throwback

Bullpen allowed 15 walks & 5 HBP (20 free passes) in 14 innings. ERA of 11.57. When they did manage to get the ball over the plate, they grooved it, which is no surprise. When you can't throw strikes consistently, the strikes you end up throwing usually end up looking like batting practice. Bullpen batting avg allowed of .340. SLG of .566. Bullpen OBP allowed of .521. That's a Little League type number. 26 total runs allowed by the bullpen in 14 innings. With that type of OBP over 14 bullpen innings, NU is lucky USD didn't score far more runs than they did. Unreal. That's the kind of weekend that makes pitching coaches think of entering a new line of work.

Well, that was a dumpster fire of an opening weekend. It's too early to make sweeping judgments, and I expected us to lose the series, but the inability to throw strikes in pressure situations is beyond concerning. The competitive "want-to" on the mound was something that should be there from day 1 of the season, even if you're still knocking off the rust, and it was not there. Not by a long shot. We did some good things offensively, especially the last two days, but when you can't throw strikes, it doesn't really matter. All the momentum you gained from coming back from 10-4 on Monday goes out the window because we have two seniors who can't put the ball over the plate in crunch time. Question now: Is it fixable? Hard to say. I expected the pitching staff to be a pretty good strength, but the bullpen guys, save for a couple of freshmen, were utter garbage this weekend. It's a mentality, and we caved almost every time, while USD rose to the occasion. Coming off the horrible season last year, this thing could spiral pretty fast if they don't get it fixed in Mobile next weekend. Cannot figure out what Shay's problem is, but it's a recurring pattern with him. When the game is on the line, he can't throw strikes far too many times. Your closer can't be someone who can't throw strikes in pressure situations. I was very concerned when they said they were moving him back to that role. I'm not sure who else can do it at this point, though. And they have to get Christo going. He's their most lively arm, but after an offseason of work to develop another pitch and pick up some movement on the fastball, if he wastes this year like he wasted last year ... ugh. Can't even finish that sentence. Another potential problem: I'm not sure USD is all that good (meaning talented). Outside of a couple of really good hitters and a couple of really good pitchers, I don't think that's a great team. They pounced on our mistakes, though, which is more than half the battle in college baseball. Ultimately, I think that's a bubble team, which makes what happened even worse. And the fact that our offense was pretty poor against USD's better pitchers also could be a big red flag. The offense Sunday and Monday was great, but the jury is still out there because of too many Ks Saturday and no clutch hits Friday against their top guys. Ultimately, though, this is on the pitching staff. Mentality going into Mobile has to be: Throw strikes immediately, or we'll try the next guy. Very short leashes. Unfortunately, it's very difficult to build a good bullpen with guys in defined roles doing it that way, but I'm not sure what else they can do after what happened with so many guys being afraid of the moment this weekend. We have to get this fixed fast, or you start putting far too much pressure on your starters, who were actually pretty solid this weekend. Eventually, they succumb to the pressure of feeling like they have to go 9 innings every game or the bullpen will blow it.

This crazy February run has been a lot of fun and tells us a lot about the culture the coaches & players built this season. Goes a long way in fueling optimism for keeping Fred. However, I think Saturday is another huge benchmark in letting us know if this is sustainable. We go into a game with something on the line, where we will be strongly favored, where we already beat this team on the road, and where the players will hear all week how good they are. Not trying to be a smart ass, but none of the players or coaches during their time at NU have experienced what this week will be like around here. We haven't played a Febr home game with any expectations or with anything on the line during Fred's time. Heck, we've only been favored in a handful of B1G games the past four years. We haven't been favored this season since our trip to Minny in early January. Granted, the expectations for this team right now are nowhere near what the 2014 or 2018 team was experiencing in February in terms of expectations, but for this group and considering where the program has been the past few years, this is a pretty big step. How does this group handle success? How do they handle people patting them on the back all week? How do they handle it when they aren't the underdog for a change? Can they keep the chip on their shoulder when things are going well? Ultimately, if Fred is going to be the answer long term, we need to win games we're expected to win in February. Saturday is going to be a very good measuring stick for how the coaches handle a situation like this.

