Thank you for visiting Nebraska. Not much of a surprise, figured he would be gone after the DLine coach bolted for greener pastures.
Wynden Ho’ohuli to the portal.
- Thread starter Tuco Salamanca
- Start date
Wish the young man well. It does open up another scholarship so let’s go ahead and use it accordingly
Damn! I really wanted to see what he could do.
4 star defenders have an abysmal rate of panning out for us in recent years.
4 star defenders have an abysmal rate of panning out for us in recent years.
As surprised as I was that we landed him, I am equally not shocked he is gone already….
If there’s one thing Frost can do well is lose 4 star guys within a year or two.
If there’s one thing Frost can do well is lose 4 star guys within a year or two.
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good look...hopefully the coach he bolted for gets what he is looking for, hopefully, tag a long fulfills his dream to follow a coach to the greenest pasture
not when he shows up to camp fat and out of shape, doesn't work in the weight room to correct it and didn't show up on time for winter workouts. it's a very good thing he left.
Don't know if true, but makes sense that someone just now entering the portal might have been told after he got back from winter break that it might be best if he moved on.
Looks like the return of the Polynesian recruiting pipeline was shorter lived than Calibraska.
I believe the same thing was said about Avery Roberts before he left for the Beavers. I checked and he led the Pac-12 in tackles the past 2 seasons, and has now declared for the NFL draft.
Seems like coaching and motivation would help. But if he didn't show up for winter workouts, I wonder if he was already planning on leaving Nebraska. I don't know his situation. He could just be homesick or maybe he misses the beach.
Watch him end up at Oregon and turn in to an all conference player.....
That cold snap we have had here recently had to have had a LOT of players "missing the beach". I just got back from Orlando. Damn it's cold here.
These things make you shake your head. 4* player from an excellent program can't see the field at a spot where we're thin on the depth chart and plays behind a kid from York. You've got to assume he's a good athlete, but something between the ears or work ethic weren't there?
I'm not sure what went wrong with Roberts. Chinander and Ruud aren't stupid, they must've seen his potential, but maybe the light didn't go on for Roberts until he went to OSU? Reimer and Heinrich have certainly shown well under their direction as only sophomores, but Roberts would have helped our defense tremendously if he was playing like he did in Corvallis.
I am friends with a couple D1 coaches in football and basketball programs and they tell me stories about good players that leaves you shaking your head. There's so much that goes on outside of game days and off the field that influences who plays and the intangibles we don't see as average fans. Maybe that's where Roberts didn't step up? We'll never know and, unfortunately, it happens a lot with great talent.
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You hate to see guys with potential leave, but this one kind of felt predictable. A guy from Hawaii, buried on the depth chart, didn't see the field last year. He committed sight unseen because of his connection to Coach T and now Coach T is gone.
The brother of the current Oline coach is in the Polynesian Football Hall of Fame. So I think NU might still get a look from Poly kids.
Roberts was a Trent Bray guy. He wanted Bray retained and developed a pissy attitude when he wasn't. IMO, he wanted Frost's staff to kiss his ass and they wouldn't. It's not the first case of a talented guy who just needs to go somewhere else. I don't think there was anything Chinander could have done to keep him happy short of just handing the job to him. There were stories that Bray was in contact with multiple Huskers after he took the job at Oregon State. That's why Frost blocked kids from going there after Gebbia left.
We always forget how young these guys in most cases. It gets driven home to me when watching my daughter's college dance team. She's a senior and when you're around the team you realize how immature most of them are. Young men the age of most of our football team have lots of growing up to do.
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He was playing OLB for now, but I imagine those spots could be fluid with our young guys.
Chinander singled him out as someone who showed up in better shape than expected for fall camp since they didn’t know what they’d be getting. But haven’t heard anything since.
We've had some guys move on who were rumored to be heavy pot users....am cough cough. I always wonder when we see a guy out of shape and unmotivated whether or not they might be hitting the weed a little too much. When we sometimes don't offer an area kid out of high school that everybody is clamoring for, I often wonder if our staff knows about recreational pharmaceutical use that maybe even the kid's family doesn't know about.
There could always be a million factors on why a kid leaves. But when a kid come from halfway around the globe and isn't getting on the field, it is not a surprise. In the era of the transfer portal, I'm not sure we can expect a lot of kids will stick it out in that situation.
Nebraska. It's not for everyone....... When was the last time we had a kid commit to Nebraska without visiting stick it our for 4 years. It seems like we had a RB do that during Pelini's tenure.
Extensive pot use is one of those dirty little secrets that most fans outside of a program don't see or understand. "That guy is good, why don't the coaches play him more?"
It's not new either, I remember back in Osborne's days there were friends of mine who attended UNL that knew several players and confirmed they were always high. It showed in how much they played because they were talented guys. You also don't know how often they flunk a drug test and, as a result, don't see the field. Guys show up to college with certain habits and behaviors that you can get away with in high school, but they're hard to break and coaching staffs pick up on it pretty quickly. Some guys like Randy Gregory can play through it or are just too good to sit.
I know I wasn't perfect in high school either. I played three sports, but still liked to have fun, so I wasn't a pot smoker, but we'd drink a few beers on the weekends. I always thought we were getting away with something. Then I remember talking to a couple of my HS coaches years later and they said, you would've been a lot better if you weren't out drinking beer all the time! :^)
Somehow I forgot about Coach Raiola in my first post, hopefully he can make some inroads. While we've obviously had a couple of high profile success stories - Dominic Raiola and Toniu Fonoti, we've seemingly had a number of other Polynesian kids come in over the years that were highly rated and left without making much or any impact. Tony Tata, Junior Tagoa'i, Manaia Brown and now Ho'ohuli are a few that come to mind. This year also seems like a make/break year for the Pola Gates kid who was one of the highest rated recruits from the '19 class.
Pola Gates is a mystery to me. Seemed like a can't miss recruit. Can he not power down enough weight gainer shakes or what?
I had a class with one of the basketball players. Very talented kid, would score pts when they played him which wasn't all that often. I asked him why one time in class. "Man......me and coach....." - that was about all he would give me. I got the feeling he was a pain in the ass at practice.
Seems like it's tough to start that pipeline. Some places just have an inherent advantage like the west coast where Polynesian players and culture are better established or Utah with the Mormon connection. I thought we had it headed in the right direction and maybe still do, but will take a few more commits to tip it toward a culture that's attractive to those kids.
Not to start the whole pot is harmless debate, but there is no doubt that heavy pot use diminishes competitive drive. It's also been shown in research to reduce testosterone levels in men. I guess that's a good thing if you're genetically prone to pattern baldness but no so much if you're a competitive athlete.
Have any of the 4 star kids who were still available late in the process ever panned out?
I believe so. No doubt though we've had quite a few who didn't. It was between us and Michigan for Matt Snyder for one. I can't remember the huge guard's name from Oklahoma who we landed. OU had pulled their offer. Some kids don't want to make up their mind and it isn't that we're landing 4 stars late. It's that we land some of the wrong 4 stars late. Who knows? Ho'ouhili might end up being great somewhere else. I can only imagine the culture shock for him moving to Lincoln and then going through that cold snap we had in December. I could see a kid sticking around if he was used to that, but for a kid used to 75 degrees and beaches, I would be saying get me out of here too.
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