aphilso1

College athletes are all receiving something of a large monetary value. Those that aren't going pro are getting a free education. Those that are going pro are getting a giant stage on which to display their skills. Imagine if you would have had an opportunity to audition for your job 30+ times per year, knowing that all the titans of your industry were watching your auditions. That is exactly what the kids that turn pro are getting, which is invaluable. No one is holding a gun to their head and telling them to go to college. They're welcome to play overseas for a year, but draft records indicate there's more value in playing for "free" for a year of college rather than receive a year's "compensation" prior to enrolling in the NBA draft.

Va Tech was already on the right side of the bubble, and then they went and knocked out the #1 team in the country in a true road game. They are in the field no matter what. This was a terrible result for us.

Huskers 65 PSU 62

Correct! And this highlight video in particular made me think of Roby

I thought of another Roby comparison, one who is in the NBA HoF but actually doesn't seem like too crazy of a stretch. Call Zay a poor man's version of him, if you like. Can you guess the Hall of Famer? 6'8" 228 lbs 16.1 points, 6.4 rebounds, 5.2 assists, 2.0 steals

Maybe they're not on the list because they're already too far on the wrong side of the bubble. I guy can dream, right?

Fair point. But internet message boards are made from equal parts idle speculation and guys claiming insider knowledge. I don't know anyone on the inside and I'm a terrible liar, ergo I provide idle speculation.

I don't remember Garner getting hurt, how did I miss that... And Carr was banged up too? He drained a three in the closing minutes and looked fine to me. Looked pretty darn good for a guy who was maybe hurt.

Do you mean another injury on top of Watkins? No, not unless it happened while I was walking to the basement to get a beer. Watkins got hurt during the game but that's the only one I remember.

I think Tanner issemester-to-semester with his schollie, so probably only gets it if we don't fill the roster at end of fall semester again. Totally agree with your thoughts on roster turnover. And I'm OK with that, but not OK with more AWIII/Jacobson/Morrow-type transfers. Transfers are the norm, but losing star players and team captains to transfer seems to be more of a mid-major problem. We shouldn't have to deal with that every year.

Watkins being out drastically increases our chance of victory. Watching the Michigan/PSU game earlier this week, I kept thinking that they had no one that can get close to directly replacing his production. They've got some big bodies and athletes, and yeah Carr is capable of winning a game by himself, but Watkins was the guy that could decimate us on the glass. And given our rebounding difficulties, that's huge.

I would be supportive of that system. As I've said on other threads, the problem isn't with quadrants. It's with RPI.

So I finally read the Lee B. article on Davis, and to me the most surprising thing was that Xavier Johnson is 6'3". For whatever reason I thought X was like 5'11" or something. I'm now even more excited to see him next year, and am intrigued by the idea of developing Davis next to him.

Nana seems most likely, for reasons stated above. I would be surprised if Thor leaves. I don't think he's going to crack the rotation either, but international kids seem more likely to stick it out at one school compared to domestic kids. I would think there's better than a 50% chance that Palmer comes back. While I could see him getting a shot in the NBA, I think being the centerpiece of a potentially deep tournament team next year would more than offset the negative of being a year older when he eventually enters the Draft. All that goes out the window if he gets a draftable grade though.

I hadn't heard anything about an injury. Frankly, I haven't heard much of anything about Nana in months. And you may be right regarding the bench clearing. I could very well be reading too much into it. But I was always of the opinion that Nana's game would have a hard time translating to Power 5 basketball and the B1G in particular, so I had kind of assumed that he would eventually move on. Given that he has shown nothing to change my opinion, I'm going to still assume that he's going to transfer. Again, would love to be wrong on all accounts when it comes to Nana.

Do we have the same wife?

There are probably better odds that he transfers, given: a. he chose not to redshirt this year, so he has the same amount of eligibility whether he stays or goes b. the most recent game when we put in scrubs, it was Tanner + Thor + 3 walk-ons...which tells me Nana may literally be the last player on our current depth chart c. Kids transfer these days when they're playing but "not enough," and Nana isn't playing at all I would love for him to stick around and prove me wrong, but I don't think he will. I also don't see him cracking the rotation even if he does stick around.

Well color me intrigued. If Miles has shown he can doing anything, it's that he can take a talented player overshadowed on a supremely talented team and develop him into a difference maker.

The problem is that those free outlets often have very little credibility, but are supplanting professional trained journalists. For sports I agree, I'm not going to pay for the privilege of reading about my favorite teams; I'll survive on free content just fine. But when it comes to actual news, I'd prefer there to be something less agenda-driven than Breitbart or HuffPost. And unfortunately those are the news agencies that are growing, because people want free content that confirms their own biases.

75 - 65, good guys win. 2 (also, kudos on the creative bonus category!)

True, I just don't think it's enough of a ding relative to how MoV is scored. Take a look at my two predictions this week: NU 77 - Maryland 67 (70-66 actual): 20 points NU 78 - Illinois 72 (66-72 actual): 22 points Personally I look at those two results, and just at a quick glance would assume the Maryland game prediction would be a much better score than the Illinois prediction. In the Maryland game I was reasonably close on NU's score, almost exact on the Terps', reasonably close on MoV, and predicted the winner. That's a solid prediction. But for the Illinois game I was terrible on NU's score, terrible on MoV (off by 12, since I predicted a 6 point win and instead it was a 6 point loss), nailed IU's, and got the overall outcome of the game wrong. That's an awful prediction, but the score is still solid. And that's why either MoV should be calculated differently, or there should be a much more significant penalty for predicting the wrong winner. Something closer to a 50 point ding instead of only a 20 would remedy it if the MoV formula stays calculated in absolute value terms.

Gotcha. I wonder if it'd make sense to adjust that specific portion of the formula next year. I know there have been times this season when I was surprised by how low of a score I had, even though I didn't even predict the correct winner (like this week's Illinois game, for example). While I appreciate scoring well, ultimately I felt I should have been punished more for not predicting the winner. And going back to the "correct MoV but wrong winner" type of pick, I would actually view that as missing the MoV by 12 points rather than 0. Because ultimately if you predict NU to win by 6, then NU losing by 6 or winning by 18 are equally far off from your prediction. You do excellent work every year Fever, so please don't take this as a slam on your efforts or math. Just a way that I think the formula could be tweaked to more accurately penalize poor predictions. Something to ponder in the off-season, maybe.

Question with regard to MoV: how is it calculated if someone predicts the exact margin of victory, but the wrong winner? For example, if someone predicted Nebraska to beat Illinois by 6, would the MoV portion of that person's score be 12 (6*2) or -5 ((0*2)-5)?

Came here for a pick-me-up. Nope, still depressed after yesterday's game.

78-72, good guys win