throwback

Bucky only favored by 2.5 - even Vegas hates those guys.

Wisky 63 NU 61

The best advice is to pull the sweater vest over the head and then go to town like you're in a hockey fight. Works every time.

I met Q (on crutches) at an event during the off-season. I believe his listed measurables are accurate. I wouldn't say that about the majority of the rest of the team. (Keisei, I'm looking at you.) What kind of player he'll be, I don't know. But the physicality of the B1G won't intimidate him.

Fightin' Howards open -10.5

If Fred truly loved the fans, he would've allowed Lundy to get one more trey to erase the previous record holders.

Very good point - have to believe the coaches used the extra couple of days between games to really dive into which rotations were hurting us. They minimized the number of minutes we had bad defensive groups out there together. Granted, it's also easier to do that when we don't have foul trouble. Loved the urgency and pace we played with today on offense - probably another coaching tweak. Rather than burning shot clock with the weave up top that had little purpose, we were cutting and screening with urgency today early in the shot clock, especially the first 10 minutes. Not surprising we couldn't keep up that pace, but that early offensive burst basically won the game. Ultimately, even as good as Keisei and Lawrence were offensively, we won that game on D. Looked far more like what we did defensively with Gary & Bandoumel available earlier in the year. PSU did miss some open 3s, but we have to have that kind of help in most conference games. Only allowed 8 second chance points, 0 fast break points by limiting the live ball turnovers, and kept PSU off the FT line. That's a good recipe for this team, along with the extra offensive urgency. I'm sure PSU took us pretty lightly, but we still had to go out and take advantage of that. Feels good to win in February - haven't done that very much the past few years.

Mich 79 NU 63 2

Ha - he kind of has a go-to, doesn't he? Hiring the bluebirds' old AD is going to fix NU hoops? I'm sure that'll go well. Wonder if we ever tried hiring one of our rivals' administrators before and how that worked out? (Side note: Are the energy busses still running around campus?) I will say Trev while at UNO had a very strong AD for hockey that helped him out quite a bit, as he knew the sport, helped reach out to Dean Blais and the current coach, Gabinet, etc. Ultimately, though, Trev made those hires. Not sure having a dedicated person to help with finding candidates is as big a deal for a mainstream sport like men's hoops versus more of a niche sport like hockey. We hired one of the hottest names this last go around -- a can't miss hire -- just fine without a dedicated AD. Clearly, it did not work out. So there's no guarantees either way. If Trev feels like he needs a dedicated AD for men's hoops, great. If not, great. It's not going to guarantee success. Ultimately, we can throw out a million ideas, but they aren't going to fix what's going on now. Maybe when the new coach gets here, some of this is worth implementing. But it's pretty clear we need a fresh start first.

PSU favored by 3.5 - a few points less than I'd have guessed

Iowa being Iowa

I think this team will surprise with a big turnaround - 3rd in the B1G sounds about right to me. Going to be tough to catch Maryland. Guessing we'll struggle in the non-con because we have so many positions and roles with quite a bit of competition, so the coaches will have to use those first few weekends to sort things out. Hopefully once B1G play starts, they'll be settled and ready to take a big jump.

One other thing - loved that Fred rolled the dice with Walker and his 2 fouls for the final 5-ish minutes of the first half. Not something he normally does, but the game was getting away from us, and it felt like that move allowed us to get back into it before the break. Have to make some non-traditional moves like that the rest of the way to give this short-handed team a chance. I was worried about coming back with Walker on that late possession we had with 45-ish seconds left, but he ended up getting the assist on the Keisei 3 to get us within 1, so it ended up being another great move.

