Just another game that means nothing

[T_O_Bull]

Most people know in Doc's first 5 years I was probably his biggest supporter and have also proclaimed relentlessly that Nebraska could not do any better than Doc right now. Then this season started, and about three games in I began to change my tune. I've actually begun leaning towards firing Doc. Even last nights win doesn't do much for me, but i think we owe it to him to see how the season plays out, because this isn't exactly the same scenario as years past when Doc has pulled one off.

 

This team is full of veterans, has a consistent rotation (for the first time in Doc's career he is not pulling random guys off the bench making fans scratch their heads), has multiple leaders, and the win came at a very opportune time. In previous years, I don't think the upset wins helped much because players still didn't understand what it meant. When you have a veteran team with some strong leaders, guys can actually take this win and use it to improve their confidence. Everyone knows this is one of the best teams Doc has had, and a shot of confidence may be exactly what it needed. Outside of the OSU game, this team is going into a stretch of games it can win, although not easily.

 

I'll give Doc 6 more games to see how this team responds. They've got OSU, @Iowa, @NW, Minn, Mich, @PSU. If they don't win 3 games and have 0 blowouts, I'm officially jumping on the fire Doc bandwagon. I absolutely love the guy, but this program has to pick up some momentum immediately and next year's team is not going to be better than this years. It's a tall order and I really hope Doc can do it, this team is different than what he's had in the past, but if they don't manage 3 wins in these next 6 games a change has to be made.

 

SADler needs to go, period. His teams play an ugly, boring brand of basketball and why would any HS senior or Juco player want to play in that system? The DOCtor has to be out. Why wait for the next 6 games to be played? Its the first time I have ever hoped for losses, there needs to be no reprieve for this guy.

T_O_B

G>B>R

Why wait for the next 6 games? Because there is nothing to gain by canning him now. There's still time to turn the season around, but if he doesn't do it in the next 6 games, the final 5 won't really matter. That's when attendance can drop to 0 and fans can start putting pressure on Tom. No sense causing all that negativity until all hope is lost for certain.

 

Its been 6 years. I'm not saying kick him to the curb now but after the last game it needs to be good bye SADler. TO needs to start making a list now because SADler has already over stayed his welcome and no I don't care what a nice guy he is. Give me an a$$hole who wins.

T_O_B

G>B>R

[Danny Bateman]

This is an oversimplification from a guy who doesn't follow NU B-ball as much as most of you. This is the rationale I used to explain to my dad why we should send Doc packing:

 

Doc prides himself on team defense. He's been that way long before he ever arrived from UTEP. In the beginning, that was embraced by us as NU fans, partly because Barry Collier sucked dongle, and partly because we knew that we couldn't attract high profile recruits and would therefore NEED to put in a lot more work on the defensive end of things as opposed to a Duke or UNC or KU because they CAN and do attract the best recruits each year. Including guys who are offensive studs that can take over games if need be.

 

The last guy we've had that was even CLOSE to that was Maric. He was a post we could feed the ball and would consistently put up solid offensive games. Doc has flat out NOT recruited good offensive players during his time here. Spencer and Jeter have been pretty good the last couple years, but I don't think I would include them in this category.

 

The problem is... Doc's worn out his welcome. The defensive thing was a good thing at first, but we didn't know at the time it would come at the expense of any type of offense. We pass the ball around the perimeter, never seeming to get any penetration, until the shot clock and then usually jack up a poor shot... and another wasted offensive possession. Sometimes we toss it in to Diaz, who is VERY GOOD at letting the ball bounce off his banana hands and dribble out of bounds.

 

Now, I don't know if you can blame Doc for the recruiting aspect of things. He's just gotten very unlucky in a lot of that. We fought hard to get Diaz here, only to have him put up a beginning of a career that has our fanbase labeling him "underachiever" or "soft." Almeida looked good last year, obviously not very polished but a strong post presence nonetheless (at least more than Diaz last year). Gallegos hasn't been the shooter we thought we were getting when we got him. We missed on a good looking one, Vander Joaquim, who went to Hawaii after going to a JUCO when we thought he was coming here. He averaged 9 pts and 8 rebounds for the Rainbow Warriors. Our admissions definitely struck out for Doc on the whole Roburt Sallie situation. He was a shot 47% and 41% from 3PT his two seasons at Memphis.

