aphilso1

Some other surprises: -Coleman at #13?!? I barely remember Adrian. IIRC, he was only on our roster for a semester and didn't crack the rotation. And I don't recall anyone being excited when we signed him either. Hard to believe he outranked some of the other recruits on the list. -Alonzo Edwards has to be our biggest "bust" in these rankings. I remember being very excited when we landed him. And I believe he was on our "shortest roster ever" team that was on the bubble for most of the season. Hard to believe he didn't earn serious minutes with his length on that team. -Wilhelm is ranked higher than Morrow or Roby. Wow. I may have to raise my expectations slightly. -Oleg is ranked higher than Eduardo, albeit by just a hair. Could we have just gotten back-to-back steals on big men? I am not terribly optimistic based on what I've seen from Oleg, so either the professionals know something I don't (likely) or Oleg is overrated (less likely).

I was just perusing the team recruiting rankings and salivating over our Top 15 Class (which is even better when considering the two 4-yr transfers that aren't included in said ranking). I noticed something extremely interesting at the bottom of our team recruiting page -- a list of the highest rated signees for as long as 24/7 Sports has been around. I find a few of these quite surprising, as I didn't remember the player being highly regarded when we signed him (for example, Yvan at #6). Others seem extremely underrated based on their recruiting pedigree (such as Teddy at #19). Without further ado, the Top 25 recruits in the 24/7 era are: 1. Bryce McGowens 5* 2. Glynn Watson 4* 3. Wilhelm Breidenbach 4* 4. Tom Allen 4* (All remaining players were rated a 3*) 5. Ed Morrow 6. Yvan 7. Roby 8. Alonzo Edwards 9. Standhardinger 10. Samari Curtis 11. Jordy Tshimanga 12. Ubel 13. Adrian Coleman 14. Oleg Kojenets 15. Eduardo 16. Nana Akenton 17. Jeriah Horne 18. Teddy 19. Nick Fuller 20. BJ Walker 21. David Rivers 22. Ray Gallegos 23. Akol Arop 24. Jake Hammond 25. Nate Hawkins https://247sports.com/college/nebraska/Season/2021-Basketball/Commits/

Lat has a combo of length and shooting that can't be replicated by any of our other players though. Perhaps Wilhelm will come in and be a Lat type player with a more rounded game, but I want to see him do it in games where he isn't the tallest guy on the floor. Big, athletic high school guys are dominant because they rarely play against other big, athletic guys. So assuming Wilhelm is a long-term, rather than short-term, Lat upgrade...that means Lat will still get every opportunity to succeed next year. I like Kobe quite a bit, but his skillset is not unique on the team. He's a plus shooter and plus ball handler, an average passer, and a negative defender with negative size. That type of skillset has a lot more competition for rotation minutes.

No. Counterpoints: 1. Saying players leaving is "excellent news" is in poor taste. They're college guys, not pros. And once a Husker always a Husker. I wasn't a fan of Shamiel's game even prior to the season starting, but I'm certainly not going to call him losing his spot on the team as "excellent." That's similar to telling your buddy that his decision to get divorced is excellent news. Just not the right response, man. 2. The fact that graduating seniors are eligible for an extra year in '21'-22 AND WILL NOT COUNT AGAINST THE SCHOLARSHIP LIMIT has been discussed ad nauseam. So for Thor in particular, your comment is incredibly ignorant in addition to being tactless. 3. Your original comment had nothing to do with signing Keon. You could have quoted any number of other comments that are singing Keon's praises, but you didn't. Instead, you chose to quote the one about players being forced out the door as "excellent news." So don't come on here and pretend that you're the guy who got offended, when your comment was clearly intended to be malicious. I didn't downvote you originally, just for the record. But your follow-up absolutely earned one.

Dalano, Trey, and Teddy were getting starter minutes in the backcourt for the majority of the season. All three are scoring threats IMO, although Banton was atrocious from deep which allowed defenses to sag. Or were you referring to the end of the season when Dalano's minutes were cut and Teddy left?

