throwback

Very sad news - at his age, I can't imagine having to work through all the things that have been weighing on his mind recently

Exactly - a chance for minutes immediately & at least 1 chance per year to show Michigan it missed the boat on him.

How about if Wisconsin wins tonight .... Rutgers can claim a win over the eventual national champion.

Not sure if knowing some of this makes me a MavSker - since there's no Husker Hockey, I do love some UNO hockey - but here goes anyway Programs certainly can jump to D-1 after having successful club programs - UNO's first coach, Mike Kemp, coached UNO's club team for a short time, then came back to UNO when they went D-1. Arizona St is promoting its club coach to become its D-1 coach - ASU has been one of the top club programs in the nation recently. Penn St has also had a pretty successful club program over time before its D-1 jump. So while it would be possible to "elevate" club hockey to D-1 over time, I would be completely shocked if NU ever adds D-1 hockey. I'm just not sure NU wants to risk its currently strong hoops season ticket base by adding hockey. There's only so much money to go around in the winter. And then where would they play? Playing in PBA would not work well - UNO has found this problem at Century Link, it's too big, which is part of the reason for the new UNO Community Arena. And fighting with hoops for winter dates is tough. To play in PBA you'd almost have to cap tickets at 5000-7000 and curtain off the upper areas, just to create scarcity and demand. NU would have an advantage with the Breslow center providing a practice area that has ice all of the time - that's another problem UNO has experienced with Century Link, as they have limited practice time there - they kind of have to be practicing nomads, kind of like what NU hoops was doing before the new practice facility was built. I even think last week & this week the Mavs are having to practice at Ralston Arena because their lease has run out at Century Link and they have no ice anywhere else they can get on consistently. At Ralston, they're probably having to work around the Lancers' practice/game schedules too, although I do think there's always one sheet of ice available at Ralston. Seems pretty silly a team prepping to play for the national championship has to practice this way, but I believe that's the case. UNO's new arena will solve this problem, as they'll always have at least one sheet of ice available for practice, personal workouts, etc. Ultimately though, I'm not sure NU would want to step on UNO's toes for hockey, as that's the money making sport at UNO. Adding NU hockey would inevitably partially cannibalize UNO's ticket base. Then there's always that rumor floating around that UNO agreed to drop football when it moved to D-1 in exchange for NU agreeing not to add D-1 hockey. Plus there's the money angle. I believe the two most recent teams to jump to D-1 hockey - ASU and Penn St - both had huge private donations, and then they're using that money as a partial or full endowment to guarantee funding of the program for a long time. I think PSU's was around $100M and included construction of a new arena (5000-6000 seats I believe) as well as funding for a women's team. So even though NU will be getting a huge pile of money in a couple of years - when we become eligible for a full B1G share & the new B1G football contract is negotiated - that they could use to add hockey, I just don't see it, short of someone providing a huge private donation specifically for a hockey program, like Penn St received. Maybe NU adds something like lacrosse, which would allow them to make use of the new soccer facility during the spring and where they could add women's and men's teams more easily. Or maybe they use all that new money to lower ticket prices across the board. I'd love to see D-1 Husker Hockey & the B1G would love to see NU add hockey to add to B1G Network programming on Friday nights in the winter, but I don't think it'll happen in my lifetime. So I guess I'll have to keep being a MavSker for hockey.

I'm assuming it's highly unlikely, but with a couple of 'ships open for 15-16 now, any chance Pinder tries to get here a year early? Highly doubtful as he would've had to carry a high academic load in anticipation of this possibility, but just wondering if there's any chance he could accelerate things academically this summer. Then again, with NU hoops' luck over the years with trying to get guys qualified in odd recruiting circumstances, maybe we'd just better wait another year and make it a standard JuCo situation.

...NU beat eventual Final Four teams in back to back seasons? Not a trivia question, as I don't know the answer. I'm guessing it hasn't happened before, but don't know for sure.

Benny Parker thru 3 seasons -- I think these are right -- 2,032 minutes, 296 points, so he'll likely play more minutes than Rivers in 4 years & score less. Back to the original question, I can't think of any other 4-year players in modern times who would come close to those numbers - maybe Conklin? Andy Markowski? I'm sure both guys are well over 500 points, but neither was a huge average per game scorer I don't believe, but played a lot. A guy like Chuck Richardson may have numbers most similar to Parker, but I'm sure Chuck scored many more points. Same with Sek Henry I'm sure, but both played a lot of minutes without being big scorers. Corey Simms maybe? Simms didn't play a whole lot as a senior, as I recall, so he might not have gotten to 2000 minutes. Definitely an odd stat, especially to have two players with those kind of numbers together for 3 seasons - I'd be surprised if we've ever had another time with 2 guys that have been over-2000-minutes, under-500-points in a career together on the same team. Heck I'd be surprised if we've had more than 1 or 2 other guys like that period in the past 50 years. Back to Rivers, I agree with your opening paragraph. When he came in with the other 2 freshmen, he was the last one I thought would make it at NU for 4 years, let alone play that many minutes. He maxed out and then some compared to what I thought he could do, and earned his minutes on those teams.

