throwback

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

Yes. I'd take that. I love watching Hayes ... and wish we had a guy like him every time I see Wisky play.

Bad loss to a pretty mediocre team We looked like a team that was still thinking about/feeling the effects of Saturday - no urgency/energy. Actually both teams looked that way through the 1st half. Our zone offense is God awful, especially spacing and passing up open shots, not that we would've hit them tonight Can we burn the all black uniforms yet? Or go back to the design we used in the '90s, those seemed to work better. Yet as horrible as the 1st half went offensively, we were still in it. So to come out as flat as we did in the first few minutes of half #2 caused me to utter a season-record number of profanities per minute. Coach Beilein is really good, their game plan picked out all of our weaknesses and got them installed on a short prep time.

NU 71 Mich 70 L Smith makes a tip-in at the buzzer

Finally had a chance to watch Trueblood in person last week - agree with most everything listed here thus far. Very good court awareness, does a nice job getting everyone on the team involved. Elk South loves to run, and Trueblood leads the charge, good in the open court. Most impressive is his quick/explosive first step, allows him to get around most HS players. While his game/style does remind me a bit of Gesell in HS, he's certainly not as strong as Gesell was in HS, and not as quick. Of course that's to be expected as Gesell had multiple Power 5 scholarship offers. And Gesell dominated the ball a lot more at the HS level. I'd say Trueblood has plenty of room to get better too. Scored in the mid-20s in the game I saw, but easily could've been in the mid-30s. Left several points at the FT line and didn't finish a few chances deep in the lane. Would like to see the FT stroke improve, releases it too low for my liking, making it tough to be consistent. A higher release point would help his outside shooting consistency too I think. He hit a couple of really nice pull-up jumpers from the FT line in the middle of the game, but when he shot another one a few minutes later, it barely grazed the side of the rim. With his quick first step, that pull-up jumper game can be his bread and butter against bigger players in college if it was a little more consistent. Didn't really want to shoot 3s in the game I saw. I think he was 0-for-1 from out there. Overall a nice addition as a walk-on and should be able to give the guys a good look in practice. Now we'll have to see if he can beat out Tai on the scout team. Should add that he seemed coach-able. Had a few frustrating plays during the game, but he didn't seem to let it bother him much, other than the occasional frustrated hand clap , and didn't show a bad attitude at any point with coaches or teammates, like you'll sometimes see out of the kid who's the best player on the floor. Elk South didn't play particularly well the night I saw them, so there certainly could've been some frustration boiling over. Didn't see anything that would indicate even a hint of a red flag from the point of view of him working inside the team concept.