James Palmer Jr. has entered the chat

NU 72 Goophs 66

I feel very confident in saying that those two -- or any of the individual players -- were not the problem the past 3 years.

I have no idea how we won that game. And I don't care. I thought Fred blew it by not bringing Griesel back sooner, but that group played some of the ugliest offensive basketball I've ever seen without losing any ground while he was sitting. I'm not sure what Maryland was doing by having Scott try to guard Walker. Huge mistake when Emilien did so well against him at their place. Reese is really good at certain things, but he can't handle DW's strength, so I get them wanting to switch him off. But then you have to double him on the catch or something, because Scott had no chance. On a day we shot 19% from 3, that cost MD the game. I get not wanting to have us rain 3s, but we weren't hitting today, so I'd have taken my chances and ran a double at DW every time in the 2nd half. I thought Keisei had his best defensive game today. He really worked on that end. We didn't have to junk it up as much on D because he was playing so hard and taking fewer chances. Being able to play straight up more often was a big help on the defensive boards. Blaise was great again. Hope he can bounce back from the ankle quickly. Hoiberg having to guard Young should never have worked, yet he did just enough to keep us in it and then wins the game by baiting them into throwing that lazy pass in OT. That young man has been unreal. He deserves a scholarship, but I think dad can afford to pay his way.

Found an early line - Turtles by 7.5 - seems high to me. I thought it'd be in the 3 or 4 pt range. I get it though, the final score the first time around made it look like MD kicked the crap out of us. EDIT: Just noticed MD is 17-9 ATS this season. The line makes way more sense with that information in hand. NU is 10-17 ATS.

As I remember the first meeting, DW had no problem scoring against and drawing fouls against Reese. It was their backup big (Emilien?) who completely stopped DW - the backup was a thicker dude, less of a shot blocker than Reese. DW seems to have better success vs shot blocker types. Maybe we go with 2 bigs when the backup comes in so we can get DW matched up against the 4? Regardless, we only took 14 3s in that first matchup - we've been at 20+ 3s in each of the last four games, including 28 at Rutgers. We'll be giving Maryland a far different look offensively than we did the first time.

Nebraska's spring camp has been sooooo quiet - none of the usual rumors / leaked news / legit news, etc. Some of that has to do with so many newcomers and so many positions up for grabs, but it's a little frustrating for fans. Makes it tough to get a handle on how things may look. Going to be a lot of tweaking of lineups, etc, these first few weekends, which usually leads to a poor record. Hopefully not, but that's usually pretty par for the course for a northern team that has unproven players in so many spots. Ideally, it'll pay dividends once conference play starts. A lot less bravado than last year, too, which is good I think. Live in the moment and let the play on the field do the talking, rather than worrying about trying to live up to -- or completely forget -- what happened the previous year. Hopefully they can split this opening weekend, but 1-3 wouldn't surprise me. By the way, Boyd's World did something new this year - a projected RPI for each D-1 team based on his ISR system. The system projects NU at 30-25 with an RPI of #102. Hoping we can do better than that, but that RPI is probably a reflection of a potentially down year in the B1G. Outside of Maryland, the rest of the B1G appears to be way down, at least in this projection. Doubt it plays out quite this badly, but it's hard to see more than 3 B1G teams making the NCAAs, maybe only 2. Here's how he projects our opponents: Vandy (1 game/N) - #3 Ole Miss (1/N) - #9 Maryland (3/A) - #32 San Diego (4/A) - #44 South Alabama (3/A) - #56 Kansas St (1/A) - #69 Iowa (3/A) - #74 Michigan (3/A) - #81 bluebirds (1/H, 2/A) - #92 Illinois (3/H) - #99 Hawaii (1/N) - #127 North Dakota St (2/H) - #129 Northwestern (3/H) - #147 Penn St (3/H) - #148 Abilene Christian (1/A) - #157 Nicholls St (4/H) - #167 Illinois St (3/H) - #168 Purdue (3/A) - #169 TAM-Corpus Christi (1/N) - #172 Omaha (2/H, 1/A) - #219 South Dakota St (1/H) - #233 Minnesota (3/H) - #248 Northern Colorado (2/H) - #291 Other B1G teams: Rutgers - #52 Indiana - #94 Ohio State - #115 Michigan State - #189 We need to be great at home with this schedule. Any home loss is going to kill our RPI. To have any hope of being around the top 50 in RPI, we probably have to go 23-4-ish at home. Very difficult.

