I think
@LarstheRed provided a good flyover to some of the issues. Miles comes into each game with what appears to be a solid game plan but when the tide turns against him, he doesn't make the necessary adjustments. He's too busy tweeting. His motion & 1 offense or whatever people want to call it, is contingent upon shooting a solid percentage from the field. The lack of a big man takes away the edge that the motion offense creates and thus is void of being able to take advantage of mismatches. The number of 3’s this team throws up look more like prayers.
Instead of utilizing timeouts to stop the momentum of the other team, Miles lets it ride. I’ve watched Denny Crum, Bob Knight, Tom Izzo, Dean Smith, Coach K and other coaches in their first year nearly use all of their timeouts in a 5-minute span just to change the tempo and momentum and jump into their player's grills to get them focused. The defensive adjustments Miles doesn't make are perplexing and are more of a team hoping the other team misses shots instead of making adjustments to counter the changes the opponent made. If they're playing match-up zone and keep getting blown up on the inside then adjustments need to be made. When they're playing Man or 2-3, they get worked over on back-door cuts or skip passes and their lack of size is hurting them on the boards.
I think Palmer is supposed to be the best player on the team and is averaging the highest PPG but he’s shooting 38% because Miles has no bench to sit Palmer. In the second half against Minnesota he was 0-7 from the field; 2 assists; 3 turnovers and 2 fouls. That’s Nebraska’s best player. But Miles hasn’t recruited well so he has no choice.
And finally, I think they have a chance to get to 20+ wins
this year but let’s see who their wins and losses come against and let's see the manner in which this team loses games it should win (e.g. Minnesota) and let’s see what happens next year. As far as “checking my expectations”, you’re right, Nebraska is a .526 team in the history of basketball so I might as well continue to “expect” Miles to maintain that lofty average. Unfortunately, he’s currently sitting at .512 as the HC of Nebraska in Year 7.