Stranger things have happened (AWIII, for example), but it seems that the number of new entries into the portal is slowing down this week. Kids don't want to enter the portal after half the schools have already filled their allotted scholarships. Now as for players deciding to turn pro, I'm not sure what a reasonable timeline is for that. So if Banton would want to test the waters of the G League or Euroball, then perhaps he could still wave goodbye to us.

Not trying to piss on anyone's Wheaties, but do we know why Keon didn't really play much for DePaul? They were the cellar dweller of the Big Least. If he's as good as advertised, why didn't he crack their rotation?

-From a talent perspective, Teddy is the only one who is a loss. Obviously we can debate his fit in Fred's system, whether he would have gelled with the new players, etc. But Teddy was clearly a talented basketball player on the offensive end of the floor. -Yvan worked hard, had a fantastic attitude, and was a big body for DW and EA to go against in practice. I would've liked to keep him around because that's the sort of teammate I want using an end-of-the-bench scholarship. But if our second most significant loss is a guy who would've been at the end of the bench, then that's a good sign. -I'd put Thor in the same category as Yvan, although lower on the priority list because he plays at a position where we are relatively deep. -I was never on the Shamiel bandwagon. I felt like his skillset wasn't a good fit and he wasn't talented enough to overcome that bad fit. -Elijah and Akol, we barely knew ya. But good luck and thanks for being a Husker. So we lost an offense beast who didn't fit in great, a couple dudes who were great teammates, a guy who some fans had high hopes for but didn't pan out, and some young guys that never saw meaningful minutes on historically bad teams. Overall, that's not bad. Now compare that to what we are bringing in: -Highest rated Husker recruit in the era of recruiting rankings -A Top 100 player who fits the mold that Fred wants in a stretch 4 -A Top 100 player that we desperately wanted last year and is transferring in with four years of eligibility. Oh yeah, and he can shoot -Another 3pt specialist -A tall guy I'd say the incoming players are a clear improvement over the outgoing players. But more importantly, the "returnees" list actually includes a group of guys that played well together down the home stretch for us this year.

If the analogy said "You've got fulfilled wishes in one hand and crappy things that happen to you in the other; let me know know which hand fills first" then I'd agree. But you didn't say that. Not even remotely. English is hard, I guess. Instead, you recommended to wish in one hand or defecate in the other. Well that's a pretty easy decision. Call me Jiminy Cricket if you must, but given those two choices I'm wishin' by my lucky stars all day.

Paul Velander finds out he actually has five games of eligibility remaining, decides to use them for this best-of-5 series, and takes 12 charges per game just like in '08-'09.

I'm not a movie or TV guy so no surprise that I haven't seen whatever show that is. I still stand by my statement that the analogy disproves the speaker's point, and as such it's a crappy (pun intended) analogy.

Nope never heard it. And it makes no sense. You're trying to say that wishing gets you nowhere (or at least I think that's what you're trying to say) but the analogy would actually prove the opposite. I can wish for things all day and fill up that hand pretty fast. Doesn't mean the wishes will come true. But point remains, an optimist is going to quickly fill up their wishing hand while a pessimist will fill up the other one and and have an empty wishing hand. So end result is a pessimist covered in poo and an optimist covered in glittery unicorn wishes (I'm assuming that's what the physical form of wishes would look like). I have to think you intended the opposite result. So yeah, it's a really weird analogy since it proves the opposite of the point you're trying to make.

That is the most bizarre analogy I have read in a long time.

Neither team can guard their opponent. As others have mentioned, it probably comes down to whether the Norms are hitting their outside shots. I say they do that in 3 out of 5, but all five games are blowouts: Game 1: Norms 91 49ers 72 Game 2: Norms 58 49ers 75 Game 3: Norms 61 49ers 71 Game 4: Norms 85 49ers 72 Game 5: Norms 82 49ers 68

You Sir, are flirting with a downvote.

Forgive me, I've been on vacation and living under a rock recently. Who is Bieta?

