aphilso1

Too soon.

Yeah. If I emotionally remove the layer of living in enemy territory, I honestly don't hate RSL that much. I have a lot more disdain for the Dynamo, Timbers, LAFC, and Sounders.

Huskers 82 Lindenwood 60 9 non-con wins 17 total wins

What a match! Now I need to pinch my nose and cheer for RSL, so that I can watch SKC play in Salt Lake this year (I had to miss the October victory ).

With the second leg of the first round playoff starting tomorrow, it's worth noting that the higher seed won 7 out of 8 first leg matches. Sporting was the only road team to win. Pretty phenomenal. Add in the wild card round, and the home teams are 9-1 with a goal differential of 24-10. Just further highlights how huge SKC's throttling of StL was. Edit: Removing SKC from the data makes it even more impressive. In the 8 matches that didn't involve SKC, the home/higher seed was 8-0 with a 23-6 goal differential.

I actually think Walker was remarkably consistent on the defensive end, but was limited due to his stature. He just didn't have the physical tools to hang with some of the skilled giants in the league. Against guys closer to his own height/wingspan, or guys who solely wanted to try to outmuscle their defenders, he was great.

Based purely on length of shorts, I'd guess that Allick will be our starting PG.

Agreed. SKC always struggles when opponents park the bus. StL's entire identity is built around accumulating parking tickets. This is a really really bad matchup. Hoping for the best, but I would rather play literally anyone else in a best of 3 matchup.

Give me even odds and I'd bet you $50 the new poster's a dude. That's not sexism, that's just playing statistical probabilities.

Ready for the match tonight. Got my Johhny (F'ing) Russell kit on, and a fancy special occasion beer ready to pour. It's gonna be a good night. Paint the wall, boys!

Better depth this year, yes. But also inferior at 4 out of the 5 starters' spots compared to 2018-19. This makes me feel somewhat worse about our upcoming season.

This season's success or failure is largely going to come down to the PG spot. If Coleman gets sticky hands then I think we're in trouble. One, we've seen what happens with Hoiberg's offense when the PG does too much himself. And two, this year we have far more efficient options who should be taking the majority of the shots.

I am in favor of any plan that regularly puts the Huskers in Vegas. I'm not a gamblin' man, but it's a relatively short drive for me and they have some decent trails to explore outside of town.

https://www.sportingkc.com/news/sporting-kc-re-signs-forward-alan-pulido-to-new-designated-player-contract This is some very welcome news. I recognize he will be 35 by the end of the contract, but he is so skilled that I'm not worried about that. Maybe his work rate diminishes and he spends more time as a target forward rather than a false 9. Regardless, the past two years have taught us that there is a massive performance gap between the games he plays in and the games he misses.

Oh, and I do really like Pepi as a striker off the bench. He’s like a massively upgraded version of Wando.

And meanwhile, Mexico can only muster a draw against Uzbekistan. If “meh” means outscoring your opponents 7-0 while watching your rival embarrass themselves, then I’ll take “meh” any day.

Personally I hate visiting large cities because I think there's nothing to do in them. I mean seriously, what do people do to fill their weekends in places like NYC, Philly, and Boston? Restaurant options -- great! But is the average person going to professional sporting events and concerts every week? No, they're not. And you know that because there's no way to fit 8 million New Yorkers in an 80,000 seat stadium or a 20,000 seat concert venue. The places I love are the places that many claim have nothing to do. Give me Missoula, Fruita, Coeur d'Alene, and Juneau. Places with relatively small populations and giant views. Where your bike gets dirty and your lungs feel clean. I find too much to do in those places, but nothing to do in big cities. To each their own.

I see a lack of slashers and shot creators. There is no Petteway or JPJ on this team.

11 responses thus far and none of you said Petteway. Y'all should be ashamed of yourselves.

I'm assuming you mean 1 Keisei 2 Mast 3 Williams Yes? I think it gets more difficult to project from 4 and beyond. Maybe Gary. Maybe Boogie. Maybe JLaw.

OK, well let's look at it a different way. We lost two players from our end of season starting lineup. We replaced them with three starters from other D1 teams. That alone is an experience upgrade. But then we also returned another player who was a regular starter prior to season-ending injury, and added a 6th man who was actually his team's best player and would've started if he was more selfish. Essentially, we have 8 guys on our roster who are used to being starters. Not just 8 guys with D1 experience, or 8 guys who have gotten a spot start now and again, but 8 guys who are used to being a top 5 player on a D1 team. That is absolutely huge. We can conceivably field a rotation solely of guys with extensive D1 starting experience. I can't imagine there are many schools around the country that can do that.

Interesting point. There are only 200 minutes to divvy up and we have a team that returns a cumulative 270 minutes per game. So 70 minutes needs to be trimmed from somewhere, and that's not even taking into account any minutes distributed to Rice/Diop/Jacobson/Lloyd. From that perspective it certainly looks like we have a team with a wealth of experience and depth. We may not have the top end talent of some other teams in the league, but the end of our rotation should be stronger than just about anyone else's that we play.

Smart Better: "I'll take the under on the Iowa game." Bookie: "Are you sure? I mean, it's Iowa...so we set the O/U to 0.5." Smart Better: "Always take the under when Iowa is involved. Always."

Welp, guess we know who will win Scout Team POTY honors this season.

This is tough to answer currently, as I honestly don't remember my exact panic level at each position from back in early April. But if I had to guess... PG - 5. I remember being optimistic that Lloyd could step into the Big PG role similar to Griesel and Banton. Lawrence can give some minutes here, Hoiberg can to a lesser extent although I prefer him off the ball. Cale could maybe provide some minutes too. Lots of options, but none as proven commodities running the show. So an average rating overall. SG - 1. Keisei and Lawrence seems like a good 1-2 punch. Sam giving minutes here if Lawrence is filling in at PG. Not an All-B1G level rotation but also certainly nothing to be concerned about. Portal efforts should be focused on other positions, not SG. SF - 8. Wilcher is one dimensional, and essentially our only returning wing. Lloyd could be a slasher and has the body to fill minutes at the three, but is that really where he fits? This seemed like a priority for a portal addition, but we could maybe have band-aided over the SF spot if needed. PF - 7. I like Gary a lot. But with his injury history you need another PF you can rely on on the roster. WB doesn't count as a backup PF, since he likely would be filling a lot of minutes at the 5. And speaking of which... C- 10. Wilhelm plus an injury-prone Keita just was not gonna be good enough in the B1G. Can't even really go small ball by sliding the starting PF down to the 5, since Gary is already a bit undersized as a 4. This was an area where we needed to make a serious addition via portal.