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OUSKINS
1/30/2010, 09:57 PM
Due to the game being moved to a late start and no TV, I’m forced to watch the online stream…figured I’d take the opportunity to do my write-up for this game in “real time” format.

The travel plans aren’t going to help—just what this team needs…another obstacle going on the road. Traveling and playing on the same day is tough. Still, no excuse—Nebraska sucks—I don’t care HOW we win this game, we just need to find a way.

Early score: 10-3 Huskers

Dreadful start….can’t throw it in the ocean…Willie looks clueless early. Bad defense. First 8 minutes, we get an F grade.

11 minutes left in first half; 11-7 Huskers: Defense has gotten much better. TMG hits a much-needed three and we force a few turnovers. Very nice steal and drive by Tiny. Nebraska had multiple chances in the first 8 minutes to blow it open, but they failed to take advantage. Now, we look a bit more settled and composed. TMG is faster and sees things quicker than his teammates…he makes a nice pass to Ray Willis who dribbles it off his foot….Tiny has very good energy tonight, still sloppy, but working hard.

7 minutes left in first half; 15-11 Huskers. Really ugly—questionable shot selection and we’re missing badly. Nebraska is playing really hard, but not pretty at all.

3 minutes left in first half; 23-20 Huskers. Briefly tied the score at 15, but Nebraska immediately went on a 5-0 run to retake the momentum. TMG is playing well, just love that midrange jumper. He is also distributing the ball well- an especially nice pass down low to Fitzgerald who converts the lay-up. Willie? I have no clue. He looks awful. Our big men are playing hard and banging, but as I type this, they let a ball slip through their hands and give up a hoop and foul in the paint. Right now, we look like a higher-energy version of ourselves in December. Ridiculously sloppy with the ball.

1:30 left in first half; 29-20 Huskers…Capel calls timeout. We look dreadful, completely regressing. It looks like we’ve never practiced an offensive set…and that falls on Capel. No one loves the guy more than I do, but this game is on his shoulders so far…team looks completely unprepared. And as shots fail to fall, our effort seems to wane as well.

Halftime; 29-20 Huskers. Horrible, horrible, horrible. On pace for a whopping 40 points. In my opinion, we have 20 minutes to more or less save the season. Can’t see us losing this game and coming back to do anything remotely promising the rest of the year. I can see the second half coming a mile away….we’ll make it semi-interesting, get the lead down to 4-5 a few times, but do something bad each time we have a chance to make a real run. We’ll see how prophetic I am…very little hope we can comeback and win, that’s for sure.

First possession of second half….ugly turnover on a pass from Crocker to Tiny. Lovely. Nebraska follows with an easy lay-up. Nice.

16 minutes left in second half; 35-25 Huskers. Willie finally scratches the box score and hits a much needed three. Right now, Tiny is the only player on the team that gets a passing grade tonight…he is getting double-teamed in the post, but he’s making good/smart decisions. Even though it’s a 10-point lead, this game is there for the taking if someone can step up for us.

12 minutes left in second half; 46-30 Huskers. Seriously? What a joke. We are getting destroyed by an absolutely horrid basketball team. Crocker just missed two point blank lay-ups. Over the past 3-4 weeks, I thought we made some really nice strides…and tonight, we’re making it a point to erase all of it.

7 minutes left in second half; 49-35 Huskers. Cleary, I gave us WAY too much credit at halftime saying we’d make it semi-interesting. This is anything but interesting. It’s a travesty. I gave the team a bit of a pass for their early struggles due to youth, etc. I just wanted to see steady improvement. But dropping this kind of effort at this point in the season points to one thing and one thing only—this is a gutless group. Hurts to say that, it really does.

4 minutes left; 59-44 Huskers. Game over. Cade hit a three that briefly cut it to 9 points, but we quickly gave it right back.

63-46 Final. Wow. Unreal.

By far the most disappointing loss of the year. It’s one thing to look bad early in the season—it’s a whole different story when it’s almost February and you arguably give your worst effort of the season in a game that you really needed to win. Really frustrating game to watch—just disgusting in all facets. The only thing Nebraska did well tonight was play hard—but that was all they needed. Yes, the travel circumstances weren’t ideal, but you’ve got to be more mentally tough than that.