 

Anyway, Doc has not found a way to get anyone offensively who is considered "good" to Lincoln for more than a year. And it is painfully showing. After rambling for too long, here's my point:

 

We pride ourselves on defense, but cannot get it done against good teams on a consistent basis. We usually hold ourselves close for a while but... continue to crap all over ourselves on the offensive end of the floor. Thus, our defense keeps us in games, but eventually breaks when our offense invariably fails to propel us to leads and/or wins in big games. And Doc is not good at developing the scrappy players he brings in. Therefore, he should go.

[Comish]

This is an oversimplification from a guy who doesn't follow NU B-ball as much as most of you. This is the rationale I used to explain to my dad why we should send Doc packing:

 

Doc prides himself on team defense. He's been that way long before he ever arrived from UTEP. In the beginning, that was embraced by us as NU fans, partly because Barry Collier sucked dongle, and partly because we knew that we couldn't attract high profile recruits and would therefore NEED to put in a lot more work on the defensive end of things as opposed to a Duke or UNC or KU because they CAN and do attract the best recruits each year. Including guys who are offensive studs that can take over games if need be.

 

The last guy we've had that was even CLOSE to that was Maric. He was a post we could feed the ball and would consistently put up solid offensive games. Doc has flat out NOT recruited good offensive players during his time here. Spencer and Jeter have been pretty good the last couple years, but I don't think I would include them in this category.

 

The problem is... Doc's worn out his welcome. The defensive thing was a good thing at first, but we didn't know at the time it would come at the expense of any type of offense. We pass the ball around the perimeter, never seeming to get any penetration, until the shot clock and then usually jack up a poor shot... and another wasted offensive possession. Sometimes we toss it in to Diaz, who is VERY GOOD at letting the ball bounce off his banana hands and dribble out of bounds.

 

Now, I don't know if you can blame Doc for the recruiting aspect of things. He's just gotten very unlucky in a lot of that. We fought hard to get Diaz here, only to have him put up a beginning of a career that has our fanbase labeling him "underachiever" or "soft." Almeida looked good last year, obviously not very polished but a strong post presence nonetheless (at least more than Diaz last year). Gallegos hasn't been the shooter we thought we were getting when we got him. We missed on a good looking one, Vander Joaquim, who went to Hawaii after going to a JUCO when we thought he was coming here. He averaged 9 pts and 8 rebounds for the Rainbow Warriors. Our admissions definitely struck out for Doc on the whole Roburt Sallie situation. He was a shot 47% and 41% from 3PT his two seasons at Memphis.

 

Anyway, Doc has not found a way to get anyone offensively who is considered "good" to Lincoln for more than a year. And it is painfully showing. After rambling for too long, here's my point:

 

We pride ourselves on defense, but cannot get it done against good teams on a consistent basis. We usually hold ourselves close for a while but... continue to crap all over ourselves on the offensive end of the floor. Thus, our defense keeps us in games, but eventually breaks when our offense invariably fails to propel us to leads and/or wins in big games. And Doc is not good at developing the scrappy players he brings in. Therefore, he should go.

 

Seems like (for a guy who says he doesn't follow basketball much) a fairly honest appriasal of the status quo.................................maybe T.O. needs to see an email rationale such as this................

[Danny Bateman]

Just my thoughts on the basketball as I see it presently... I don't know what Dr. Tom sees in Doc but he's shown the ability to let go of coaches that need the boot last year with Anderson, so it'll be interesting to see how everything unfolds...

[It'sNotAFakeID]

I'll try and throw a different slant on Nebrasketball.

 

dudeguyy, you mentioned that we pride ourselves on defense, that Doc has always prided himself on defense. And what we have seen from the Nebraska basketball program over the 6 years that he has been here is good defensive play: the defense has always found a way to keep us in the ball games against much better teams until the second half, where our offense inevitably fails us.

 

What you said got me thinking and what I came up with is that maybe Doc isn't really suited for a head coaching position. But if we can him, who do we get? Do we go after someone who prides their coaching style on offense, and then watch as our defense can't stop anything and wind up in the same position? I think it would be much easier to keep Doc on as head coach [where our defense would be good] and go after an assistant coach who prides himself on his offense-heavy coaching style.

