aphilso1

Huskers 67 Hawkeyes 82 Four.

It is now.

15. Walker counts against the limit. The NCAA's COVID rules for '20-'21 season are: -Anyone who plays this year won't have the season count toward their four year eligibility clock. It is essentially an extra year of eligibility for players opting in for the year, and not penalizing players who opted out due to COVID risks. -Anyone who uses that extra year of eligibility in the '21-'22 season won't count against the team's scholarship limit. In other words, guys who are out of eligibility this year can come back as an extra player next year. Guys who still would have had a year of eligibility anyways (like Walker) could in theory come back for an extra year in '22-'23, but will count toward the scholarship limit if they do so. It creates a scholarship numbers crunch in '22-'23 but is a freebie for '21-'22. EDIT: sorry, didn't see that Matt had already answered the question succinctly. Consider this a longwinded supplement.

Haha, woops! I'll make the excuse that I live west of the Central Time Zone, so I haven't consumed my morning coffee quota yet. Nice catch.

That is a super interesting graph. Definitely shows that HCFH is getting our guys into a position to be successful, but the shots just haven't gone in.

Gotcha. So the age old question of dealing with the highs and lows of a talented frosh, vs the stability and lower ceiling of a senior playing out of position. I think a Senior PG Trey would look a lot like Senior PG Dylan Talley, just for a point of comparison.

There are clearly some things to like about Trey running the show, namely, his intelligence and leadership. But I don't think we have any chance to be good if he is the starting PG next year. His passing and ball handling are acceptable for an off-ball guard, but really below average if you are comparing him to B1G-level point guards. Intangibles are nice, but I want a point guard that can handle the rock and dish it out. Purely hypothetically -- can you imagine a player with Cam Mack's ball handling and Trey's brain? That would be awesome.

I wouldn't be so sure about that. A lot of overseas players end up sticking it out at their original school, especially if their first time in America was when they arrived for college. Which makes sense. If you are two years into a degree at an American university, but unhappy with your playing time, what do you do? In theory you could transfer to another school, but it is really tough to completely upend your life in a country where the only people you know are at your current college. Often times the decision comes down to heading back to Europe to play professionally or just toughing it out and getting your degree at your current school.

I like that you are fully embracing my Teddy-Melo comparison.

Yeah, definitely. Andre looks like a long-term project that will reap major benefits in Years 3 and 4. So I agree to an extent. For "progress" though, I just want to see a core nucleus of players return. Like most of us, I have been slightly bamboozled by the individual 'talent upgrades' over the past couple seasons that haven't produced on-court progress. I really think the key to becoming a mediocre team (rather than outright terrible like we currently are) is just to bring back the same group of guys for a second year. That's the minimum bar I am looking to see reached, in order to feel like this season wasn't a complete waste. But you are absolutely right -- for long term success, we need to retain our best freshmen long enough to see them become upperclassmen. That's what I want to see long-term also. In the short term though? If I don't have to completely relearn the names and numbers on our roster, then I am happy.

Well this comment didn't age well. Less than 24 hours later, and we are already down 1 potential returning starter. The silver lining is that Teddy was the one starter who was most likely to move on. I still think that if we can keep Walker, Lat, Banton, and Trey -- plus at least one of Kobe, Andre, and Shamiel -- that is a solid amount of returning productivity. Add in some fresh talent from the recruiting class and I think that is clearly progress, even without retaining Teddy.

Nebraska 57 Rutgers 65

I don’t think we can answer the progress question until we see who all puts their name in the transfer portal. If we return 4/5 of our starters plus at least 1-2 key subs, in addition to the solid recruiting class, then yes that is progress.

Ok, that makes more sense. That being said, I wonder what Shamiel’s FG% at the rim would be if his charges counted statistically as a missed shot. He has to be top 10 in the country on layup attempt charges per minute played.

Minnesota 75 Nebraska 70

Less than 50% from point blank range? Yeah, that is bad. Shamiel’s 65% is frankly shocking to me considering how often his shots get blocked in the paint.

Except that Trey and Shamiel don't finish at the rim at a terribly high rate, they just look really good while missing layups. And both give memorable highlight finishes that I would gladly trade for a more consistent/less glamourous finish. Trey in particular is very inefficient in the paint. While they are both quite athletic, it's not really "functional" athleticism when the ball clanks off the rim or gets swatted away.

