correct, indiana 98-97 loss, all others were at opponents or neutral venue
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Nebraska @ UCLA - 3/3, 10 PM CST (FS1)
- Thread starter BGRed
- Start date
They seem wore down to me! Basically seven man rotation and an extremely late game!
to me, the biggest concern of whats been happening lately is the adjustment teams are making on defense, and the tape continues to prove the concept. Recipe to beat NU (now). 1. - Pressure JMAR all day, as hard as it takes. 2. Pressure MAST all day, as hard as it takes. The farther mast gets from the basket, the harder you pressure him. Iowa proved this concept, and everyone else is buying in. Sure, everyone wants to stop Pryce, but thats the OBVIOUS gameplan. its the subtle Defensive gameplan stuff (see first 2 points) that IMO are doing the most damage. To me, one major difference between now and earlier in the season is that Mast played more outside. we ran a lot more 5 out type stuff. now mast is inside more, maybe cause teh coaches perceive him as not shooting as well, so lets get him closer to the basket? Or maybe the coaches saw the Iowa Recipe and realized, "holy crap, we can NOT have him doing ball handoffs outside the 3pt line anymore, cause the word is out, he can't do it under pressure." well IMO thats having a twofold negative effect. If you pressure JMAR as hard as it takes, JMARs only recourse is to drive past whoever is pressuring him. earlier in the season, he could do that, and then kick out to whom-evers man was helping in the paint. often times that was Mast's defender. well now, mast is standing 3-4 ft outside the lane, JMAR drives in cause he doesn't know what else to do, and whoever is guarding mast can help on the drive, and recover to send Mast's shot into the 3rd row, cause he's not athletic enough to do anything of major value in the lane. Sure, he'll hit some floaters or hook shots, but he'll also miss layups, or get his shot blocked over and over. See Penn St game. Teams are doing this and are going to keep doing it over and over over, and i believe its why lately, we're always starting slow. first half is a slug fest. some teams have the athletes to play NU in this manner, and do it all game. See UCLA and Iowa. Some don't, and NU starts to pull away in teh 2nd half. See Maryland, Northwestern. I think NU needs to get mast back outside, and get his defender away from the paint. if you're gonna pressure JMAR that hard, then that needs to come at the risk of giving up a layup. Right now, that risk doesn't exist. JMAR has not played well the past few games, and its causing everything to fall to crap. Too many turnovers. Nobody is gonna help off on Pryce. Those days are gone, so you are seeing teams force the other guys to make plays. I think our odds would be better if our spacing got back to how it was earlier in the year. Lately, our spacing hasn't been that as much. The harder people pressure Mast on the outside, teh more it seems like they are telling him to just go fight those battles closer to the basket. I don't think its working out in the manner the coaches want, IMO.
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Teams are also getting away with absolutely mugging Pryce on all of his movement. If they let that continue to happen Sunday, in the Big10 tourney and the main tourney we'll struggle.
It was 20 because it was over. Some may say the team quit, but that's not quitting, that's cutting your losses and getting off the court. If the team felt that keeping you as a believer was going to mean keeping it to 15, then I have little doubt they could have happily kept their foot on the gas. It was 10 points late, then 2 really stupid plays nudge it to 15, and the wind was out of the sails. This team knows how to dig down when there is a reason to.
It was not a good effort overall. The guys need to get back to enjoying the game. I think there has been a little more tension because of all the talk of seeding, and they just need to get back to one game at a time.
The pressure is so much easier to put on the Huskers because we haven't made teams pay for it. I don't see as much back cutting for easy buckets as we did earlier, and some of that is because the lane seems congested. Frager seems less eager to go all the way to the rim and let the chips fall where they may. Instead he's stopping, getting eaten up by pressure, and not getting shots or passes off. He needs to be fearless if he's going to go into the lane.
It's interesting to see how Mast has not been as successful in the paint as he was early in the season, in part because they are doubling him, and he's not finding someone open to make them pay. One on one, he's good, but that double hurts him because he doesn't elevate. We seem a little worried about picking up fouls on screens, which leads to us not getting any space when we try to rub guys off. I say put in Garcia or Leo, tell them to head hunt, and set some hard picks, fouls be damned, get the defenders less comfortable, and tell the offense to come shoulder to shoulder with the guy setting the pick.
All of these things are fixable in short order, but I do have a couple of beefs with how we are playing. One is we aren't attacking the pressure, we are drifting away from it. Look at the 3s we are taking now as oppose to earlier in the year. 3 to 5 feet further out, and we just aren't good enough to do that. We need to start the offense where WE want to, not where the defense wants. Second, we are standing and watching too much. The hardest guy to cover is the one that never stops moving, and always makes you work to keep that 'ball and man' integrity. I'm seeing a little too much floating and drifting around, not moving with purpose.
It does bother me some that even though Cale scored some nice mid and short range buckets, when we were down late needing 3s, and it was painfully obvious he wasn't in any kind of rhythm, why not toss in Blue, who never seems unprepared to crank up a shot?Berke needs to run Pinnacle's stairs every time he misses a lay in. That's a lack of concentration.
Iowa and UCLA absolutely did. Unfortunately, that’s Big 10 officiating and it's mostly not going to fly in the NCAA Tournament. How many times have we seen Big 10 teams get in foul trouble early in the 1st round because they are conditioned to believe that’s now a foul?
In the UCLA game, I didn’t think the officiating was that terrible. They did call it a few times (unlike the Iowa game). I mean, we shot 18 free throws, we just didn’t make them. Stirtz is one of the toughest players in the conference and Skyy Clark is build like a large NFL receiver or linebacker (his dad played in the NFL). It’s not like we are going to see that every night. Also, there are ways that Fred needs to deal with that, too. Running a different type of motion screen where Berke can knock unexpectedly blow up Stirtz once, would be enough to loosen things up. Against Skyy, that probably wouldn’t work. If other players were scoring, we could have opened it up too.
Very interesting take. Also, paragraphs are your friend
Bierke, Frasier and Jared Garcia missed easy ones...it was if we were pressing (choking) and leaving everything short. Kind of reminded me of myself trying to make a putt with 20 bucks on the line!
Sorry. Meaning that being a top 4 seed and thus getting to OKC means being ranked higher than 2 of those 3 teams.
Purdue 6
NWestern 15
Early
A NWestern win locks up a triple bye for Huskers, right?
NWestern 15
Early
A NWestern win locks up a triple bye for Huskers, right?
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Purdue 25
NWestern 34
Halftime
NWestern is not a 2nd half team, getting outscored by 14 points on average
Go Cats!
NWestern 34
Halftime
NWestern is not a 2nd half team, getting outscored by 14 points on average
Go Cats!
Purdue wins 70-66
dang it
