aphilso1

Welp, you may have gotten your wish. Getting Wales from Pot 4 is just brutal. Could be worse I guess, since Iran is a pretty cushy draw from Pot 3.

I just want to be in Qatar's group, and avoid Senegal from Pot 3. Pot 4 is actually pretty stout, when you consider we aren't allowed to draw New Zealand (since they still have a playoff against our fellow CONCACAF member Costa Rica) nor Canada. Plus Wales is likely the final UEFA qualifier. Then you have a couple of South American sides in Pot 4, too. Ghana would really be a best case draw for us, and would have the added benefit of meaning we can't draw Senegal from Pot 3.

On a related note, how cool would it be if Mexico loses by 1? We could leave an open goal in the final few minutes of the match, allowing Costa Rica to beat us by 4 and thus have CR finish 3rd and El Tri finish 4th. That would be EPIC!

It's finished, so we are officially eliminated from Pot 1. The only options now are Pot 2 (99.9% likelihood) or Pot 4 if we were to lose by 6 goals and therefore have to backdoor our way in via the intercontinental playoff. By FIFAs rules, all intercontinental qualifiers are automatically put into Pot 4 regardless of FIFA ranking. there is no mathematical way of dropping to Pot 3.

What will be really interesting is if the US and Mexico both win, boosting each other's strength of schedule. Could it be enough to leapfrog both Netherlands and Germany if they tie each other? Probably a moot point, as Portugal will likely clinch tomorrow anyway.

If Portugal wins tomorrow, then I believe that statistically closes the door on our chances for Pool 1. If they lose, then we'd be in the running for that last slot. We'll know if there's anything to play for 24 hours from now.

Good weekend! SKC looked sloppy but pulled out the win against RSL, and the USMNT played its best match of this WCQ cycle. Woot woot!

SKC needs to make the nameplate fonts bigger. With all the offseason turnover plus injuries, I need some help with knowing who’s who on the pitch. And yeah, Dest+McKennie+Aaronson are not the three guys I would have picked to be injured for the final WCQ leg.

This thread got weird.

I'd take Griesel, Cale Jacobsen, and...yes, even a Donovan Williams transfer. I know the recruitment with Donovan went pretty sour on both ends, but a chance for Greisel and Williams to come home plus develop Jacobsen seems like a reasonable change of pace from how we've been recruiting. Still go get some of the best nationwide talent you can, but mix that in with guys who grew up wearing Husker gear and have equity in the program prior to arrival.

I laughed.

Yep, SLC is a different kind of sports town. Jazz are king, for sure. After that the Utah/BYU rivalry seems to take precedent, followed by West Coast NFL, Real Salt Lake, and winter Olympic sports. March Madness (and non-local college sports in general) are pretty far down the priority list. I never hear Top 25 college football or college basketball chatter on the radio. They'll talk BYU and Utah, and a little bit of big picture Pac-12 stuff. But that's about it for college sport chatter. I'm curious if they'll start talking Big 12 football once BYU joins the conference.

I was listening to some local Salt Lake City sports radio today, and they were doing a quiz on the mascots for some of the lesser known schools. They got Yale, Akron, and Richmond right. Then one of the hosts got Rutgers. After a long drawn out pause, his response was "who cares about Rutgers?" I got a pretty good chuckle out of that. For the record, the other host got the answer half right by saying "Knights."

Like everyone else, I would have loved to have seen Bryce win FOTY. But discounting Branham by saying tOSU is part of the god ole boys club is just sour grapes. If the media were the only ones voting, then yes I absolutely can see that argument holding merit. But the coaches that voted had to game plan for both Bryce and Branham, and they are essentially telling you which player they found scarier to prepare for. Their answer was Branham.

Cats 78 Huskers 70 zero wins.

I think you already included the PSU game in the Week 16 standings.

I have no answers but was wondering the same thing. Really bizarre.

Are you implying that 45 feet of continuation is too much? Surely he was gathering to shoot at midcourt.

Wiscy 80 Huskers 70

I called him Bo Spencer back in December. Although Verge has really improved as a distributor since then, and I no longer would say that he "doesn't make other players better."

I saw that stat earlier. Pretty impressive, and made me realize that we as a collective fanbase have been much too hard on Zo. The fan narrative all season has been that's he's selfish, makes bad decisions, and the ball sticks in his hands. It's pretty tough to lead the B1G in assists if that narrative is true. While he does make some bad decisions still, his growth and maturation at the PG position has been evident this year. I for one wish he had another year of eligibilty for us, now that he seems to have really turned the corner and is able to balance being a playmaker and distributor.

You said earlier that you were high school friends with his old man. So when you say that you don't have a good feeling anymore, is that general speculation or insider info? Hoping for the former and not the latter...

I thought there was an unwritten rule that any movie references need to be from 1997 or earlier.

These kids in red sure are fun to watch this week.