Crocker and Willie were both clearly hampered by their injuries, but if they were THAT injured, we should have left them on the bench and let TMG run the show like he did against ISU.

I’m a die-hards die-hard. Therefore, I’ll be there the rest of the year—but I have no hope at this point. Maybe they’ll prove me wrong, but I doubt it. This is a lost year—I am no longer really focusing on what Capel can do THIS year, but rather looking ahead to see what he does NEXT year to redeem this mess. 2010-2011 will be a huge year for Capel.

As for the rest of this year? I have no problem with the LNC being half-full the rest of the year. The team doesn’t deserve the support of the casual fan. Yeah, if we beat Texas next Saturday it may rekindle the fire for this year, but I just don’t see that happening.

Sooner04
1/30/2010, 10:38 PM
We just got dominated by a team who'd lost their five conference games by an average of 11 points a game. We never led, and tied the game only once after the start, 15-15.

There is no excuse for how poor we are on the road. I was really confident that we'd figured some things out after the performances in College Station and Lubbock, but tonight is as bad as it gets. Defensive pressure and all the crap they were trying to use as excuses on the broadcast does not mask the fact that this team is so unbelievably weak of mind. They fold. They collapse. They shrink from adversity everywhere but inside the Lloyd Noble Center.

I'm glad I didn't get to watch this game. All I had were the dulcet tones of Bob Barry, Sr. and the whine about every call insight from Mike Houck. Speaking of which, I wonder if Castiglione ever listens to our radio broadcasts. For one of the flagship schools in the conference I've got to say we are completely JV when it comes to our radio coverage. I did some radio PBP for a little while. I wasn't very good, matter of fact you could probably call me lousy, but I know for a FACT I'm better than Bob Barry, Sr. is today.

We make fun of O-State's guy, Hunziker, all the time, but I listen to their radio team often to and from OU BBall games. It's amazing listening and being able to "see" what's going on. They describe where the ball is, who's guarding whom, and what action is taking place. What a novel concept. You get more of an idea of what's going on listening to the crowd's reaction than you do listening to BBS run three seconds behind with the call.

Dreadful. On all accounts from the coaching, staff, players, ballboys, water guys and radio team..........dreadful.


EDIT: I just checked the box score. We had 13 assists on only 15 made field goals. We played fifteen minutes and only made 15 field goals. Eight of the 15 were from distance, so we somehow played 40 minutes of basketball while only converting seven field goals from inside the arc. That's attacking the basket!

Mjcpr
1/30/2010, 10:57 PM
I'm glad I didn't get to watch this game. All I had were the dulcet tones of Bob Barry, Sr. and the whine about every call insight from Mike Houck. Speaking of which, I wonder if Castiglione ever listens to our radio broadcasts. For one of the flagship schools in the conference I've got to say we are completely JV when it comes to our radio coverage. I did some radio PBP for a little while. I wasn't very good, matter of fact you could probably call me lousy, but I know for a FACT I'm better than Bob Barry, Sr. is today.

We make fun of O-State's guy, Hunziker, all the time, but I listen to their radio team often to and from OU BBall games. It's amazing listening and being able to "see" what's going on. They describe where the ball is, who's guarding whom, and what action is taking place. What a novel concept. You get more of an idea of what's going on listening to the crowd's reaction than you do listening to BBS run three seconds behind with the call.



Yes. I hate to bag on the old guy too, but my God, he is just awful at this point. You are 100% correct in saying you can tell more about what's going on by the crowd noise that you hear than you can by his call. Football is no better. You get a quicker idea of what happened by hearing his spotter tell him what to say.

That said, we stink.

Rickety_Syd
1/31/2010, 02:00 AM
I didn't have a problem following what was going on on the radio, and I'm no sports genius.

I agree about Houck though. But hometown color guys tend to be like that.

PhilTLL
1/31/2010, 06:34 AM
Football is no better. You get a quicker idea of what happened by hearing his spotter tell him what to say.

I've really started to wonder about this. The audio engineers know we can hear that guy, right?! Why would they intentionally make him so audible? It's not just that it makes BBS seem incompetent, it's incredibly annoying to hear. Does BBS not use headphones, thus requiring someone to yell things at him instead of just feeding it to his ears?