throwback

It was #110 before Wednesday.

Agree and a fair point. However, if we get to 18 wins, that means 5 of our Q1/Q2 wins would have come after he was injured - nearly half of them. On paper, that looks pretty good over a 10-11-game stretch without a key player. Unfortunately, it's going to be very difficult to find enough offense without Cope. Not Hail Mary vs Northwestern tough - maybe 57-yd FG by Alex Henery tough.

Agreed. And even 18 may be enough. The bubble is shallow, as you said, which helps. Right now, we're at 2 Q1 wins and 5 Q2 wins. With 4 more regular season wins to get to 18-13, we'll be around 4-5 Q1 wins and 6-7 Q2 wins. Last year's bubble-ish teams that made the tourney: Oklahoma #10 seed - 6 Q1 / 3 Q2 Butler #10 seed - 4 Q1 / 4 Q2 Texas #10 seed - 6 Q1 / 2 Q2 UCLA #11 seed - 3 Q1 / 5 Q2 Arizona St #11 seed - 3 Q1 / 5 Q2 Creighton #8 seed - 2 Q1 / 5 Q2 Providence #10 seed - 5 Q1 / 5 Q2 USC (no bid) - 4 Q1 / 5 Q2 Notre Dame (no bid) - 2 Q1 / 5 Q2 Baylor (no bid) - 4 Q1 / 3 Q2 At 18-13 in the regular season, our resume of 11-ish Q1/Q2 wins would be better than most of these teams. Only 23 teams had 10+ combined Q1/Q2 wins last year - all made the tournament comfortably. Missouri & Alabama & Providence were the lowest seeds at #8 and #9 and #10. I don't think we can win 4 more Q1/Q2 games without Cope. But if we do, I really think 18 wins - with 11 of those Q1/Q2 wins - has us on the right side of what is a very shallow bubble. Plus we'd have the B1G tournament to try to pick up another 1 or 2 wins. Now, this is all assuming the committee follows the pattern of last year regarding quad 1 and 2 wins and almost ignoring losses. Understandably a big if, since there are new people on the committee every year. Also assuming Penn St & Seton Hall stay in the Top 75 of the NET. They have a few spots of cushion right now, but it will be close on both of them coming down the stretch. For example, we'll need to win at PSU, but it'd help to win by just 1 point.

NU 58 NW 48

Just really happy for the players. Hopefully they can play a little looser now. A big win Saturday would at least make those final 4 games intriguing. I don't think they have enough offense without Cope, but they'd still be in the conversation with a win vs NW. I thought the last call was a good one - as rr52 said, he had his arms at an angle, inside Palmer's "cylinder" - Coffey threw his arms up and flew backward when he felt the contact, tried to sell Palmer jumping into him, but I thought it was a foul because of his arm angle when Palmer started his shot. Palmer did come forward just a bit, but Coffey's arms were in his cylinder, so Palmer's vertical plane shouldn't matter. Uhhhh, you just let a team that has not been able to make 1/3 of its FGs the last month make 1/2 of its FGs against you. You didn't deserve to win. If you deserved to win, it wouldn't have come down to a last shot/referee call. This quote, among many other reasons, is why he'll always be Mr. Jackwagon.

That's all fine, but I'm not jumping to wild conclusions until I find out whether he's having cable installed.

I'm sure NU is still in the conversation on some brackets - losing streaks aren't part of the team sheet, so that's not something the committee will consider. As of now, NU is still #40 in the NET and has 2 Q1 wins and 4 Q2 wins. Taken alone, that's a bubble team. At this point, we're going to have 23-24 Q1/Q2 games before the B1G tournament. That's a crazy high number. So I can see why people who haven't seen us play much the past month would look at the team sheet and see we still have 5 Q1 and 2 Q2 games left, plus a conference tournament, and think there's still a chance. Those who've actually seen what's been going on on the floor, though, would have a vastly different opinion.

NU 61 Minny 49 3

PU 76 NU 39

NU 66 MD 60

NU 66 Ill 59

Didn't figure that number would last.

Early line / NU -2

Don't forget about 6-5 center Chris Logan taking over for Hoppen. Hope this team can follow the same path.

This is a shart ... after a night involving a case of Keystone Light.