AnotherUMassFan

Well, I wish I could say good game but the officials ruined it. Good luck in the B1G!

EXACTLY what I was thinking.

I'd be more pissed about the officiating were I husker fan.

Anyone who likes the new officiating must not be watching basketball.

Because they're not a good jump-shooting team.

That is a foolproof method for beating UMass but, for some unknown reason, not very frequently employed. That said, on occasion UMass can rain threes so a team can get burned trying it.

MilesDavis - funny you say that because it looks to me like the Huskers were the better coached team in the first half. The Husker defense is well designed for UMass and the Husker offense is executing screens on offense very well. UMass is winning but I believe UMass has more scorers.

You're kidding, right? No and with all due respect I think my eye is better than yours. Petteway is the only player I'd take,

You're kidding, right?

A lot of relatively low scoring predictions here...my bet is the o/u comes in around 150 UMass 82 Huskers 76

In Fordham's case it was absolutely about the NYC market but that's obviously been a failure. Duquesne was a founding member from the Eastern Eight (Villanova, Duquesne, Penn State, West Virginia, George Washington, Massachusetts, Pittsburgh, and Rutgers) and was a decent program back then. Why the A10 ever let them back in after they left for a year in 92-93 is an enduring mystery but undoubtedly was about keeping a presence in Pittsburgh - it certainly wasn't for the quality of their basketball program.

CardHusker - from a basketball perspective, I agree. It's now become habit for me to think of conferences from a football perspective since I am resigned to a future of college athletics entirely dominate by football dollars. Fordham - remember - I said history. Fordham's got a sweet 16 in 1971. That said, Nebraska's a better program now than Fordham and has been for 30 years.

Ya...it's the downside of being in the B1G. When the Illini are one of the weakest conference teams you play, wins are going to be hard to come by.

I would hope that the players aren't looking past Nebraska. This UMass team is as old as any Nebraska is likely to play (the average age of the starters is, I think, 21) and only the transfer, Derrick Gordon, has ever played in the tournament. These players understand that losing will be very damaging to their chances of dancing. In the A10, UMass has an easy schedule (the best teams at home) but only VCU and SLU are going to be highly-respected wins on Selection Sunday and neither of those games will be easy for UMass to win. That means UMass can't afford to lose out of conference to any team out of the top 50. If UMass loses to Nebraska then UMass is going to be hoping and praying that Nebraska shocks the B1G and ends up top 50.

It's been a rough fourteen years. Bruiser Flint, an assistant under Calipari, was a very good guy but probably the wrong coach for UMass (he's done well at Drexel). He was followed by Steve Lappas who was an unbelievably bad hire. Then came Travis Ford who was a good coach but left as soon as he had some success. UMass fans were somewhat split on the hiring of Derek Kellogg. Many of us, myself included, loved the hire because DK is from the area and starred at UMass. After working as an assistant under Calipari he seemed ready to take UMass to the next step. His first couple of years were pretty disappointing as he tried to implement a dribble drive system that was not well-suited to the players he had. Now, in year six, DK appears to have assembled a team that should male it to the NCAA tournament. This UMass team is not a particularly good shooting team - it thrives on tempo, dribble drive, and interior play. It has the players to out-rebound most opponents and if it does so it should win. None of DK's teams have played particularly well against zone defenses and that approach may well work for the Huskers should they try it. UMass should benefit from officiating according to the new rules but that officiating seems to be being inconsistently applied across college basketball today (it was not, generally, applied during the UMass-YSU game, for instance).