aphilso1

Yeah, that hire came out of left field (pun intended). In all seriousness though, I think he's walking into a good situation. My Phils have been bad for the better part of a decade, which has drastically lowered expectations from the Charlie Manuel era. Plus they have the young pieces in place to go .500 in '18 and compete for a playoff spot in '19. Kapler has a chance to be seen as the guy who steered the team out of the wilderness and back to winning baseball.

I'm a Phillies fan, so I stopped watching baseball roughly the first week of May.

That phrase made a lot more sense back when doughnuts used to cost less than a dollar.

That Illinois ranking jumps out too. A projected 38 position drop. Ouch.

I've said it before, but I'll say it again. The ability to rebound the basketball will be key to this team's success. That was the one thing we were actually good at last year, based on three guys that were solid rebounders (Ed, Jacobson, Jordy) and another who was great relative to his position (Tai). Three of those four guys are gone. The game film I've seen of Copeland leaves me seriously questioning his willingness to rebound. Okeke is proven. Palmer is somewhere in between. I can easily see this team improving significantly in offensive efficiency and scoring, but ending up with only a slightly better record. If that happens, I think an unwillingness to put in work on the glass is a likely reason. For that reason I consider this hypothetical trade only a marginal win.

Morrow was the best off-the-ball offensive player we had by a HUGE margin. No one else positioned themselves for easy buckets in an even remotely comparable way. That skillet will be sorely missed this year, unless someone on the current roster drastically changes their approach on the offensive end.

That's a really solid explanation, Dimes. I heard a professional better on the radio make a similar comment regarding Nebraska's pre-season projected football win total. It was something that (at the time) appeared really low, like around 5.5 games. And a lot of fans were calling in and going bananas, saying "how can we only be projected to win 5 games when we're favored in 8 of them?" The answer was because Nebraska was expected to lose three games by a wide margin, win two games by a wide margin, have one game as a slight underdog and six as a slight favorite. The odds were that Nebraska would't actually go 6-1 in those close games, but instead go something in the neighborhood of 3.5-2.5. Hence the low overall win total. And in hindsight, Vegas knows what they're doing.

Alright, so I didn't hear Bilas 100% accurately. But in my defense, I was listening while on my morning commute. It's hard to get the details correct while weaving in and out of traffic and cutting people off.

Jay Bilas, Esq., was on Mike & Mike this morning. And unless I completely misunderstood, I thought he said the reason the FBI can get involved is because the schools in question are public institutions receiving federal funding. I found that interesting since it's potentially a get-out-of-jail free card if a private school like Creighton were to use similar tactics. Bilas said it's similar to taking bribes on underwriting federally-backed mortgages. If you want to lower the bar for a loan with your own dollars, that's fine. But if you do it when tax payers dollars are involved and you get a kickback, that's a jail sentence.

First thing I noticed, too. Can. Not. Unsee.

I wasn't terribly excited by this addition, until I read some of the Georgetown message boards. They're a fairly educated fan base and they were DYING to get this kid. Anytime we take a top target from a school like Georgetown is a big deal, especially an early signing period top target.

Is Perkins still in business? Ever since their best customer Tiger Woods disappeared, their locations have been closing left and right.

That's odd. Creighton players all have four-letter nicknames in my household.

I like your style. Strike while the iron's hot!

@hskr4life you hit the nail on the head with that one.

Gill seems more likely. I could see Tanner getting some spot minutes later in the season against a big, bruising B1G team if either Jordy or Duby is in foul trouble. But I don't see how he could be in the early season 10-man rotation.

He wasn't a top 150 recruit coming out of high school, so he wouldn't be reflected in this thread's analysis. Neither would most kids that "transfer up." But those top 150 kids that don't pan out at their initial school of choice and "transfer down" -- those kids are absolutely impacting these rankings. But hey, ratings and rankings are subjective and open to differing opinions.

Very interesting data. Thanks for researching it, BR22. I think I would make one adjustment if I was going to use a weighting system, and that would be to decrease the points slightly for players that transferred to the school rather than signing right out of high school. My reasoning is that a kid, generally speaking, has not lived up to his high school rating if he chooses to transfer. Now obviously there are exceptions (such as kids that transfer for academic reasons), but the most common transfer reason is lack of playing time. My hunch is that Nebraska looks good in these rankings because we're propped up by a few guys who didn't live up to their ranking at their original school. Admittedly, I don't know enough about our conference counterparts to know if anyone else has recruited the transfer wire as heavily as us.

Oh no! I'll be in Hawaii at that time, and therefore unable to attend. Y'all should feel really sorry for me.

From the people that you talk to, have they given you any indication on how the Copeland eligibility will effect playing time for other players? Are there specific combinations of players that work really well with Copeland around them?

We managed to get a lot of transition points last year, even while emphasizing crashing the boards. There were many times that Tai got the rebound and went coast-to-coast by himself. And Glynn also has shown the ability to be a one-man fast break, as long as he receives the outlet pass relatively quickly. I think we can send 3 or 4 guys to rebound and still play uptempo. Doesn't have to be one or the other.

I still think it's largely going to come down whether or not we have a team that can rebound the basketball. Last year we missed 128 more shots than our opponents, and yet still outrebounded the opposition by 63 boards. That's pretty impressive, when you consider that NCAA-wide the offensive/defensive rebounding split was around 28%/72%. Morrow and Jacobson were tireless on the boards. Tai was a strong rebounder for a guy playing as a combo guard. Those three guys are gone. My fear is that we will be a significantly improved offensive team, but with a similar record due to no longer having an advantage on the glass.

I'd bet on the in between. There's a ton of talent across the board in the B1G. So even though our roster has improved, we're still going to be the second most talented team on the floor in a lot of conference games. NIT seems like the most likely result for the year, but obviously we'd all be ecstatic to make The Dance.

I hope we destroy them. I'll still be happy if we beat them. I'll hang my head in shame if they destroy us. It sucks being one of only two Nebrasketball fans in an office full of bluejays (the majority of which are JaySkers).

Copeland coming back may be what relegates Taylor to being a sub. TM values experience, but having a highly experienced PG (Watson) and guys with decent experience at the 3, 4, and 5 (Copeland, Roby, Jordy) may mentally free Miles to start the most talented player at the 2.