Dang. If I knew that Jeriah was going to read my post about transferring back to his former school, I would have better clarified which home. Lincoln, not Tulsa. I'll do better next time.

I think I've been pretty consistent in my expectations and analysis of the season. That I would consider it progress, but only if we actually returned a fair amount of key pieces for next year. It does us no good to have a historically bad record as we rebuild if the rebuild starts over every single season. Thus far I do think we are winning the offseason because: 1. We haven't lost any significant contributors other than Teddy (who technically was an in-season loss), 2. We're bringing Kobe back for an unexpected extra year, 3. None of our recruits have asked out of their NLI, and 4. We added what appears to be a great transfer fit in CJ. My thoughts may change slightly if Banton decides to move on and we are again replacing multiple starters who had eligibility remaining. But thus far I like the combination of players returning and new blood.

Kind of the flipside of this year. We knew going into the year that the conference would be stacked, and that we could be a significantly better team but with no improvement to record.

Come home, Jeriah! (kidding, not kidding)

I live halfway between Utah State's and Utah's campuses, just under an hour to either one. Then BYU is another 30-45 minutes past U of Utah. It's kind of a weird sports scene out here. You get a lot of casual BYU fans who never attended the school, but will pay a little attention to the team due to the religious connection. So even though they are the furthest campus away I feel like I see more BYU hats and t-shirts than the others. Then the Utes are kind of bizarre. A bit of a hippy school, at least by Utah standards. Kind of like a really palatable, mild version of the U of Colorado. I'm sure there are rabid Ute fans but I just don't come across any of them. Seems they are too busy hiking, biking, and snowboarding to pay attention to sports. And then surprisingly, there are quite a few massive Utah State fans that I run across. Definitely seems like the school where alumnae have the most school pride and a serious case of little brother-itis. USU is an ag school tucked away in the northeast corner of the state, away from the major population corridor of the Wasatch Front. Feels kind of like UNK if the Lopers were a Division 1 team with an actual fanbase and athletic funding. And then on top of all that, the Utah Jazz and Real Salt Lake both are pretty popular. So anyway, it's kind of an abrupt change of pace from Nebraska where everything revolves around the Huskers. Two pro sports teams, a PAC-12 team, and two teams in smaller D1 conferences but with seemingly more invested fanbases than their PAC-12 rival. Not surprising at all that the USU message boards are getting worked up.

Me? Nope, no clue who that could be. I get my intel from this message board. I have no behind the scene sources.

Dalano got a lot of rebounds in open space because the big uglies were boxing out. If Dalano is the 4, that means he's the guy doing the boxing out. Is he still a + rebounder if he's wrestling with a guy that is his height and 30 lbs heavier? Maybe. But I don't know if we are automatically a much better rebounding team simply by swapping Dalano in for Lat. As for the other questions, yes the offense can be run properly through two combo guards but I would still expect we will be a team that turns the ball over at an average-to-above-average rate. I've got to think ball movement will be better. If for no other reason, because those two combo guards are brothers and want the other player to look good too.

That's a really interesting presumption. Not saying you're wrong, but I'm also not sure if that's true. We've all heard this a thousand times by now, but HCFH's system is a lot more positionless on offense then most. Ergo, having a true point guard is less important as long as we have enough capable ball handlers to share the load. The flipside of that is that we've now seen two full seasons where Fred has one guy who initiates the offense, even if that guy handles the rock a bit less than the PG on other teams. That guy was Cam in year one. Then it was Dalano for the first 2/3 of the season and Trey in the final 1/3. And sprinkle in a bit of Kobe depending on who else is on the floor at the time. My presumption is that we were OK taking a true PG as long as he was a proven elite player at his position. But I'd be a bit surprised to see us snag a PG just for the sake of taking a point guard. We have four guys currently (McGowens x2, Webster, & Banton) who will see lots of minutes and are capable ball handlers. I'm sure we'll take at least one more guard, but I don't think we are prioritizing a PG over a combo guard. Just my two cents.

OKC is benching Horford for the remainder of the season in an apparent tank job. Gotta think Roby is a starter from here on out.