We had other deficiencies besides point guard, perimeter shooting was terrible.
Chucky wouldn’t have helped in that department.
Fred should be fired today
- Thread starter spartanhusker
- Start date
Chucky wouldn’t have helped in that department.
I get it but the fact is he got a LOT out of that crew last year. I'm frustrated too. I don't know how we get the talent to NU we need because we clearly didn't get it this past year. I just don't think bringing in a new guy would change anything and we're pot committed with Fred. I believe that was intentional. All the AD cares about is winning enough at home to fill PBA. My expectations after watching 50+ years of Husker basketball I admit are pretty low. Fred gave me some hope last year. They were fun to watch but the team was like a group from the Island of Misfit Toys. Somehow they won. This year not so much. I can't get to home games. I'm not in the locker room or at practice. The only thing I an see is the product on the floor. The transfers we brought in weren't good enough to replace the guys we lost. The one guy I expected more from this year was Juwann. He would have a great game and the next game he would be absolutely horrid. His inconsistency killed us without Mast to take up the slack.
I mentioned a couple times in other threads that having Chucky Hepburn would have had NU in the top 25 all year long. This would have allowed us to use Worster as the backup PG, where he would have been better as a complementary player. Worster has some skills that work as more of a role player. Hepburn would have allowed the rest of the team to fill their roles (Williams, Gary, Essegian, and Morgan) — and we could have cut Uhlis loose.
Chucky shot 35% from 3, 44% overall from the field and 85% from the line this past year.. Couple that with his handle and ability to penetrate and I think he would have helped.
Not saying he wouldn’t have.. But our perimeter shooting this year was a far cry from last year’s tournament team.
Are you fvcking serious? Would Chucky have made us better? 🥴 Did you see our point guard play this year? 100% we’d be in both the B1G and NCAA if we had Chucky this year.
But we think we can match offers from schools Louisville who has a history of final 4s and putting kids in the league. We have to significantly over bid these teams, but we’re cheap and have zero self awareness.
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I totally disagree. Chucky is an elite scorer from the point and takes care of the ball. If it wasn’t for Williams we would’ve had the worst backcourt in the country. Much less the B1G.
Rollie shot 22% from 3 and 71% from the line. One of the reasons our perimeter shooting was so poor was Rollie. Nobody had to guard him tight. Couple that with the fact that he was trying to draw fouls on drives and would throw up wild shots and not get a call. We had too many guys who weren't a threat to shoot and it allowed opponents to focus their D the other guys on the floor. Chucky shot 35% from 3. How many more games would have 2 more 3s per game have won us?
We were two wins away from the NCAA tournament with freaking Rollie Worster as our Point Guard. Chucky, averaging 16 points and 6 rebounds for the #13 ranked team in the nation, would have led us to the tournament easily.
But it doesn't matter, his family hates the Huskers. Especially after the fans would boo him the entire game every time Wisconsin played us in Lincoln.
I guess that would make it moot point if he had zero interest wanting to play for Nebraska..
Last year, we had 10 players shoot 32% or better from three. This year, we only had three players shoot 32% or better from three. Funny thing is they weren’t three point shooters at their previous schools. Fred had to know that. What was he thinking?
Yeah, see, I can forgive Fred for not bagging Chucky Hepburn. He was leaving a program better than Nebraska's and ended up at a program better than Nebraska's. The only reason NU even comes up in a conversation about Hepburn is because he's from Nebraska, so I had no expectation that he would land in Lincoln.
But go back and look at the shit ton of point guards who entered the transfer portal last spring, many of them from mid-majors or lower-tier power 5 programs. Lawrence was not a true PG, but he was the closest thing Fred had to one on roster. As soon as he left, PG needed to be the top priority - a fact discussed here quite frequently last spring. Instead, NU ends up with a utility man from Utah who was a somewhat serviceable ball-handler but never, ever a PG, and a standstill shooter from Wisconsin who cannot handle the ball to save his life.
There's no way in Hell that there were no mid-major or even Division II PGs that couldn't have filled this need better than those two. I'm not talking about a star player who was well-established at a power conference program, I'm just talking about someone who is, you know, ACTUALLY A POINT GUARD. This is the blunder that falls squarely at Fred's feet, not the fact that Chucky Hepburn went to Louisville.
I heard rumblings of such. But if we didn’t offer 20% more money than Louisville we didn’t do the bare minimum to gain his interest. And I’m about 99% sure we didn’t even outbid Louisville.
Like I said before. If we didn’t offer Chucky, at minimum, 20% more money than Louisville we don’t really know if there was a chance.
The issue for me is that I don't know who he tried to get. I mistakenly thought with the bigs we took that we would have a deeper roster without really thinking hard enough about what we lost with Mast and Tominaga. I thought Essegian might be an upgrade from Kesei but I'm not done with Essegian. I think he can be a valuable tool but there has to be other guys on the floor with him who are an offensive threat. The other thing Rollie lacked was enough foot quickness to stay with opposing guards. We really got exposed when the opposition had 2 or 3 guys on the floor at the same time who could shoot 3s AND take you off the dribble.
If Fred could not pull a single PG out of that portal class, but he gets a hall pass because he "might have tried, we don't know" - then the head coach of Nebraska basketball is the single greatest job in the history of sports.
Gillespie from Belmont was a good example of a productive mid major. Ends up at Maryland and has a great year. I think Fred was just plain lazy in the portal. I think he settled for a bunch of big ten subs. I think Fred deep down doesn’t have the drive to be an elite recruiter. His assistants aren’t good recruiters either.
That was his knock at Iowa St, heard recruiting wasn’t something he enjoyed..
Easiest gig in big ten:
- No expectations from admin
- Fifth highest salary
- Loyal fan base
- Lapdog media
- Extension after marginal success
Always cringe when I hear that a coach… “Doesn’t like to recruit.” Yikes, that’s probably at minimum 60% of your job. 😬
Ahneman is not a good outside shooter. Hasn’t hit a 3 all year, literally.
Not much expectation from fans either until the meltdown. That’s the only reason an admitted non-fan was commenting. Nothing was Fred’s fault until the end.
I dunno if the original contract was really the problem. I know I sound like a broken record, but we have to overpay for both coaches and players. That’s the hole we’ve dug for ourselves.
Now the extension we’re 100% simpatico. Straight criminal.
Truth, though the only expectation from admin is high attendance and concessions income
