throwback

Also was curious if anyone saw Platteview Thursday night with 6-10 soph Brady Heiman? I saw him a couple of times mid-season, but was curious what others thought. (And I have no idea whether he's even on NU's radar at this point, other than he's 6-10, so I'm sure they've at least looked at whether he has hair on his legs.)

No on your first point (for selfish personal reasons). I'd rather see something like, if you make it to state two years in a row with "x %" of kids returning you should have to bump up a class. Or if you've made it x times out of so many years you need to bump up.Been saying your second point for years.... Encourage schools to time their spring break with state basketball so it doesn't interfere with school Ha - yeah I understand not liking the multiplier, it wouldn't be popular, which is why they haven't done it already. It's a tough call for the NSAA. Shot clock shouldn't be. With Arop, I think his coach said he could guard anywhere from a 2 to a 4 at the college level, and I can see that. (A perimeter oriented 4 more than a, say, Purdue or MSU type 4.) Maybe he's a lock down defensive type player for a year or two till his offensive skills develop who can guard a variety of people. We're certainly going to need one after Webster graduates. In fact, I would maybe think his time at NU could be a little like Webster's. I think Arop could develop into a slasher. He certainly wouldn't seem to have Webster's ball handling skills at this point, but Webster's jumper was a mess when he arrived. I believe the NU coaches had to completely reconfigure it (I could be wrong on that). But Webster got on the floor after he decided to dedicate to defense. And this year as a junior he found his offense, while his defense remains strong. Arop has more leaping ability than Webster and a longer wing span, so maybe he's that lock down defensive type player at first? It sounds like he has the attitude/work ethic to be someone who would embrace that challenge. And with Arop more than likely being an offensive project when he arrives on campus, and with NU having just 1 scholarship left for '17 at this point, the pressure is really on the coaches to go and find an immediate scorer with that other scholarship.

Sipple has a bit about Florence today, he apparently has made a recovery - so great news It doesn't really give a time line on the surgery, etc, so it may have happened a while ago - the foundation's fund-raising golf tournament is coming up, so that may be why he wrote about it today more at: http://journalstar.com/sports/huskers/sipple/steven-m-sipple-riley-s-belief-in-inclusion-helps-explain/article_d3213037-fbae-59d1-9a34-37025b1d8476.html

Some good points all around on Arop - you have to love the athleticism, so quick and gets his hands on a lot of passes with that long wingspan - he also is so quick off the floor when rebounding, he just beats everyone else to the ball while in the air. When he had that coast to coast drive last night, I think he only needed 7 strides. He eats up a lot of ground in a hurry. If he were only 6-8... But he's raw on offense. Not sure how much of it was him deferring to a lot of seniors on the team on that end, but he would appear to have work to do on ball handing and shooting skills. Fortunately he has another year to do it, and his coaches say his work ethic is tremendous. So tough to project sophomores, but Chang has a lot of potential too. If he lives up to it, he'll have a ton of offers, so it was smart of us to offer him early and start working on that relationship now. I like Wingett, but with Arop already committed for '17, and with only 1 more scholarship available right now, tough to know if he'll get one. If we had 2 more 'ships left, maybe he gets one. Would have to see him against much higher levels of competition than C-2 to form a better opinion. Can he guard players with quickness who match his size? Walker is another tough one - maybe his game fits better at UNO and its offensive style? Shot clock is desperately needed in HS. I'm not sure what the right number is, maybe 35 or 40 seconds, but it's needed badly. It's also getting close to needing to drop back to 4 classes. Maybe they could to go 5 initially, but it's inevitable that we're going to have to shrink at some point. And I wouldn't mind seeing a multiplier for private schools. Not sure how much difference it would make ultimately, but it's probably time to at least try it to try to even the playing field a bit. I also wouldn't mind seeing them stop playing in the high school gyms on Thursday. Just start the tournament on Wednesday, then you play the whole thing at Pinnacle & Devaney. Half the field would start on Wednesday / half would start on Thursday with the Wednesday teams having the day off. Or shrink the number of classes. Regardless, the state tournament is always a great weekend, there's nothing quite like it. And this year's junior class has a lot of talent, I'd say the most we've seen in Nebraska in a long time.

NU 68 Mary 67

NU 70 Wisky 65

Neb 63 Rutg 48 1 win

NU 71 n'western 70

NU 68 Pur 65

Neb 74 PSU 60

NU 79 OSU 70

Aren't there enough gloom and doom threads? Isn't this one about Indiana? JMO, but I'm sure we could be told how terrible this season has been and how horrible it is to be a season ticket holder in one of those other threads. Back on topic, going to be really tough in Bloomington without Shavon, but we are catching them at a good time in their schedule. Coming off games vs Iowa & Mich St and with a rivalry game with Purdue looming, hopefully the Hoosiers are looking back and ahead, rather than at NU. Going to take a special effort from multiple guys to hand Indy its first home loss.

