Swan88

When was the last time Nebrasketball had all three of it's signed recruits included in the top 130 of ESPN rankings? It's a reality now--see this website! This is an independent confirmation of the success that Tim Miles & Crew are having at identifying and landing talent. Also, the University has done a superb job of branding with that big, bright "N"--and it looks great showing up three times on the ESPN list of top-130 recruits for 2013!

This! Any assessment of the Nee years cannot be complete without an acknowledgment of this reality. Bargen (and another assistant who left around the same time) provided discipline and focus and management skills and attention to detail that Nee could not (or, at least, did not) provide himself or replace with other assistants. Nee seemed to recruit very well, but he apparently could not manage the team well (the player walk-out is but one example). And he never repeated or even came close to replicating his Nebraska success at any subsequent job. But the negatives tended to persist with him, it seems.

Here's predicting that Mike Peltz will play a meaningful role on this team next year, regardless of the talent level infusion. This is because he can do what Barfknecht calls the "hoops grunt work," and do it very well. His walkon status is testament to a deficiency of one sort or another. But his value, nonetheless, to this year's team seems to be very real and very substantial. And so it seems reasonable to expect that the need for the high-quality "hoops grunt work" that Mike can provide will not vanish next year and will not be entirely filled by the newbies. Heck, I seem to recall in the first exhibition game that the primary person to slow down the opposition's main scoring stud was not Biggs or Gallegos or Parker or Talley--it was Mike Peltz (but perhaps my short term memory issues are arising . . . again).

As long as we are in a predicting mode for next year's team, here are my two cents worth (or maybe it's only one-cent worth): (i) the two freshmen, one sophomore and one walkon who see significant minutes throughout this year will also see significant minutes during the first half of next season because of experience triumphing over ability, but (ii) once the second half of next season arrives, experience will start to even out, and ability will prevail. As to who will have the greater ability next year among available players . . . no clue.

Lee Barfknecht has a nice article in this morning's Omaha World Herald on Mike Peltz. Here is a link. The opening line from the article is this: "Mike Peltz has turned into the Nebraska basketball team's Swiss Army knife." The article fills in some blanks on Mike Peltz, such as, "he led Class B in scoring as a junior and senior" and he plays with a lot of knee pain from a "partially torn patellar tendon."

The offers list in the OWH is underwhelming at best . . . Charlotte and St. Bonaventure, for Pete's sake. While the OWH article cites Rivals, it fails to provide the following additional information from Rivals: (i) the Rivals list of offers includes Marquette, (ii) Rivals reports that Atewe visited Auburn in October, (iii) Rivals reports Atewe as saying that, among the schools recruiting him the hardest are Georgia Tech and Miami.

Hey, Norm, you've gotta lighten up a bit. It's a game! And it's obvious that Nebraska is on the rise, with a steep trajectory. Some year soon, we're gonna be fighting toe-to-toe with the biggest of the big boys. And Tim Miles & Crew will lead us there. Stop fretting so much and enjoy the ride!

Hate to break it to you, folks, but we are going to experience a lot of nights like this in 2012-13. We don't have any margin for error: we are playing a lot of minutes with two freshmen and a walk-on, and we have some other significant issues. As to the price we are paying, it's for the lack of adequate recruiting over the course of several years. We will be able to pull off some more decent wins this year, like Wake Forrest and USC, because of the quality and creativity of the coaching staff in making the most out of what we've got. But there are limits to magic that any staff can pull off. So, we will also experience nights like UNO and Kent State--and when nights like those are paired up with a quality opponent, things will get ugly!

Yikes!!! Our prayers are with him! If I recall correctly, he had some health issues relating to his heart when he came out of high school.

November 28: Boise St. 83 at Creighton 70. December 5: Boise St. 55 at Utah 76. In the words of that great movie . . . "There's a chance!" In all seriousness, one benefit in playing a highly ranked team is that the Huskers have everything to gain and very little to lose, while the Jays have very little to gain and a great deal to lose. A lop-sided victory for the Jays will be mostly a non-event (other than for the local chatter), but anything else will have some degree of significance.

We are apparently after Matthew Atewe, the 6'9" power forward from Canada who currently plays at a prep school back east. He reportedly has offers from K.St., Marquette, Memphis, Auburn, Clemson and others. He's had some glowing things to say about Tm Miles and Chris Harriman.

Shavon Shields showed some promise tonight. Looked like he belonged out there. Confident. Fluid movement. Under control. Looked good!

There are two B section tickets for the USC game available right now on the ticket marketplace at Huskers.com.

Since we are into songs around this place, here is the line for the USC game: "Pack up the babies and grab the old ladies and everyone goes to Brother [Miles'] Traveling Salvation Show"! Here's a (the song starts around the 2:10 mark).

"Smith, a Kent, Wash., native, came to UCLA with McDonald's All-American honors and was ranked by ESPN as the No. 1 center recruit in the country. Rivals.com ranked him as the No. 3 center nationally and Scout.com ranked him as the No. 4 center nationally."(From yesterday's L.A. Times). So much for stars and rankings on this one!

Benny Parker: 7 assists and 1 steal, with 1 turnover, in 31 minutes. Hmmm . . . that's pretty good (understatement intended).

A little sandbagging here? "Much better than the Jays right now"? Let's not get carried away. But nice post, anyway, Tony.

It appears that there were no basketball recruits in Lincoln today. The basketball team had a practice at the Devaney that was still in progress an hour before the football game started.

Pretty funny, Silver! (I don't know how to do a smiley face on this thing). At least it's not a prostate joke. As I always tell young men who make bald jokes and prostate jokes (not to admit on this anonymous board that either would apply to me) . . . , "Aren't you a bit young to make that kind of joke? And aren't you thinning a little bit up there already?"

What if he is only heading to the toilet when you are being snide? Were you the guy yelling snide things last night when I did just that at the four minute mark? If so, apology is accepted.

In my younger days with family back home or youngsters with me at a game, or with other reasons to commit less than 4+ hours to a game and related travel, I often arrived at a basketball game late and/or left early--actually, i did that with regularity--and listened to the radio for the initial and/or final minutes of a game. It worked perfectly for me. Some people were offended? So it goes.

To answer my own question: looks like he is definitely a righty and not ambidextrous. Hope the injury effects don't linger.

Is Shavon Shields a left handed or right handed shooter? The bandage is on his right elbow. Maybe it was an optical illusion, but standing side-by-side with Walter Pithford, Shavon did not seem to be 4 inches shorter. Is Tulane to be his first game on the floor? Or perhaps that won't occur until Kent State? The Kansas City connection looks to be very important for the Huskers this year: Shavon, Benny and Brandon.

Dylan seemed to stop going for the basket after he blew the dunk--too bad on that because he made a really nice move to the basket on that play. It would have been the highlight reel of the game, had it gone in!

Not Norm here, but the answer is, "Yes" he was double and tripple teamed [but can't say it was "like Doug Mc," since I haven't seen him play this year] When the ball went into Brandon anywhere near the inside, he was immediately double teamed and it seemed like all the defenders sort of collapsed a bit around him. It was frustrating because it seemed there should be an open man somewhere, but we never seemed to find him or otherwise make them pay for such efforts.