NU 77 PSU 68

Newbill splashes a 3 at the buzzer, PSU 79, Minny 76 - final #10 seed is up for grabs! So we're the #10 with a win tonight, would play Indiana at 5:30 Thurs #12 with a loss and would play PSU at 3:30 Wed

Minny down 2 to Penn St with 3 1/2 minutes to play Any word on PItchford's injury for tonight?

NU 67 MD 60

NU 66 Illllllinois 60

NU 68 Osu 66

NU 71 Iowega 60

NU 63 Maryland 61

I wasn't questioning the plan - sorry if it came across that way. It certainly worked well enough through the majority of the game. If we could've just shot the ball with a little consistency, we'd have had the lead most of the way. I just thought PU had adjusted to it in the first several minutes after halftime, but I thought it was a good strategy overall. If we just rebound a bit better, it's a brilliant strategy, but playing the way we played did left us open to allowing more offensive rebounds, and PU did a good job of making us pay on 2nd-chance points. I think Miles said the 2 PU post players had something like 90 turnovers and 20 assists on the season combined, so forcing them to pass with the quick double/triple was a smart option in my mind, and it worked well the majority of the game.

1 up for Fringe reference Outstanding! As far as the rebounding issues, Coach Miles mentioned it on the post game, but when you're doubling and scrambling on defense, it's tough to match up on the box out, Coach said it's similar to playing zone. And we are lousy rebounders when playing zone, so the rebounding problems probably shouldn't have been a significant surprise. Now you can debate whether we should have run 1/2/3 extra defenders at Hammonds every time, maybe we could've changed up a bit in the 2nd half, but when you're going to immediately double/triple and try to make Hammonds to beat us passing the ball, forcing you to scramble defensively, you're going to have more rebounding problems than normal. PU also seemed to get nearly every loose ball to bounce its way, like the ball we knocked loose on the double team in the first half and bounced to a Boiler standing in the lane for a layup, or the air ball PU shot late in the game that landed in the hands of a Boiler offensive player for a layup. Couple of key momentum plays that the road team needs to go its way.

Nice articles in both LJS & OWH on Mr. White today. http://journalstar.com/sports/huskers/mens-basketball/white-making-strides-in-redshirt-season/article_c90c1beb-a72d-536d-9178-19396881b33c.html http://www.omaha.com/huskers/husker-transfer-andrew-white-gets-a-jump-on-next-season/article_8e5e61d5-4c52-53c2-93dc-8672140f8073.html

Had a chance to watch WIU in Omaha yesterday vs the Mavs. Pretty amazing how quickly WIU's players forgot how to play defense after Coach Molinari left. After a slow start, Mavs scored roughly 65 pts over final 30 minutes.

NU 62 Purdue 54

NU 61 Wisky 60

NU 66 Nitts 62

NU 57 NW 48

Reading this thread, I'm reminded of something Coach Miles said in the preseason when asked about the expectations and whether NU could pick up where it left off - he said he wasn't sure if NU was actually as good as it played late last season, or if the team just got hot. Someone who's better with the stats probably has the answer, but I believe NU's statistical results from last season would point to a team that just got hot, as NU's statistical ranking and analysis shouldn't have jived with a 19-win, 4th place B1G team. Because Miles is such a stats analysis guy, that's probably why he was wondering whether the team just got hot late last season. When you're hot, you play with so much more confidence, and that's an area where we just have been lacking his season when it comes to outside shooting and to an extent FT shooting, especially on the road. If we had taken a slight step forward last season, rather than the huge leap to an NCAA berth, I think we'd be about where we expected 2/3 of the way through year 3, considering where the expectation level was going into Miles' first season. I'd never "give back" what NU did at the end of season 2, as that was best ride for NU hoops in a long, long time. But that hot streak raised the expectation level too high going into season 3 versus the overall talent level, and the team hasn't been able to match it, which has raised the level of pressure on the team. It all kind of feeds on itself. Hopefully NU can start another hot streak, beginning Tuesday, but the schedule is so much tougher down the stretch than it was last season that it's hard to imagine NU going on a big win streak this time. Growing pains are to be expected when a program is trying to build itself up from the depths of where we've been. Coach Miles has us on the right trajectory, but, as shown so far, it's not going to be a smooth ride, with plenty of ups and downs.

NU 55 Minny 51