HuskerBB

Winning is fun!  Got the okay from the wife tonight to take the family up to Minneapolis for the Big Ten Tournament.

If my options are:
1. Play in Omaha against a 7 seed who should be a 4 seed
2. Play any other location against a 7, 8 or 9 seed that is perceivably not very good.
 
Id take the Omaha game 100% of the time.
 

Great post Norm.    I would say though - and not to take anything away from Sam - but that culture change also doesn't happen without Emmanuel Bandoumel and Juwan Gary coming in with the play hard team first attitudes they exhibited.   Also FWIW probably not without a leader like Derrick Walker coming back for another year when he easiliy could have left.
 

That is a fair comparison but I don't think it is quite the same.   Auburn has been in the tournament fairly often and would not have generated quite the same excitement by playing close to home - and less significantly Auburn was also not the state school playing in the largest city in the state - and is not quite as close to Birmingham as Lincoln is to Omaha.   I also don't recall Auburn being talked about so much on their abiltiy to beat anyone at home but stuggling on the road which has been the national narrative about our program this season.   Auburn does have a big home court advantage on their campus - but alot of that gets attributed to the fact they play in a small arena (under 10K) which also means fewer people tend to watch them play live vs NU.
 
I was admittedly exagerrating a bit on the $ comparison.  But - again if you get specific the NCAA knows how well Omaha sells tickets anyway.   (They may have wanted Auburn in Birmingham to make sure it sold out there - that is not an issue in Omaha).      I did a quick check and Omaha is already the location with the most expensive resell prices for any of the 8 round one sites - one of two where no seats were priced under $100 currently for session one.   It appeared to me that a few of the first round sites are still not sold out as there were lots of options for what I assumed was face value ($60 for session one) in places.    No one is as rabid about these things as Nebraska fans.   I know several people who sold volleyball tickets to BIg 10 and NCAA games last year for over $400 a seat.   Nebraska playing an NCAA basketball game in Omaha would be an even hotter ticket.  Likely anything in the lower bowl would be $1,000 or more - that definitely would be the case if either Kansas or Iowa State are also there - and I think they are both far more likely to land in Omaha than Nebraska will be this season (and FWIW I think both of those are more comparable to the Auburn in Birmingham example than putting Nebraska in Omaha  - except they are both also likely higher seeds than a #9).   
 
If you do think there is a reasonable chance that Nebraska ends up in Omaha I advise you to buy that ticket now.   The one thing about these kinds of events in Omaha is they will be well attended regardless so you will probably not lose money on your seat if you decide later not to go.     As I mentioned in another thread if you are thinking about flying anywhere you should probably have already bought the airline tickets on SW that you can cancel for full credit as you are correct that the week of the games airline prices will be jacked up as well.    Personally I made plans months ago to go to Vegas for March Madness (thinking NU probably was not likely to get in the tournament this year - my bad).   Regretting that a bit now - but this is also not a great year for our fans in terms of tournament site options - and FWIW I do have a SW ticket booked for Thursday morning from LV to Salt Lake (was only $59 but used points anyway) so feel like I at least have a 1 in 8 chance still of seeing us play live this year :).       

That is a fair comparison but I don't think it is quite the same.   Auburn has been in the tournament fairly often and would not have generated quite the same excitement by playing close to home - and less significantly Auburn was also not the state school playing in the largest city in the state - and is not quite as close to Birmingham as Lincoln is to Omaha.   I also don't recall Auburn being talked about so much on their abiltiy to beat anyone at home but stuggling on the road which has been the national narrative about our program this season.   Auburn does have a big home court advantage on their campus - but alot of that gets attributed to the fact they play in a small arena (under 10K) which also means fewer people tend to watch them play live vs NU.
 
I was admittedly exagerrating a bit on the $ comparison.  But - again if you get specific the NCAA knows how well Omaha sells tickets anyway.   (They may have wanted Auburn in Birmingham to make sure it sold out there - that is not an issue in Omaha).      I did a quick check and Omaha is already the location with the most expensive resell prices for any of the 8 round one sites - one of two where no seats were priced under $100 currently for session one.   It appeared to me that a few of the first round sites are still not sold out as there were lots of options for what I assumed was face value ($60 for session one) in places.    No one is as rabid about these things as Nebraska fans.   I know several people who sold volleyball tickets to BIg 10 and NCAA games last year for over $400 a seat.   Nebraska playing an NCAA basketball game in Omaha would be an even hotter ticket.  Likely anything in the lower bowl would be $1,000 or more - that definitely would be the case if either Kansas or Iowa State are also there - and I think they are both far more likely to land in Omaha than Nebraska will be this season (and FWIW I think both of those are more comparable to the Auburn in Birmingham example than putting Nebraska in Omaha  - except they are both also likely higher seeds than a #9).   
 
