throwback

Agree and a fair point. However, if we get to 18 wins, that means 5 of our Q1/Q2 wins would have come after he was injured - nearly half of them. On paper, that looks pretty good over a 10-11-game stretch without a key player. Unfortunately, it's going to be very difficult to find enough offense without Cope. Not Hail Mary vs Northwestern tough - maybe 57-yd FG by Alex Henery tough. ?

Agreed. And even 18 may be enough. The bubble is shallow, as you said, which helps. Right now, we're at 2 Q1 wins and 5 Q2 wins. With 4 more regular season wins to get to 18-13, we'll be around 4-5 Q1 wins and 6-7 Q2 wins. Last year's bubble-ish teams that made the tourney: Oklahoma #10 seed - 6 Q1 / 3 Q2 Butler #10 seed - 4 Q1 / 4 Q2 Texas #10 seed - 6 Q1 / 2 Q2 UCLA #11 seed - 3 Q1 / 5 Q2 Arizona St #11 seed - 3 Q1 / 5 Q2 Creighton #8 seed - 2 Q1 / 5 Q2 ? Providence #10 seed - 5 Q1 / 5 Q2 USC (no bid) - 4 Q1 / 5 Q2 Notre Dame (no bid) - 2 Q1 / 5 Q2 Baylor (no bid) - 4 Q1 / 3 Q2 Georgia (no bid) - 5 Q1 / 5 Q2 At 18-13 in the regular season, our resume of 11-ish Q1/Q2 wins would be better than most of these teams. Only 24 teams had 10+ combined Q1/Q2 wins last year - all but 1 made the tournament - and comfortably. Missouri & Alabama & Providence were the lowest seeds at #8 and #9 and #10. (EDIT: Found 1 team that won 10 Q1/Q2 games and didn't make the tournament last year - Georgia had 5 Q1 and 5 Q2 wins, but didn't make it; they had a #79 RPI.) I don't think we can win 4 more Q1/Q2 games without Cope. But if we do, I really think 18 wins - with 11 of those Q1/Q2 wins - has us on the right side of what is a very shallow bubble. Plus we'd have the B1G tournament to try to pick up another 1 or 2 wins. Now, this is all assuming the committee follows the pattern of last year regarding quad 1 and 2 wins and almost ignoring losses. Understandably a big if, since there are new people on the committee every year. Also assuming Penn St & Seton Hall stay in the Top 75 of the NET. They have a few spots of cushion right now, but it will be close on both of them coming down the stretch. For example, we'll need to win at PSU, but it'd help to win by just 1 point. ?

NU 58 NW 48

Just really happy for the players. Hopefully they can play a little looser now. A big win Saturday would at least make those final 4 games intriguing. I don't think they have enough offense without Cope, but they'd still be in the conversation with a win vs NW. I thought the last call was a good one - as rr52 said, he had his arms at an angle, inside Palmer's "cylinder" - Coffey threw his arms up and flew backward when he felt the contact, tried to sell Palmer jumping into him, but I thought it was a foul because of his arm angle when Palmer started his shot. Palmer did come forward just a bit, but Coffey's arms were in his cylinder, so Palmer's vertical plane shouldn't matter. Uhhhh, you just let a team that has not been able to make 1/3 of its FGs the last month make 1/2 of its FGs against you. You didn't deserve to win. If you deserved to win, it wouldn't have come down to a last shot/referee call. This quote, among many other reasons, is why he'll always be Mr. Jackwagon.

That's all fine, but I'm not jumping to wild conclusions until I find out whether he's having cable installed.

I'm sure NU is still in the conversation on some brackets - losing streaks aren't part of the team sheet, so that's not something the committee will consider. As of now, NU is still #40 in the NET and has 2 Q1 wins and 4 Q2 wins. Taken alone, that's a bubble team. At this point, we're going to have 23-24 Q1/Q2 games before the B1G tournament. That's a crazy high number. So I can see why people who haven't seen us play much the past month would look at the team sheet and see we still have 5 Q1 and 2 Q2 games left, plus a conference tournament, and think there's still a chance. Those who've actually seen what's been going on on the floor, though, would have a vastly different opinion.

NU 61 Minny 49 3

PU 76 NU 39

NU 66 MD 60

NU 66 Ill 59

Didn't figure that number would last.

Early line / NU -2

Don't forget about 6-5 center Chris Logan taking over for Hoppen. Hope this team can follow the same path.