NU 72 M 69

To illustrate how insane the transformation is in how this team plays: When we were playing a defensive style, we go on the road and completely shut down what the bluebirds are known for by holding them to a season low 53 points. I think they've only scored less than 60 points two other times. After the injuries, we can't play that style and have to emphasize our offense a bit more. So we go on the road and completely blow up what RU is known for by scoring 82 points on their floor, the most they've allowed at home all season. Only one other team has managed to score more than 72 points against them the entire season - Iowa did it twice. That's quite the transformation out of our team. Before the season, I did not think the coaches had the transformation into a defensive team in them, let alone a mid-season pivot to emphasize more offense. Very impressive. Not sure I can remember anything like this happening previously, other than the 1985-86 season when Hoppen tore up his knee around the 2/3 point of the season, and that team had to transform itself completely and still made the NCAAs. This team certainly isn't playing for those stakes, but it's still stunning what they are doing with this late-season pivot.

To be fair, he says that about everybody. I think they had to send out to NASA to calculate how many 3s Lat supposedly made in practices last season. But they decided to trust CJ to start for whatever reason tonight and it worked big time.

Unreal effort - so important to go +5 after the under 4 timeout in the first half and then play even up to the under 16 timeout in the second half. CJ hit a huge 3 to push the lead back to 5 right before the under 16 timeout, and that took a lot of momentum away from RU, as they put a lot of effort into those first 5 minutes coming out of the locker room. I thought the coaches were crazy starting CJ, but he had a game and then some. I love how the coaches have flipped the script midseason about how we are playing - the constant switching defenses without Bandoumel & Gary is working and hiding some of our flaws now on that end. And to turn the offense loose and play faster now that we need to play more of our better 3-pt shooters is exactly what needs to happen. Went from a team that had to win in the 60s to now a team that probably needs to be in the 70s+. To make that philosophical change 2/3 of the way through the season is incredibly hard. To do what we did tonight offensively in that building against that type of defensive team is one of the most impressive performances of Fred's era. Not quite what we did at Wisky last year or in Omaha this year, but right behind those two. Griesel did such a good job of settling the offense down at the right time and pushing it at the right time. Maybe his best game from the standpoint of being the QB out there. Don't look now, but we've won at PSU, at Ohio St, at Wisky, at the bluebirds, at Minny, and at Rutgers in the last calendar year. That's 6 wins in our last 14 true road games. Also 3 wins in February already, most since 2018. Could be a fun finish to the season.

Ha - yeah. If some student section booing and a few airball chants triggered her that much, she might want to stay away from Twitter and message boards, because what Wisky fans had to say about him after the game is several times worse than what went on in the arena Saturday.

12.5-pt 'dogs for NU - we haven't covered as a double-digit 'dog in 5 straight games.

It was nice to see Shavon's dad get a chance to stand next to the Lombardi trophy before the game.

Ohio St scores 14 points in the first half and loses by 21 Sunday to MSU in Columbus. Brutal.

Nice to see most Wisconsin fans hate their team almost as much as I hate their team.

Not to gloat or anything, but that's two straight games Chucky has had a chance to beat us on a late shot in regulation and failed. I'd almost feel bad for him, but then I remember that he chose to play for that program. Disgusting.

R 71 N 52

Add Texas and you have the four most hated teams on the planet. Now if Fred can just figure out how to play and beat Texas yet this season, I feel like he may just save his job.

I was afraid I wouldn't hate Wisconsin as much now that the nut puncher is gone, but I was relieved to find the hate is still strong. Feels great to beat them, especially like that.

How bad would OSU's luck ranking be if they hadn't been gifted that game against Rutgers where the B1G had to issue a formal statement that the officials blew the call at the end of the game, allowing OSU to hit the winning 3? That was one of the luckiest wins in the entire B1G season. From the eye test, OSU's bad "luck" is self-inflicted. They looked disinterested and undisciplined when they were in Lincoln, and that hasn't changed much to me watching them since.