Yeah, that could be a bit of semantics. I am grading these guys on a Big Ten scale though, so someone who is a great shooter compared to the average human can still be atrocious compared to B1G shooting guards. And looking at the makeup of our roster, we only have a couple guys who are above average shooters compared to other B1G players at their same position (Teddy and Lat), zero above average ballhandlers in my opinion (again, graded relative to other B1G players at the same position), and the number of lazy passes that we produce each game is baffling. Post players have a slightly different set of core fundamentals, and I do think Andre and DW both box out well, front bigger post players well, and use their feet (rather than hands) pretty well to defend, among other traits. Those are the two guys that strike me as the most fundamentally sound on our roster, relative to their position. Regarding all the dumb turnovers, maybe I just am not paying attention to the stats enough but I don't feel like we are turning it over at an alarming rate. It's just that when we do turn it over, those turnovers seem more punitive this year in terms of taking points off the scoreboard or creating auto-buckets on the other end.

Thinking back through past rosters using this scale is also kind of interesting. That '08-'09 team was an elite team fundamentally (both categories) and in intangibles, but had historically poor size. They weren't average at anything. Just one extreme or the other.

That is a really interesting way to look at it. I haven't seen enough tape of our recruits to grade them in this manner. And I'm not going to grade every current roster player in detail because that would take all day. But here is how I view the general makeup of our team: 1. Basic Fundamentals - poor. I am having a hard time thinking of any player on the team that I would say is above average fundamentally for B1G-level play. Relative to their position, I would actually say our centers are closest. Walker does some really nice things fundamentally in the post, and Andre looks like he is focusing hard on trying to make that a strength going forward. Kobe also seems to be in the 'average' range for a B1G guard. Other than that? seems like a lot of below average fundametal players. I know some people will add Thor to this list...but just watch him dribble. Oof. 2. Secondary fundamentals - actually pretty good. I think we have quite a few guys on this team that could be called 'crafty' or 'wily' and understand spacing well. Unfortunately, those same guys go from 'pretty good' to 'atrocious at inopportune times (see Exhibit A: final 10 second of regulation in the first Illinois game). But in general, I think Trey, Walker, Kobe, Teddy, and Dalano are all pretty good in this department. 3. Size - probably our biggest strength out of these 5 criteria. We have length at every position, a couple stout wrecking balls like Shamiel, and even three true post players. What we are still missing here is elite size like Cockburn at Illinois or Garza at Iowa or the pipeline that Purdue has had for the past decade. 4. Functional Athleticism - we suck in this category. We have a bunch of guys that look great stepping off the bus and can do some insane things athletically, but in a game that athleticism doesn't translate to high level basketball abilities. Trey and Dalano in particular come to mind here, with their flashes of freakish athletic ability surrounded by lots and lots of plays that that athleticism doesn't translate. Teddy probably is the guy that squeezes the most juice from his natural athleticism orange, but I wouldn't call him athletic. is anyone on our team a plus in this category? I guess Walker is when graded on a scale relative to other centers. 5. Intangibles - this is tough to grade since I don't see these guys in any capacity other than when they play for 40 minutes on TV. But from what I can see in games, Trey, Dalano, and Walker have it. Teddy does at times, but too often is a negative in this category. I don't know though. This is pretty tough to judge when a team loses us much as we do, because I think disciple, attitude, and hunger are going to naturally suffer for most players when you continue to see loss after loss after loss.

That is a really cool thing to do for DW, and quite an accomplishment especially considering the transfer in the middle of his academic career. Congrats to Derrick and the whole Walker family

I like Teddy, so you’re not going to get much of an argument from me. And I hope he stays another year and rounds out his game. But there are obviously drawbacks to his game, which are very similar to the drawbacks in Melo’s game. And I have a hard time seeing what talent we can surround him with to create a great team. Top shelf PG? He is at his best when possessing the ball for a high % of our offense. Shooters? He doesn’t kick it outside a whole lot when driving, nor does he create for others much while handling the ball on the perimeter. Elite big man? Maybe. He does seem to look to pass it off to cutters when driving. Sort of a pick and roll principle, without actually being a pick and roll. I could see an Ed Morrow type player really working well in combo with Teddy, so maybe that’s what we are missing most.

I kind of came to this conclusion too. As a former foster parent, I have a soft spot for Boys Town kids. I really, really, wanted him to succeed here. But I think an apt comparison is that he's cut from the same mold as Carmelo Anthony's NBA** career. He's going to give you some gaudy stats, keep you in games when you should be getting blown out otherwise, and even win some games on his own. But the flip side is that he's hard to build a team around, and you will have a ceiling on how much team success you can have. **Yes, I realize Carmelo won a title in college. Maybe there's a better example because of this, but Melo is the first person that comes to mind when I think of Teddy's game and limitations.

Nebraska 58 Illinois 76

Huskers 65 PSU 75