throwback

We also are both adidas schools and shop at the same logo store. This charity game is a great idea - looking forward to it!

Don't want this to come off the wrong way, as I really like Miles and want to see him continue. But having a new AD is probably best for the long term health of the program. With all of the mixed signals he was sending out, it's tough to figure out what the Ginger Ghost was trying to do with hoops. Because he was in so much trouble with his football decisions, I think he was frozen in place. He wasn't going to be allowed to do anything with hoops. He had no political clout to do anything else, in other words, until football rectified itself one way or the other. It almost felt like the entire department was in limbo. Not that he's gone, things can return to normalcy. It will be good to have a fresh set of eyes on the hoops program, allowing it to be fairly judged at the end of this season, whichever way it goes. I hope NU wins enough this season to allow Miles to have a nice contract extension. But if the wins don't come, I think the new leadership will get done what needs to be done. No more limbo. Moos sounds like the kind of AD that will let Miles know where he stands, be direct, which I believe meshes far more with Miles' personality. I don't expect this AD to hide behind an end-of-season Tweet, followed by 7 weeks of radio silence. The Ginger Ghost & Miles were polar opposites, obviously. It seems like he was letting Miles twist in the wind for most of last season, which caused a ton of unnecessary drama and a loss of focus. I don't expect that to be a problem with the new leadership, which hopefully will allow the coaching staff to focus more on the court and less on the mixed signals out of the AD's office.

Agreed - I think we'll still get the Kansas-Kentucky type games, as ESPN will pay for them for some December programming. But NU-Cincinnati type H/H series are all but gone, which is unfortunate. Or you'll have to have a couple years in a row where you stop playing in the in-season tournaments, which is also unfortunate. I imagine this could push the start of conference season to just before Xmas, rather than just before New Year's as it is now - (at least in seasons where we aren't moving the B1G tournament up a week ) - so that would add another 2 games with no students and listless arenas, which also would be unfortunate. Perhaps they'll stick to this year's model and play the first two conference games in early December so students will be there? That would be better than starting B1G play Dec. 20/21/22.

Also will be interesting to see if other conference follow suit and how this affects RPI. (Does anyone play 20 games right now?) A lower number of cross-conference games - especially if Power 5 teams sacrifice high-end games vs each other to schedule more home games against non-Power 5 teams - has to skew the accuracy of RPI a bit, I would think. I mean you're now having 2 of your 32-33 games against repeat opponents, rather than playing someone new - that's roughly 6% of your schedule, which could affect RPI quite a bit if enough conferences go to 20. Or maybe not. The math there is a bit above my pay grade.

I believe you're limited to 29 without the neutral site tourney. With that tourney you can go to 31, but 4 of the games have to be in the tourney. Now that 4th game doesn't have to be at the tourney site, it just has to be against a team in the tourney field. So most years, teams play 30 as the neutral site tourney consists of 3 games, and they just don't schedule that 4th game. This year we are at 31, because we're counting the game with St John's as the 4th game of our neutral site tourney, since St John's is in the tourney. There's also those 4-game tourneys where you play 2 non-power 5 teams at home that are "in" the tourney, and then you play 2 neutral site games later against name schools, like we did in the Barclays tourney in 2015-16. Then you can get to 31 and take care of a couple of home games vs non-power 5 teams in the process. With a 20-gm conference schedule, playing more of the 4-gm tourneys with 2 at home and 2 at a neutral site may be the easier way to go going forward, rather than playing in the 3-gm neutral-site tourneys, although you lose the TV exposure when you're not in the ESPN-sponsored 3-gm neutral site tourneys.

Mixed feelings on this - Completely understand the desire to play more conference games, especially with conference expansion. Not to mention TV partners want more high-end content - ie, conference games - instead of non-power 5 teams in the non-conference. Now we'll have 7 double-plays and 6 single-plays each year. They can really balance the conference schedule nicely now if they want - have 1 team designated as a rival that you double-play every year. Then with the other 12 teams, you can have 6 double-plays and 6 single-plays, switching them each year. So you'd play your 'rival' 8 times every four years, and everyone else 6 times every four years, which would be nice balance. Unfortunately, that's going to change the way non-con schedules will be put together. If we want 17 home games like we have this season, that means we need 7 home games out of the non-con. We're locked in to H/H with the Bluebirds. Throw in a 3-gm neutral site tourney and that leaves 8-9 games to get to the 30-31 max, and 6-7 of them would have to be at home, depending on whether the bluebird game is in Omaha or Lincoln. And that doesn't even figure in the BE/B1G challenge when we play in that or the B1G/ACC game. So you probably end up either giving up H/H series with teams like Kansas or giving up the 3-gm neutral site tourneys because we need X number of one-game series home games vs non-power 5 teams to get to 17 home games. Or you back off and go with 15-16 home games. which doesn't seem likely. Makes it really tough to schedule H/H series vs name schools, especially when we don't know for sure that we'll have any home games in the B1G/ACc and B1G/BE challenges until several months before the games are played.

