year on to his contract but keep the total dollar amount as is. Essentially making this season a free season and he can earn the extra year becoming equal to an extra 9M if he makes or wins a game in the ncaa tournament in the next 2 seconds.

If we absolutely have to be dumb and fire Hoiberg then I want Scott Davenport.

To be fair, it was probably our best defensive play of the game.

Huh? When did I ever say Gates got Mack here? Mack was going to St John's until we hired Abdelmassih. St John's fired Mullin days after losing Abdelmassih and he wasn't on the hottest seat before that. Mack litterally followed Abdelmassih here after decommitting from St. Johns after the news broke. https://stormthepaint.com/2020/05/21/former-st-johns-basketball-commit-potentially-turns-former-assistant/ Gates has always worked with the back court guys and notably the point. He spent a lot of time working with Mack. I never said he recruited him. He only spent a year with Glynn but was very heavily involved with McIntosh at Northwestern. Everywhere he has coached there was a pretty good pg he helped develop. Except here. I expected him to do great things with Trey but because of multiple reasons that didn't happen. And Verge is what Verge is. I don't blame Gates. Like I said several times I wouldn't fire any of them. Maybe change a few things, give guys more power to get after guys who aren't doing the stuff like cleaning up the locker room. But a recruiting oversight and more inclusion probably wouldn't hurt. What do these guys do all day if they don't recruit? That's like 98% of the clock time for most coaches. If these other guys don't recruit our game plan analytics must be insanely detailed. Lol. I'm saying can we give these guys ONE semi normal season to show what they can do before we throw it out and go back to being the worst major basketball program in the country. I mean we suck.can we maybe give these guys a year where they actually have dudes coming back, are bringing more in and actually might be able to actually have some normal practice and game times. If it fails by all means go back to sucking with some other coach that doesn't have at least a shred of a shot to stop us from being so pathetic at men's athletics. It's not like he took over a great program with an actual roster to take control of and a regular big ten basketball season. No they took on the worst program in history with no roster, covid - twice and a year where they had game prep during pregame warm-ups and a month of wall to wall makeup games. This year was awful yeah. So buisness as usual for Big Red hoops. I am saying we know what we have to look forward to if we fire these guys. Just look at the last two decades. Are you all that unwilling to just sit back and let it ride for a year or two. If it doesn't work we wasted a few years before resuming our regularly scheduled Nebraska Basketball programing with being awful at shooting the basketball followed by missing 5000 bunnies a year. Staring another guy who will be fired in 3 years. But if it clicks?

I don't assume that. And I have also said I wouldn't fire any of them. But Gates is a pg coach. Has been his entire career of note. And a pretty darn good one. So if he's not coaching the point guards what is he doing? Expecially if he isn't recruiting. The problem this year is that a. Our team has a severe accountability issue. And b. Our 2 best players don't like each other and don't play well together. The first falls on one guy, Fred Hoiberg. The second I have said many times I was giving them a pass on. No matter who recruited them. Because with the 5th year transfers and the portal and covid this entire recruiting class was brand new territory and they weren't able to do the typical recruiting on campus visits where they find out who likes who. Who meshes who doesn't. Etc. No matter how you slice it, if we don't fire Hoiberg the only way this shit show gets turned around is through recruiting. It's litterally the only possible way we aren't just throwing away a year and our entire roster leaving nothing at all here for a new coach to even start with. So the Dumbest thing that this program can do is fire the guy who just signed our best class in decades. We are either recruiting our way out of this mess or we're not. Simple as that. As I said have said, again. I wouldn't fire anyone But if someone has to be the sacrifice the guy who either couldn't get any of those guys to be a legitimate pg option or is not recruiting and not coaching the one position he has been working with his entire career. Not the only chance this isn't a 5-6 year hellscape while we wait and hope the next guy at least leaves us enough pieces that the guy after him can maybe not be absolutely screwed his first season. I think there's no way you can fire Hoiberg right now and get anyone else with even half as much of a chance to end up being better than this staff. Expecially while eating $12 Million dollars. So if you don't fire Hoiberg: This is is an excellent staff and Gates is better than anyone you are going to replace him with. Ditto for every coach we have on staff. Firing any of them is shortsighted. This season is one you just toss out and learn from. The only way out of this mess is to recruit our way out. Firing the best recruiter on the staff and one of the best recruiters in the country period is a really REALLY dumb idea. Our best hope by far is to just do nothing, hope they know what the problems are and they are able to fix them. Otherwise it's going to be a horrible decade on top of dozens of horrible decades of Nebraska Basketball.

Doc has no actual coaching or recruiting role. He is the special assistant to the head coach. That means he watches practice but doesn't do any coaching. Sits in on coaches meetings and offers advice. He also can act as a person to represent the program during certain events and speaking engagements. Etc. I know people hate football comparisons around here but firing Doc cause the basketball team sucks is akin to firing Matt Davison because the football team sucks.