If you do think there is a reasonable chance that Nebraska ends up in Omaha I advise you to buy that ticket now.   The one thing about these kinds of events in Omaha is they will be well attended regardless so you will probably not lose money on your seat if you decide later not to go.     As I mentioned in another thread if you are thinking about flying anywhere you should probably have already bought the airline tickets on SW that you can cancel for full credit as you are correct that the week of the games airline prices will be jacked up as well.    Personally I made plans months ago to go to Vegas for March Madness (thinking NU probably was not likely to get in the tournament this year - my bad).   Regretting that a bit now - but this is also not a great year for our fans in terms of tournament site options - and FWIW I do have a SW ticket booked for Thursday morning from LV to Salt Lake (was only $59 but used points anyway) so feel like I at least have a 1 in 8 chance still of seeing us play live this year :).       

Great post Norm.    I would say though - and not to take anything away from Sam - but that culture change also doesn't happen without Emmanuel Bandoumel and Juwan Gary coming in with the play hard team first attitudes they exhibited.   Also FWIW probably not without a leader like Derrick Walker coming back for another year when he easiliy could have left.
 

Any win over Indiana still means something with 5 natty banners hanging overhead. Doesn't matter their present situation, in my mind. Gotta keep beatin' I.U. -- that's probably how Indiana feels about beating NU in football, tbh.
 

Great post Norm.    I would say though - and not to take anything away from Sam - but that culture change also doesn't happen without Emmanuel Bandoumel and Juwan Gary coming in with the play hard team first attitudes they exhibited.   Also FWIW probably not without a leader like Derrick Walker coming back for another year when he easiliy could have left.
 

Great post Norm.    I would say though - and not to take anything away from Sam - but that culture change also doesn't happen without Emmanuel Bandoumel and Juwan Gary coming in with the play hard team first attitudes they exhibited.   Also FWIW probably not without a leader like Derrick Walker coming back for another year when he easiliy could have left.
 

We'll have our program's first NCAA tourney win.
 
That's it. That's the post.

People who equate Nebraska basketball to utter failure often just listen to the click bait of "never won an NCAA tournament game" and overlook the fact that before 1985 we had great teams better than others in the tournament but Kansas won the bids to the tournament.
 
By modern day standards, we've been to the tournament 7 times...which isn't great. But it's not in the realm of failure. There are 185 teams (even counting years before 1985) who have made it to the tournament at or below what Nebraska has.
 
That doesn't even factor in fan support where we are in the top 15 of in-person support across the nation. But I digress.

Great post Norm.    I would say though - and not to take anything away from Sam - but that culture change also doesn't happen without Emmanuel Bandoumel and Juwan Gary coming in with the play hard team first attitudes they exhibited.   Also FWIW probably not without a leader like Derrick Walker coming back for another year when he easiliy could have left.
 

Great post Norm.    I would say though - and not to take anything away from Sam - but that culture change also doesn't happen without Emmanuel Bandoumel and Juwan Gary coming in with the play hard team first attitudes they exhibited.   Also FWIW probably not without a leader like Derrick Walker coming back for another year when he easiliy could have left.
 

We really needed our most athletic players (Brice and Jamarques) to step up when Indiana made that run and the refs let the game get physical - and both of them really did.   Great to see.
 
I know at least 7 of our players have been the guy that the TV crew selects to interview after the game (basically a view of the player of the game).   Only one in the main rotation I am not sure about is Sam - anyone remember him being in that spot.   Regardless it is really amazing how we seem to have different guys step up from game to game.   A really balanced team which makes us hard to prepare for I would think.

Great post Norm.    I would say though - and not to take anything away from Sam - but that culture change also doesn't happen without Emmanuel Bandoumel and Juwan Gary coming in with the play hard team first attitudes they exhibited.   Also FWIW probably not without a leader like Derrick Walker coming back for another year when he easiliy could have left.
 

Great post Norm.    I would say though - and not to take anything away from Sam - but that culture change also doesn't happen without Emmanuel Bandoumel and Juwan Gary coming in with the play hard team first attitudes they exhibited.   Also FWIW probably not without a leader like Derrick Walker coming back for another year when he easiliy could have left.
 

Wish I could give this more upvotes.   FWIW Brice has taken over games this season also.   He was critical tonight and has been in other games as well.   Maybe he does not play with as much outward emotion as others and I do recognize he has made some lazy passes on occasion but he has been a lockdown defender against some key opponents, a big time scorer who is probably our best player at creating his own shot which is sometimes necessary and a key rebounder at times as well.   We ask him to do a ton of things on the floor and he does them very well.  Plus I am not sure we have ever had a guy who so consistently knocks down key free throws at the end of games.   I love Keisei and Reink and Juwan is the team leader and maybe my favorite player - but Brice is absolutely critical to the success of this team as well.

I will agree with that. It does even show 'too much care' at times.

Actually I would think the only way we would have any chance to be in Omaha is if we squeeze in as a 12 seed - one of the very last at-large bids.   If you are a 7-10 seed then your likely 2nd round game is vs a #1 or #2.  I can't imagine how much grief the committee would get if they made a #1 or #2 play us in Omaha in the 2nd round.    A #12 has to beat a #5 to get to a #4 so that might not be looked at so strangely - but #12's also don't get an preference in regional location considerations.
 
