millerhusker

Extremely disappointed. Our players are locked in to the hype and the emotion of the game. But we're absolutely not locked in to what it'd take to play effective winning basketball on either end of the court. We have players recklessly flying around the court on defense, yet we get caught sleeping and simply not guarding one of the best shooters in the country on numerous possessions. On ball defense is soft and porous, reminiscent of Hoiberg's first couple years. Transition defense is very poor. Getting outrebounded. Offensively we have individuals just doing their own thing on the majority of possessions. We're showing a lot of immaturity in this game. Hopefully we learn a lot from this going forward.

Allick needs to sit. He's way out of control and has costed us a few possessions.

If we're going to keep going under screens and giving up open threes we at least need to block out and rebound. 6 offensive rebounds already for Creighton.

We are not playing well at all. Creighton is just missing shots. For now.

Our players are caught up in the emotion and not staying in the system offensively. Need to settle down. Disappointed in the officiating early. Creighton could've been called for 4 or 5 fouls now, if they were being consistent with the two ticky tack fouls called on us.

Why

An early double digit deficit

Yeah, seems like the national perception of the Big Ten will be fine. Purdue beat Xavier, Gonzaga, Marquette and Tennessee. But just lost to Northwestern. Still some great non-con opportunities for Big Ten teams: Marquette @ Wisconsin Kansas @ Indiana Creighton @ Nebraska Baylor @ Michigan State Ohio State vs. UCLA Illinois @ Tennessee Purdue still has Alabama and Arizona.

One thing I'd like to see us stop doing is fouling three point shooters.

Wondering this as well. Last year we had a week off before the St. John’s and K-State games and we came out and laid an egg in both of those.

Seems like everyone is either going to throw in the towel or start celebrating early after these next 4 games. These games might tell us a lot about how this season will go. They also might not. We could go 3-1 and not make the tourney in March. We could go 1-3 and still make the tourney. After 12 games last year Creighton was 6-6 and reeling. Fast forward a few months and they ended up 1 second shy of the final four. In 2014 we were garbage until late January, but ended up dancing in March. This year will be a fun ride regardless of the next 2 weeks.

FWIW Lunardi’s latest Bracketology still had six Big Ten teams in and two more in the first 5 out.

Our big lull in this game came when Boogie-CJ-Brice were on the court together as 1-2-3. We scored 4 points in 6 minutes during that stretch in the second half. This also happened against Rider. Fortunately they didn't give up 10 points in a minute to Fullerton like they did to Rider. It just doesn't make sense to have these three on the court together if you don't have to. All three really lack an ability to move laterally. Brice is pretty explosive vertically and has good straight line speed, but is slow laterally. CJ and Boogie have none of the above. So they all struggle to stay in front of smaller, quicker guards and wings. They all have their strengths offensively, but they are the three players on the team who at times will dribble into a crowd and cough it up or get their shot blocked. I'm in agreement with Hoiberg that a guard getting their shot blocked by a big is as good as a turnover. Against Creighton, we cannot afford to 1. give up a big run, or 2. waste possessions with avoidable turnovers or dribbling into Kalkbrenner. We need to go at Kalkbrenner physically with Mast and Allick, like we did last year with Walker and like Iowa did a couple weeks ago with Krikke. He has a pretty good feel for avoiding contact and blocking smaller player's shots. But if you take the fight to him with stronger, more physical players he's pretty soft. We haven't faced a real frontcourt yet this year. It'll be interesting to see how we handle it.

I'll be pretty pissed at Creighton if they lose to Oklahoma State tomorrow night

If Creighton gets as many second chances as Duquesne and Fullerton did, we won't win that game.

The first NET ranking of the season will come out in early December on ncaa.com. Then I just check there for daily updates. I don’t look at RPI anymore since the committee doesn’t use it (right?). For getting an idea of just how good teams are, I like Torvik’s.

People will inevitably keep comparing this year to the 2017-18 season in this regard. But it’s just two pretty different situations. That team didn’t earn a tourney bid. We weren’t on the edge of our seat on selection sunday. Through six games that season, torvik had us at #106. Through six games this year, we’re sitting at #32 and we haven’t played creighton or k-state yet. That team lost 4 non-con games and had 4 single digit wins against low-major non-con teams. That’s a poor resume going into conference play. We took care of business in conference and beat the teams we should’ve beat, but that was a hell of a long ways to climb from the early season metrics. Only ended up with one statement win all year, against Michigan, and finished the regular season #42. So in a down year for the B1G, we still climbed 64 spots from late November to early March. That projected record of 21-10 (11-9) would put Nebraska in the tournament this year.

Colorado State has one of the best players in the country in Stevens. It’s pretty cool that he decided to stay at Colorado State this year because he could’ve left and had his pick of blue bloods to go play for.

Didn’t matter how it happened, we just had to win this one. The box score will look like our point guards didn’t do much, but I thought those two guys played excellent. They took care of the ball and made good decisions against a scrappy, quick, physical team that pressures you for 40 minutes. It seemed like we couldn’t secure a dang defensive rebound.

Tough task. Their top 3 guys have made a combined 37 three pointers already. But they also shoot the mid-range, or "far 2s", very efficiently. And they're all near 90% free throw shooters. I think we'll do what we do. Run them off the three point line, have Mast/Allick waiting in the lane to deter, and play the analytics game and hope they don't make damn near every mid-range shot like Michigan State did in Lincoln last year. The one thing that can't happen in this one is JL getting in early foul trouble. Our solid defense starts with him. His on ball pressure will be important tomorrow night. Need to make their offense uncomfortable.

Got a steal with this one. He will be our Tamin Lipsey. Probably won't start as a freshman like Lipsey did, but he could if he had to. I'm very confident in his abilities translating to the next level.

Add Ulis and I already love what next year's rotation could be.

That one was fun to listen to on the radio. The toughest test yet will be on Wednesday against Duquesne.

Coleman shouldn't have it

My prediction after 4 games remains the same. 20-11