I don't think we revert to the mean - we're having to play our better 3-pt shooters more with Gary & Bandoumel out, but we give up so much on the other end and on the boards that the better 3-pt shooting is not helping in the final result. There's probably some interesting analytics somewhere that show what our 3-pt shot frequency looks like with and without Walker in the lineup the last few games, as well as our turnover percentage on possessions and points per possession with and without Walker in there. Clearly what we're trying to do offensively isn't generating enough points. We haven't scored more than 67 points in regulation in a Big Ten game yet. But with the way our defense is struggling, 67 and fewer points isn't going to win like it did earlier in the year. Including the game Gary got hurt, we've given up fewer than 72 points once in the last seven games. Not a winning formula. We may need to adjust our offensive philosophy again to try to take advantage of what we have on the floor now versus what we had a month ago. I think we've already seen some of that, and the 3-pt percentage is up accordingly. We also may have to really look at which players are on the floor together and try to control it so we have certain guys running together more. (Foul trouble messes those plans up in a hurry, though.) The coaches have some extra time this week with the Tuesday/Sunday schedule, so maybe they can come up with some good offensive tweaks.

Felt like Illinois cranked up the defensive pressure in the 2nd half and sped us up a lot, leading to atrocious offense and far too many turnovers. Scored 19 pts in the 2nd half and 9 of those 19 came in a span of about 51 seconds. Brutal. We'd have been better off on several of those possessions to just hold the ball and let the shot clock run out versus trying to run offense, turning it over or getting a shot blocked, and giving up a dunk. Good effort, all things considered, but Illinois is a terrible matchup for us, so not a surprising final score. Ultimately, another double-digit loss. Too many of those after the Gary injury. (It's 6 in 7 games for those counting.) I think Saturday tells the tale of the rest of the season. PSU is going to be ripe to be upset - they'll probably be a 6 or 7-ish pt favorite Sunday, they handled us pretty easily the first time, they'll be coming off what'll probably be a pretty emotional / high energy game playing Purdue on the road tomorrow, and they haven't been a good road team of late. I'd imagine they'll take us pretty lightly. If we're going to steal a few wins down the stretch, it needs to start Sunday.

NU 65 PS 61

Illinois opens -13.5 or -14, depending where you look - I'd expect that to move another 1 or 1.5 by the tip

Ugh. Tough to break down a game where we never really seemed to be in it after midway through the first half. Live ball turnovers that led to easy buckets were killers again. Then again, our half court defense isn't great anymore, either, so maybe the turnovers don't matter all that much. We have a few guys who are really fighting it on both ends, which made our foul trouble in the first half especially difficult to overcome, as the guys who are fighting it had to play a bit more. Went from 1 down with 8 minutes to go to 12 down just before half. Basically, game over. Would've been a complete disaster without Sam Hoiberg's play. The fact that Keisei had a career night vs NW and we got blown out, and we follow that up with a career game from Hoiberg and we get blown out again tells me the worst is probably yet to come. Can't really count on different guys having career nights to boost our offense the rest of the season. Tuesday might be a hide-the-women-and-children night as Illinois was a horrible matchup for us with Gary & Bandoumel available. Silver lining - Vegas' algorithms don't appear to have caught up to our injuries yet, so at least there's money to be made.

UI 76 NU 52

Turtles favored by 11 right now - opened at 9.5 most places but jumped quickly.

Turtles 77 NU 58

Can't give up 22 pts off turnovers and 16 second chance points - that is an utter disaster for the way this team is built. Those two numbers combined have to be closer to 15 total to give us a chance. Not a surprise, but it's hard to see another win or two on the schedule without the rebounding and defense of Gary & Bandoumel. The freshmen played hard, but they just can't replace the experience we're now missing. Have to find a way to not play Keisei & CJ at the same time. They kill us on the defensive end because they both need so much help on the drive and close out so poorly. Easier said than done when we have so few perimeter players left available. Maybe we can do something going forward with that scrambling 1-3-1 zone we tried toward the end, but I fear our success was more that NW simply lost interest in the game by that point. Going to be a looooong February. I don't envy Trev. As much as it seems he doesn't want to make a change here, it's going to be tough not to with the complete collapse that appears to be starting. It's too bad, because it felt like a few weeks ago that we were going to sneak out a few more nice wins. But those injuries are going to be far too much to overcome.

Poor NW. Missing a backup guard. Will the B1G let them postpone till he's better?

Looks like NW healed up enough to take down Wisconsin Monday, 66-63.