The other problem with the Omaha option is tickets would be astronomically priced.   Might be just a cheap to pay for ticket, airfare and hotel somewhere else than just the ticket if we were in Omaha. 

Great post Norm.    I would say though - and not to take anything away from Sam - but that culture change also doesn't happen without Emmanuel Bandoumel and Juwan Gary coming in with the play hard team first attitudes they exhibited.   Also FWIW probably not without a leader like Derrick Walker coming back for another year when he easiliy could have left.
 

Great post Norm.    I would say though - and not to take anything away from Sam - but that culture change also doesn't happen without Emmanuel Bandoumel and Juwan Gary coming in with the play hard team first attitudes they exhibited.   Also FWIW probably not without a leader like Derrick Walker coming back for another year when he easiliy could have left.
 

Great post Norm.    I would say though - and not to take anything away from Sam - but that culture change also doesn't happen without Emmanuel Bandoumel and Juwan Gary coming in with the play hard team first attitudes they exhibited.   Also FWIW probably not without a leader like Derrick Walker coming back for another year when he easiliy could have left.
 

I don't agree with that, at all. NU will never be a #12 because the last 4 in are usually 11's. The mid-majors are typically 12's.
 
I can see a scenario where NU can figure into Omaha, but it involves getting a bunch more wins yet. We shall see. I'm not counting us out, let's just say. When it doesn't happen, then it doesn't happen. My wishful thinking is personal in nature.
 

Two years ago, we were coming off the worst three-year run in the modern history of the program. Maybe ever, but I'm not going to go back to the beginning to verify. Twenty-four wins combined in his first three seasons here and I'm of the understanding Fred thought he was done, which was why he didn't schedule a youth basketball camp that summer after his third season.
 
The only thing that probably saved his job was a potential need to keep our powder dry in order to fire Scott Frost at the helm of the flagship football program.
 
That spring, we picked up a portal commit from a Lincoln kid who wanted to come home and play his last season of college basketball in front of the hometown crowd. Turns out, that pickup was transformational, as Fred recently acknowledged in comments about Sam coming back to watch our game against Penn State. Sam Griesel, according to Fred, changed the culture of the team. It was unselfish ball, and it allowed people (including potential recruits) to see what the finished product was supposed to look like when we ran our system instead of running hero-ball.
 
There was another Summit League standout who was looking for a new home that same spring. A kid who grew up just west of here. We tried to get him to Lincoln. And he was gracious in turning us down. He observed that, while we're starting to build a culture here at Nebraska (which was a nice way of saying we didn't have one), another team just east of us already had one established. Hard to hold that against him. After three of the worst years in program history, it would have been a tall ask to get anyone to believe we were on the cusp of turning things around. You could get a local Lincoln kid to spend his last season of college ball here because it's literally his home. But drawing a kid with more extended eligibility was obviously not as easy.
 
Last season, though, we, as fans, could get a better glimpse of how the pieces fit together when the system was run the way it was intended. And so could recruits. Big men and backcourt players alike could watch our film and envision what their role would be in a Husker uniform. We have a system. We have a culture. We finally have an identity.
 
So, a little more than a year ago, I suggested the following:
 
 
Fred has said the way things played out last year and the success on the floor that we had at the end put us in position to land guys like Rienk Mast and Brice Williams. And, frankly, Ahron Ulis, but that's a different matter. We got everything from the portal that we needed -- a skilled post to replace Walker, a solid point guard to replace Griesel, and an athletic wing to provide some scoring punch -- we just didn't plan on the extracurriculars that would keep Ulis from participating this year.
 
And now, this year, it's hard to argue the trajectory of the program. And, again, potential recruits can watch our film and -- IMPORTANTLY -- they can easily see how they would fit within our system. I think that's huge when it comes to recruiting. It's like sales. You want the buyer to envision driving that car or drinking that beer. And I think kids will be able to imagine how they would fit in our program and how they could contribute.
 
And the doors we're unlocking with the way this season is playing out ... the NET might not factor in the story lines, but kids hitting the portal sure will.
 
All of this is just to say I think we'll enjoy our portal experience this spring. We have a FAR better chance of landing the kinds of players we were just missing out on a year or two ago.

Wish I could give this more upvotes.   FWIW Brice has taken over games this season also.   He was critical tonight and has been in other games as well.   Maybe he does not play with as much outward emotion as others and I do recognize he has made some lazy passes on occasion but he has been a lockdown defender against some key opponents, a big time scorer who is probably our best player at creating his own shot which is sometimes necessary and a key rebounder at times as well.   We ask him to do a ton of things on the floor and he does them very well.  Plus I am not sure we have ever had a guy who so consistently knocks down key free throws at the end of games.   I love Keisei and Reink and Juwan is the team leader and maybe my favorite player - but Brice is absolutely critical to the success of this team as well.