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OSU 79 NU 70

Much better offensive flow. I'm even going to call it enjoyable to watch. Outside of turnovers, Verge played great, and most of the turnovers were when he was trying to make the extra pass, so I'll live with them. When the ball moves, guys are in a better rhythm and shots go down. Looked like threat of the bench -- and then actually using it -- worked. Very few bad shots in the first half. Fred was more lenient in the second half, so we'll see whether this was a one-time thing. I hope it wasn't. Not sure this means we're going to beat Ohio St in 1 1/2 weeks -- Kennesaw is not good -- but it was nice to see NU actually playing like a team on offense.

I felt like Big Ten coaches caught up with what we had done the previous season and we couldn't make the adjustment - partly because of Cope's injury leaving us short-handed, which greatly reduced the number of options we had for making adjustments. That was a talented team but definitely not deep.

Should be a great game. I hear the Buffs are really good. And at that memory, I'm going to go start drinking. Yes, I'm well aware it's 9:44 a.m.

Trey and Fred were both on the radio last night & they set mid-January as a return date. Trey thinks he can make a big difference when he returns. “When I'm out there, everyone's more comfortable,” McGowens said. “They can just be themselves. I take a lot of stress off a lot of people and instill that confidence in them. I can’t wait to get out there and help this team get turned around.” https://omaha.com/sports/huskers/mens-basketball/trey-mcgowens-could-return-to-nebraskas-lineup-in-january/article_2939073a-6207-11ec-b088-ef72cbce01b9.html Hope he's right.

On the radio last night, Fred said he needs to pull players who take bad shots: “It's my job to get them out of the game if we take those shots moving forward,” Hoiberg said. “We take them out for some of them. I didn't take them out for all of them. ... That's my fault for those shots (continuing) to be taken. I've got to make a move.” While I applaud this sentiment, I worry we may end up with 3 or 4 players on the floor at some junctures because so many guys will be sitting next to Fred. Poor shot selection seems to have moved beyond pandemic status with this team into endemic status. https://omaha.com/sports/huskers/mens-basketball/trey-mcgowens-could-return-to-nebraskas-lineup-in-january/article_2939073a-6207-11ec-b088-ef72cbce01b9.html

I hate writing this, but here goes. Fred looks really worn down and has for quite a while. Not that I blame him. I feel the same way watching this team ... and I only do it once. He has to go back and watch the film over and over. (Of course, I didn't put this roster together, so I don't deserve that punishment, but I digress.) I may be projecting here, but it feels like he's been worn down ever since the start of covid. He just doesn't seem to have the same enthusiasm as he did that first year, either in game or when speaking with the media. With his health problems, and with what the team went through last year, it's completely understandable. But the program, players, and fans deserve better than a coach who projects a worn down image. I'm just not sure he's dedicated to the daily grind it takes at this point. I definitely could be wrong, but with the jr high style mistakes we make on the court, I feel pretty confident in saying that the team is not grinding during practice. The coaches clearly are letting a lot of things slide in practice. Ultimately, I don't think he gets fired at the end of the season, even if we lose the next 20. However, if something like that happens, I think it's probably 50/50 that he just steps down and works out a reduced buyout with Trev. Quite frankly, with the way this is going, that may be the best outcome. It ain't working. We're making this look waaaaay too hard. With the resources we have, playing basketball that looks somewhat competent shouldn't be this hard, and we're light years away from the level of competent. It would take a seismic shift to fix it at this point, and, although I do think Trey's return will make a difference, I'm pretty confidence it won't be seismic. I don't feel like Fred has a seismic shakeup in him at this point.

We make the game of basketball look really, really hard to play.

NU 73 KSU 56

If we get this to 20 pages, does the hot seat disappear and sign an LOI with someone else? Or do the recruiting board rules not apply here?

If we're point-shaving, we're taking it to the extreme. Someone needs to clue the guys in that when we're a 7-pt dog to Michigan, we don't have to lose by 35. We only have to lose by 8 or 9.

N 73 KS 70

It's a depressing, give-up season and it's not even finals week yet. At least it's easy to make money on Nebraska games. Taking Vegas' metrics a while to catch up to what we're seeing with our own eyes.

Saw Fred quoted that burning Q's redshirt is on the table, depending on how short-handed we are tomorrow. If he gets a shot, hope he plays well & forces his way into the rotation. Might as well give him a shot if they're going to burn his redshirt.

