I mean...until Underwood got to Illinois they missed the dance 4 years in a row.
Gophers enter the Vault as 7.5 underdog
- Thread starter scarletred
- Start date
I was talking about Illinois now with Underwood. Basketball schedules minus some pre conference tournaments are basically year to year.
Easy… My aunt graduated from Our Lady of the Worthless Miracle. It’s a good school
Berke and Meah have disappointed me greatly. I would say Morgan is about what I thought he would be or maybe even a little better. Meah started the last game 1 for 6 from the free throw line. We can't win with that kind of foul shooting form him and Berke.
More importantly they are 11-8 in conference play.
That gets you in the dance.
Fred convinced Williams and Gary to ride it back, as he should’ve. Two players that would start for almost every D1 team. (Gary would probably be 6th man type on some of the more talented teams) Then Fred completely failed at bringing in a supporting cast to help them be a legit tournament team. At the bare minimum we needed…
1. Solid point who could dictate pace and score. FAIL
2. Reliable 3 point shooter who ideally isn’t just a one trick pony. FAIL
3. Solid post player. Someone who can do more than 1 thing well. FAIL
We also could’ve used a good wing player. Someone who could hit outside shots, stretch the defense and then get to the rim on both ends. FAIL on that too.
Season is almost over and I honestly can’t even say who our best addition is? Can anyone? Essegian… maybe? Good shooter, moves around well without the ball on offense and makes his defender run all over. But he’s not a consistent outside threat, his defense is terrible and he’s not nearly as good at scoring inside the arch. Tominaga was a little streaky as well, but he still found ways to score if the 3s weren’t falling. Beyond that… I’ll say Berke was looking pretty good before the ankle injury, but he’s been dreadful to watch since. Kid is lost at sea and can’t throw a pebble in ocean right now. Was hopeful and optimistic about Rollie, but he’s such an extreme liability on offense that it affects his whole game. Seems like his confidence is just shot. 🤷♂️
Damnit, we suck 😞
Berke really should be better than he is. An athletic big like him and he's just brutal in the lane trying to score. He might end up being really good, he's just not there yet unfortunately.
Rollie has struggled this year from 3 and he forces too many shots near the rim trying to get to the line. Those have been his problems this year. He has been better from 3 before he got to NU. I suspect some of that is he's facing better defenders in the B1G than he did last year. As far as the bigs go, EVERYBODY wanted transfer bigs and Fred got the best ones he could convince to come to a program with our history. It's hard for me to blame Fred for not bringing in an all conference big. We don't have the checkbook for basketball nor the history to attract a top big man. Period. IF we want to get guys like that, we have to fund NIL better for basketball.
There lies the problem. The Jayskers . The big football supporter in Omaha basically most of those throw the basketball support to Creighton.
Many have thought we have the booster dollars to buy football and basketball teams in our alumni and fan base. Unfortunately we don't have near the type of depth of wealth in those categories that many other P4 schools have. We have seen what 2 families have been able to do for us. Some of our competitors have dozens of families like that contributing to their programs. It's a numbers game and NU is a relatively small school compared to other B1G and SEC schools.
We may not have the NIL funds to meet every need, but I listed 4 positional needs in my post… 1. PG 2. Perimeter shooting 3. Post 4. Wing
We may not have the funds to address all those needs, but we could’ve addressed 1 or 2 of them. Fred pretty much missed on every portal addition. That’s not acceptable regardless of our situation.
He has beat Creighton twice... that alone should allow him to keep his job. Fred definitely did not win in the portal. Berke, Essegian, Griffiths and Worster are all worse than I thought they were going to be. Morgan is slightly better and Ulis is a left over that we had to use.
With that said, Gary as much of a work horse he is should NEVER shoot the ball more than 10 times a game. Unfortunatly with how bad our other players are he freaking has to, and it is sad.
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