That line is worth a +1

Maybe Chris Del Conte (TCU) is the guy? http://bigrednation.com/2017/10/rumor-alert-nebraska-may-found-new-ad/ Hired Dixon as TCU's hoops coach last year, which, considering TCU's basketball history, seems like a pretty good hire. And of course tremendous success at TCU in football & baseball under his watch. To be fair, he inherited both of those sports' coaches, but he also deserves credit for making TCU a place where they'd want to stay, rather than jumping to a bigger program.

ESPN reporting U of Miami part of this too. Hope our former AD wasn't involved while down there.

Excellent news!

Hope the coaches all got their book reports done before today, or they're going to get incompletes.

Good riddance. Had to be done. Surprised it happened this soon, but it was inevitable.

NU's open to the public event will be outdoors on Oct. 6 from 8-9:30 near PBA. Interesting idea - should be fun! http://www.huskers.com/ViewArticle.dbml?DB_OEM_ID=100&ATCLID=211668349

I seem to remember a reporter or two finding his way into Coach Iba's practices back in the day, even when he hung towels on the windows, so it can be done.

Well, there goes about 10% of our Adidas apparel budget for the year. Those letters aren't cheap.

Shon Morris just said his top 3 teams in the league are MSU, Minny & NW - guess who our first 3 games are with? Sheesh. Brutal early, but if we can survive till February, finishing with 4 out of last 5 at home is about as favorable as it can be down the stretch.

I'm a schedule all the games you can guy, so nice to see them using that St. Johns game as the 4th Advocare game to get to 31 games - smart way to do it. I know N Dakota has a bit of a reputation as a cheap shot team, so hopefully Coach Miles can avoid going Fran after that game - that's definitely the trap game on there.

I think he can contribute here eventually, but it'll take a redshirt season and probably another year or 2 beyond that. Going to have to be patient. I like his instincts as a shot blocker. Am curious to see how his 3-pt shot has developed, along with his overall offensive game during the summer. He has improved a lot over the past couple of years, but still a ways to go to be Big Ten caliber. Still, with big guys, their development seems to come in bunches and it comes late, so I think it's worth taking a chance here. Hopefully he picks the right school.

Because NU is now a full-fledged Big Ten member (and because it's the dead season for college sports), thought it might be fun to pick NU's All Big Ten team so far. Pick 3 for the backcourt and 3 for the frontcourt. These are the guys who had the most stats/games started/games played during NU's time in the Big Ten - 2011/12 to 2016/17 - but write-in candidates are welcome. No real guidelines for voting. For example, you can weigh whether you prefer a guy who finished his career at NU versus someone who had one great season and then abandoned his teammates and transferred late in the summer before his senior year and screwed over the entire program. (Not naming any names here.)

Maybe this isn't what you meant, but right now, we don't know if he plans to extend Coach Miles' contract and keep it at a 4-year contract. He hasn't said. He didn't extend it last year, but we don't know yet for this year. Perhaps that will be addressed next week, although last year, the drop back to a 4-yr contract wasn't announced till August. http://www.omaha.com/huskers/mens-basketball/no-contract-extension-for-tim-miles-shawn-eichorst-optimistic-about/article_cc04a41e-5a89-11e6-9c39-c751a2b50988.html Eichorst granted the 1-year extension after '15 to keep him at a 5-yr contract. He didn't after '16, so he dropped to a 4-yr contract. I don't have a problem with that. 4 years is plenty in terms of stability, and the teams' performance in '15 and '16 didn't warrant an extension.. Obviously, this year's performance doesn't exactly warrant an extension either. However, the industry standard does warrant keeping a coach at a 4-yr contract. And I guess I don't see the wisdom in not extending him another year to keep it at a 4-yr contract. If they fail next year, and he's fired, you're only saving $900K roughly by dropping him to a 3-yr contract. For a department that will have a $125M+ budget, that's not much. But if your scenario comes true, and they win big next year, now you have to deal with the hard feelings if you drop the coach to a 3-yr deal that could cause him to be looking around after a good season. If they have a big season next year and you lose him to another school because the AD was trying to cheap out on the buyout, that's not going to go over well with fans. In my mind, if you believe in the coach enough to keep him around, you keep him at a 4-yr contract (or whatever the "standard" is for that sport.) That's just part of the cost of doing business these days. To me, that would go for any coach, not just Coach Miles. Trying to save a bit of money down the road just isn't worth the hard feelings or the potential ramifications, not for a big time athletic department.