Yup - it's time to end this experiment with him at PG. Utter joke. Try anyone else. I spent most of the first 30 min of game time angry at him for the utter lack of effort on defense, dribbling through the zone press, and hero ball on offense. Then I remembered that the coaches are allowing it to happen. Until they decide to do something about it, we're stuck watching this trash.

A 96 NU 53

These guys play like they hate each other. Was honestly surprised when Verge hit the floor hard midway thru the 2nd half after another circus shot and a couple of guys eventually went over to try to pretend to help him up.

That sounds impressive, but someone is going to have to help me out with the transitive mathematical properties here. Do I divide maximum overtimes in a loss by the number of Burnos to find the equivalent to one-score losses in football? Or do I have to apply pi to the number of Burnos first? TIA

Just came here to post these quotes. Very telling quotes, but not surprising from watching the way the offense runs right now. When there's very little offensive flow or when there are multiple possessions where only one guy touches the ball, the other guys stop moving without the ball, and shooters aren't ready for the unexpected pass. Then when that pass comes flying out of a pile of bodies and isn't very accurate, the shooters have no rhythm. This would explain why our returning shooters are at a far lower percentage this season from 3 than they were last year and why the new sharpshooters we brought in are struggling. Seems like there's quite a bit of frustration among at least these two players, although, to be fair, these quotes were probably immediately after the game, when frustrations were highest. However, I'm sure it's not just those two who are feeling the frustration. Coaches need to get a handle on this before it's too late.

If this continues on the same trajectory, and I see no reason why it's suddenly going to change, hot seat talk is more than warranted at the end of the season. This team should not look like it has for large stretches thus far this season. And it doesn't appear there are many answers from the coaching staff. Maybe it'll get going when Trey comes back, but there are a lot of potentially bad looking games between now and then. It's utterly mind-boggling why things are where they are at this point. When he was hired, I'd have guessed a less than 1% chance we'd be in this spot early in year 3. Yet, here we are.

Mich 68 NU 60 6 3s 6 wins

This is worth a shot. Seemed like we had quite a few good looks out of timeouts today. Another option - stop having Verge initiate the offense ... because it never leaves his hands way too often when he does that. Or when it does leave his hands, far too often it's a wild pass that no one can catch and shoot because he has dribbled into pressure with no plan. Maybe keep him out of it until he shot clock winds down. Much of what he does seems like late shot clock desperation anyway, so just wait until that point in the possession to let him handle the offense. They did that one or two times today where he went and stood in the corner while the other guys tried to initiate something. Clearly, something has to change. We'll have a handful of B1G games where we light it up from outside and win, but I imagine the majority of B1G games will look like what today did.

Not exactly the hottest take in the history of mankind, but this offense looks really bad when no one can make a 3-pt shot. Maybe it was tired legs, but I think it had more to do with our really poor offensive flow today. Seems like our point guard kind of gives up on running the offense when the other guys aren't making shots right away. My guess is when Verge is our leading scorer this season, we will lose a lot. (Granted, we probably will lose a lot either way.) Half court defense was good most of the way, but we had one guy making bad switch calls and freelancing too much once again. I did like starting Keisei - thought the offensive flow was best in those first several minutes when he was in there. I like the way he moves without the ball, and it seems to get other guys moving a bit too. I do think Edwards can play at this level, but they need to figure out a good role for him.

Good points - easily our best performance of the season - Verge made good decisions thru most of regulation and I don't think he took a shot outside of a few feet for the majority of regulation - unfortunately CJs & Bryce's outside shots weren't falling or it's probably an easy win. For the majority of the game, it was our best half-court defensive performance by miles as well. Not sure why we couldn't come up with a way to stop Seaborn, though, and make someone else beat us. As someone else mentioned, Bryce had no business trying to guard Seaborn. Would've liked to have seen Edwards get a shot at him. Not sure if we've improved enough to win any of these next three games -- after all, the bar was very, very low after the first several games -- but I'm way more encouraged this morning than I was 24 hours ago. That was a good effort going on the road for the first time & easily could have been a win. Admittedly, my expectations going into last night were for a double-digit beatdown, so my perspective is skewed a bit. But I'm still more encouraged coming out of the game than I was going in. Teddy Valentine isn't going to ruin that for me.