Arop had 18 and 11 in South's 4-point loss to the Colorado team with the 6-10 Indiana recruit. http://www.neprepzone.com/sports/pospisil-omaha-south-meets-its-match-but-coach-bruce-chubick/article_fb3d50c2-30fc-58a4-9a27-757f97e12450.html

Indy 77 Neb 65

He only truly has weight problems if he fits snugly into that quad-XL #32 jersey we've had hanging in the equipment room for the past few years.

NU 61 PSU 59

Is there a press conference today? Maybe he'll be at that Miles will have his pre-flight conference Tuesday afternoon. After listening to the Husker Sports show tonight, I'd suspect that Shavon probably won't even travel to Wisconsin. Agreed - didn't get the impression he would travel to Madison, even as a spectator - probably a smart decision so he can continue whatever treatment he's undergoing without interruption.

I know you're somewhat joking, but to put it into words Every year you play 18 games against 13 teams. 5 Home and Aways (10 games against 5 teams) 8 games either home or away (8 games against 8 teams) Whatever teams you played home and away one year you won't play home and away the next. And you'll play h/h with every time 5 times every 13 years...assuming the B1G stays at 14 teams. That would be the smart way to do it, but that's also giving the B1G scheduler quite a bit of credit for thinking ahead. Hopefully that's how they're doing it. An even easier way to do it would be to give each team a home and home "rival" - say NU and Iowa, Minny & Wisky, Indiana & Purdue, etc. You'd play your rival home and home every year. Then you'd play 4 of the other 12 teams home and home once every three years. Much simpler formula and better schedule. It's not good that we've only had Iowa at PBA once in 3 years - we should be playing Iowa home and home every year.

Going to be great to have both of them in Lincoln!

Well done on AW III on the Journey - once you scroll thru the PSU/Indiana/Mich stuff anyway. The stories on NU are never long enough for my taste. Very mature young man, good ambassador for NU. Too bad that last shot didn't go in to tie it, then they'd have had a story. And there's plenty of behind the scenes/in the locker room/in the huddle type stuff too, which is always great to see.. If Shavon is out for an extended period of time, it's certainly going to be a struggle for us, but White seems like he'll be a good leader to have available to keep everyone on the same page. Favorite part for me was AW III saying he chose NU in part because he wanted the challenge of being a player who was relied upon to be a top guy, versus just being a role player, like he was at KU or perhaps would have been at Maryland. He certainly has lived up to that challenge for NU this season.

Wisky 68 NU 61 2 players

NU 88 Rutg 68

NU 82 Turtles 81

Journal Star listed nearly every one of Arop's shots in the game story during his 14-for-16, 32-point night vs Papio (they missed one of his makes in the list): Dunk 2 Layup 4 Short jumper/floater 5 18-footer from baseline 1 19-footer from key 1 ?? 1 "Aguek is really coming on. He's special and every night, he gets better," said Chubick. http://journalstar.com/sports/high-school/basketball/boys/boys-basketball-arop-bests-chang-in-battle-of-husker-recruits/article_3192bbb2-08a6-508c-95c3-db0c67f10507.html

I'm certainly not the expert but I've seen a little basketball and I'm not sure what you saw to say we were badly out coached? I'm not saying we weren't but I'm curious to know what you saw that makes you say that. You can game plan for something but your scout team is not going to be able to duplicate what you see in the game at the speed it really happens. Sometimes there is a big gap between the gameplan and the player execution. Since I've not been to practice or meetings, I don't know enough to say one was more at fault than the other.We did seem to struggle adjusting to the post rim run throughout the game but I also think we made some good adjustments. What did you see that made you feel things were tipped drastically Michigan's way? They don't really do a lot of stuff, they just seem to do what they do very well. This is a good point in that it may explain the slow starts to both halves - took us a bit to adjust to the speed of what they were doing perhaps. You cannot relax on the defensive end against that team, and you have to play proper technique with good communication through the entire shot clock, as they excelled at exploiting even the slightest mistakes. Also I'm not making excuses, as every team has tough turnarounds during the season, but we couldn't have gotten back from MSU much before dawn Thursday. Not much time to implement a game plan before a Saturday afternoon game, especially against a precise offensive team like UM. At least not much time, should you choose to give the players some time to recover and sleep. We expended a lot of energy at MSU as well, had a couple of guys banged up and sick, so it would've been nice to have one extra day, maybe playing Sunday. Being out of gas could explain some of the missed FTs late. It takes a ton of energy to overcome big deficits, too, and we had to do that twice Saturday. Again, not an excuse, as I'm sure we've had/will have B1G opponents who will go through the same thing. And UM has its share of injuries. So credit to UM for taking advantage on the road in a tough atmosphere with those quick starts.