Ha - not a popular rant. I may or may not have had my morning coffee before tying my rant. To be fair, I did label it as a rant, so that was fair warning. I guess I'm old fashioned in that a tweet isn't sufficient for me. If it is for some people, I understand. But I believe any leader in a position like the AD needs to present ideas/plans and then open him/herself to questions from the media. Without opening yourself up to questions, it gives the appearance that you don't necessarily believe in what you've stated in a press release/statement/tweet. Your ideas/plans have to pass the "smell" test. Without press conferences to explain yourself beyond a tweet, you're just fueling conspiracy theories and rumors. It's tough to get people behind your plans without scrutiny of the plans. Waiting 6+ weeks to address the season and discuss a long term vision for the second biggest program that you're overseeing is just far too long for something that could be handled in a 30-minute press conference. It makes no sense to me, and it does nothing to help the program. A big time athletic dept is more like a publicly traded company than ever. You have to sell people on your plans. You have to generate confidence. Like Mr. Barfknecht always says, as an AD you have to sell hope or winning to keep people on board with a particular program. What we've heard - or haven't heard - over the past 6 weeks hasn't done any of that, at least for me. Hopefully he does speak to the media next week and is able to present some ideas/plans that will help move the program forward and put a rest to all of the speculation and rumors that do nothing to help the situation.

[rant] Well, it's after the Final Four. It's after the Spring Game. Yet still no word from the AD's office. 43 days since we've played a game. And all we've "heard" from the AD is a tweet. It's beyond time to lay out his vision for the program. What is the plan? I don't want to hear an ultimatum for 2017-18 - that almost never works out well for either party. But you can still articulate long term expectations for the program that don't have to include an ultimatum. To me, at least part this sh!tst0rm of an offseason has come from the silence from above. Since we're more than a week into the signing period, it's probably too late, but if you have enough faith in Coach Miles to keep him for 2017-18, then say it publicly. It really isn't that difficult. If he isn't your guy, then you should have fired him. Rip off the Band-Aid and start fresh. This wishy-washy lack of comments just results in doubt and confusion. And rumors. Tons and tons and tons of rumors. Time for him to come out of his bunker and make an appearance. Even public company CEOs have to speak to the shareholders once a quarter. And there are a lot of public companies that don't operate organizations that make $125M+ per year, as NU is about to make. The AD can't be a hermit. He/she has to be a leader, inspire confidence, etc. He/she doesn't have to be Stevie P and hold a press conference every time he/she has a successful bowel movement, but there's a happy medium there. PS - And while he's making his rare media appearance, how about laying out his vision for NU's overall athletic program going forward? We're going to be seeing the full Big Ten share in less than 2 1/2 months. If there was ever a time to have a rock solid, long term plan in place, this would be it. How's about sharing at least an overview of it with the paying public? Where is that money going? Hopefully a cut in ticket prices, even a small one, is on the table. Hopefully an idea of adding several more layers of bureaucracy in the AD's office is not. With a $25M-$35M jump in the athletics budget on the horizon, that should push NU into the Top 15, if not the Top 10, of all athletic departments in funding. Time to start acting like we belong there. / [rant]

I'd take him ... primarily because he doesn't wear #3. (If he comes here, don't give your number to him Isaiah. I don't care what he offers.)

Geez. Is this thread still going? Wait. Did I miss one of those three- or four- or multiple-day weekends? Damn. I hate it when I go to work on days where I don't need to. Someone let me know if the weekend will still be going tomorrow. I could use a day off.

Geez, I hope it happens soon. I don't want to have to wait all the way till midnight for the news. I have to work in the morning.