This is a shart ... after a night involving a case of Keystone Light.

Damn. Horrible news. Feel awful for him. The mountain to climb the rest of the season just grew by about 10x.

NU 66 Floppers 60

OHIO ST (12-6) #39 (2-4) (2-2) (1-0) (7-0) QUAD SHEET NET Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Cincy A W IUPUFW H W Creighton A W S Caro St H W Samford H W Cleve St H W Syracuse H L Minnesota H W Illinois A W Bucknell H W Y'town St H W UCLA N W High Pt H W Mich St H L Rutgers A L Iowa A L Maryland H L Purdue H L Nebraska A x Michigan A x Rutgers H x 5 straight losses heading into Lincoln - need to make it 6 - hope they try the same small lineup they used for stretches vs Purdue against us, as I'm pretty sure we can handle it. Without Young available, we definitely need to get C Wesson into foul trouble like Purdue did.

Just looking at how this projection has changed over the past month-plus - NU's number of projected Q1/Q2 opportunities hasn't changed much, ranging from 22-24. Time to take advantage of our opportunities and pick up some Ws. Q1/Q2 NET Date of (record as of projection date in parenthesis) Combined NU rank Projection Q1 gms Q2 gms Q3 gms Q4 gms 22 (3-2) #13 Dec 16 12 (1-2) 10 (2-0) 3 (2-0) 5 (4-0) 23 (4-2) #10 Dec 31 13 (1-2) 10 (3-0) 2 (1-0) 5 (5-0) 24 (5-4) #14 Jan 11 14 (1-4) 10 (4-0) 2 (2-0) 4 (4-0) 23 (5-6) #21 Jan 21 14 (2-5) 9 (3-1) 3 (3-0) 4 (4-0)

Good news: RU game became a Q2 game. Bad news: We lost to frickin' RU. Costly loss, as we fell to #21 in NET rankings. We're 2-5 in Q1 games, 3-1 in Q2 for a combined 5-6. At this point, we have only Q1 and Q2 games left on the schedule (subject to change as the rankings change going forward), with 7 Q1 games to play and 5 Q2 games, plus whatever occurs in the B1G Tourney. If you want someone to cheer for the next week or so, Penn St is #76 in NET right now, so just a 1 spot move up for them gives us a Q1 game later at State College and makes our win vs them earlier a Q2 game, rather than the Q2/Q3 games those are currently. Mr. Obvious statement: We need to start racking up some wins. Feel like we need to get to 11-12 Q1/Q2 wins to be wearing the home whites in the opening round of the tourney. Next 3 games: vs Ohio State - Q2 vs Wisconsin - Q1 at Illinois - Q2

NU 74 OSU 60 14

NU opens -10 on the road O/U is 135 Looked back several years, but can't find another game where we were a double digit favorite on the road - for neutral site games, we were minus-14 against Rutgers in the 2016 B1G Tournament and a double digit favorite vs Mizzou State in KC this season.

RU is 0-6 in Q1 games, including 0-2 in Q1 games at home. RU is also 1-2 in Q2 games at home, so not great against the best teams on their schedule when playing at the RAC. At this point, this has slid into a Q3 game for us - very likely the last non Q1/Q2 game of the season for us. But RU is right on the cut-off line for Q2/Q3, so it could go either way as the season progresses. RUTGERS (8-9) #137 (0-6) (2-2) (0-1) (6-0) QUAD SHEET NET Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 FDU H W Drexel H W St John's H L E Michigan H W Boston U H W Miami-Fl A W Mich St H L Wisconsin A L Fordham A L Seton Hall A L Columbia H W Maine H W Maryland H L Ohio St H W Minnesota A L Purdue A L N'western H L Nebraska H x Penn St A x Indiana H x Ohio St A x Michigan H x

Rutgers is the kind of team that when you're playing them in high school, watching them warm up across the court, you're wondering why the wrestling team is out there. They're big enough to be on the WWE circuit. They definitely shoot like wrestlers. Unfortunately, they fight on the glass like wrestlers too. We will need to have our big boy pants on in the paint. Baker had a huge game vs the Bucknuts, but that's the only game I've seen where he's looked like the reincarnation of Corey Sanders. Unlike Sanders in the past, I expect us to handle Baker, so as long as we don't get murdered on the boards, we should be fine. (Because it's in NJ, murder is a real possibility.)

NU 64 RU 53