[T_O_Bull]

How about we hire Bruce Pearl. Assign a compliance person to shadow him, and hire a good assistant to run defense. We do not need to keep SADler around one more minute than we have to.

T_O_B

G>B>R

[gamecocks]

I say, we go after an assistant at a big time basketball school. Wojohowski (sp) from Duke comes to mind. A big time assistant would be used to recruiting the best players in the country, plus have plenty of knowledge from being around great head coaches. What about Danny Manning from Kansas. What kind of a price tag would we have to throw at him to have him leave Kansas and come build our program?

[bball_backer]

How about we hire Bruce Pearl. Assign a compliance person to shadow him, and hire a good assistant to run defense. We do not need to keep SADler around one more minute than we have to.

T_O_B

G>B>R

Yeah, I heard Pearl is exactly Tom's kinda guy...

[bball_backer]

I say, we go after an assistant at a big time basketball school. Wojohowski (sp) from Duke comes to mind. A big time assistant would be used to recruiting the best players in the country, plus have plenty of knowledge from being around great head coaches. What about Danny Manning from Kansas. What kind of a price tag would we have to throw at him to have him leave Kansas and come build our program?

 

Manning will never leave KS and I've always maintained an assistant at Duke (or other school like that) would rather stay for another year or two and then get a GOOD job as opposed to leaving for Nebraska. The only chance we got is to hire someone as we bring in the new arena, which is why Tom needs to make a decision quickly. This literally is, in my opinion, Nebraska's only chance for probably 60 years until they build new facilities again, to bring in a decent coach.

[gamecocks]

I say, we go after an assistant at a big time basketball school. Wojohowski (sp) from Duke comes to mind. A big time assistant would be used to recruiting the best players in the country, plus have plenty of knowledge from being around great head coaches. What about Danny Manning from Kansas. What kind of a price tag would we have to throw at him to have him leave Kansas and come build our program?

 

Manning will never leave KS and I've always maintained an assistant at Duke (or other school like that) would rather stay for another year or two and then get a GOOD job as opposed to leaving for Nebraska. The only chance we got is to hire someone as we bring in the new arena, which is why Tom needs to make a decision quickly. This literally is, in my opinion, Nebraska's only chance for probably 60 years until they build new facilities again, to bring in a decent coach.

What kind of "GOOD JOBS" are out there that come open every year. The jobs that are available are more than likely because the coach has just been fired because the program is not producing wins. I agree, that there are a lot more favorable positions than Nebraska basketball coach, but some assistants might think this is the perfect spot to start his head coaching career. Most coaches are not going to start here, thinking this is the first and "ONLY" job that they will take. But more than likely use this as a stepping stone kind of job.

 

I am not just looking at the Duke assistants, but any assistant from the likes of North Carolina, Michigan State, Ohio State, Kentucky, etc. It even seems that former players from these programs are getting into coaching. If we could get a young assistant and a couple former players as assistants, that would greatly approve our chances in the recruiting world.

 

I admit, I am no professional on how to build a basketball program. It just pains me to see our program struggle year after year.

[bball_backer]

I say, we go after an assistant at a big time basketball school. Wojohowski (sp) from Duke comes to mind. A big time assistant would be used to recruiting the best players in the country, plus have plenty of knowledge from being around great head coaches. What about Danny Manning from Kansas. What kind of a price tag would we have to throw at him to have him leave Kansas and come build our program?

 

Manning will never leave KS and I've always maintained an assistant at Duke (or other school like that) would rather stay for another year or two and then get a GOOD job as opposed to leaving for Nebraska. The only chance we got is to hire someone as we bring in the new arena, which is why Tom needs to make a decision quickly. This literally is, in my opinion, Nebraska's only chance for probably 60 years until they build new facilities again, to bring in a decent coach.

What kind of "GOOD JOBS" are out there that come open every year. The jobs that are available are more than likely because the coach has just been fired because the program is not producing wins. I agree, that there are a lot more favorable positions than Nebraska basketball coach, but some assistants might think this is the perfect spot to start his head coaching career. Most coaches are not going to start here, thinking this is the first and "ONLY" job that they will take. But more than likely use this as a stepping stone kind of job.

 

I am not just looking at the Duke assistants, but any assistant from the likes of North Carolina, Michigan State, Ohio State, Kentucky, etc. It even seems that former players from these programs are getting into coaching. If we could get a young assistant and a couple former players as assistants, that would greatly approve our chances in the recruiting world.

 

I admit, I am no professional on how to build a basketball program. It just pains me to see our program struggle year after year.

You are correct in that guys look for stepping stone jobs first. Problem is, there are 300 some division 1 teams. A stepping stone job is a mid-major school where you are competing against lower level talent and lower level coaching. If you believe you are a good coach, you can go to a mid-major, get one or two decent players and be able to coach your way into the tourney for a couple years, then get an offer to a mid-level team in a major conference. It's much easier to do that way than to go to a horrible school in one of the nation's best conferences where you will have to bust your ass night in and night just to reach .500. And going .500 at Nebraska isn't going to get you any great looks at better jobs.

[Comish]

I'm coming to the conclusion that regardless of whether it's a big name, new name, recylced name, or no name.........................More than a coaching resume, we need a bona fide RECRUITER...........

 

Basketball is different than many sports in that it is relatively easy to turn things around with just a couple of big time players. I'd think the strongest attribute we should look for in any coach is unquestioned and demonstrated recruting abilities. I stand by my earlier assertion that if you can recruit to friggin Manhattan, KS......... ................................you can recruit to Lincoln....................especially with our new facilites coming on line...........!!

[Foppa]

I'm coming to the conclusion that regardless of whether it's a big name, new name, recylced name, or no name.........................More than a coaching resume, we need a bona fide RECRUITER...........

 

Basketball is different than many sports in that it is relatively easy to turn things around with just a couple of big time players. I'd think the strongest attribute we should look for in any coach is unquestioned and demonstrated recruting abilities. I stand by my earlier assertion that if you can recruit to friggin Manhattan, KS......... ................................you can recruit to Lincoln....................especially with our new facilites coming on line...........!!

 

cough Stephen Curry cough cough Jason Richards cough

[PaulCrewe]

I'm coming to the conclusion that regardless of whether it's a big name, new name, recylced name, or no name.........................More than a coaching resume, we need a bona fide RECRUITER...........

 

Basketball is different than many sports in that it is relatively easy to turn things around with just a couple of big time players. I'd think the strongest attribute we should look for in any coach is unquestioned and demonstrated recruting abilities. I stand by my earlier assertion that if you can recruit to friggin Manhattan, KS......... ................................you can recruit to Lincoln....................especially with our new facilites coming on line...........!!

Which all falls back on TO being very against letting Doc bring on an assistant with AAU ties. It is an era in which we live where AAU ties dominate the landscape and it is time that some of those roots anchor in LIncoln. Not everyone within the AAU is scum.

[bball_backer]

I'm coming to the conclusion that regardless of whether it's a big name, new name, recylced name, or no name.........................More than a coaching resume, we need a bona fide RECRUITER...........

 

Basketball is different than many sports in that it is relatively easy to turn things around with just a couple of big time players. I'd think the strongest attribute we should look for in any coach is unquestioned and demonstrated recruting abilities. I stand by my earlier assertion that if you can recruit to friggin Manhattan, KS......... ................................you can recruit to Lincoln....................especially with our new facilites coming on line...........!!

Which all falls back on TO being very against letting Doc bring on an assistant with AAU ties. It is an era in which we live where AAU ties dominate the landscape and it is time that some of those roots anchor in LIncoln. Not everyone within the AAU is scum.

+1

Tom struggles here and I don't think he realizes what he's doing. When he was dealing with student athletes he was also so incredibly careful not to lump people together, give in to stereotypes, etc. He always took every person on an individual basis. One person doing something would not change how he felt about another. But he does not at all take this approach with AAU. As you stated PC, there are decent AAU coaches and players that aren't out to make a buck. I'm all for a clean program, but you have to go the AAU route. If it means it takes a little longer to get established because you're trying to do it right, fine; we've been waiting 100 years I think we'll survive an extra one.