We are going to the Crown tournament. A new one in Vegas and includes schools from the BIg . Big 12 and Big East . Actually the this crown tournament is considered better than the NIT.
Fred should be fired today
- Thread starter Spartanhusker
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Probably more. It’s all about the jimmies and joes. If you can’t get guys you’re useless. Idc how good you can coach.Always cringe when I hear that a coach… “Doesn’t like to recruit.” Yikes, that’s probably at minimum 60% of your job.
I used Chucky only as a familiar example of what ONE better guard might have done for this team. As you point out, there were other guys out there. There are things that Rollie does well but his weak points cost us some games. Obviously it wasn’t all on him.
I’ll change my tone. I don’t think the Crown will be better basketball but just but bigger names then the NIT. It smells like the XFL. All the same I’m not even sure Huskers go to the crown, cause they’ll take 2 B1G schools. Looks like one with Ohio State will be one. Minnesota, USC might get in over us. Rutgers, Indiana, and northwestern turned down all
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I believe more than 2 big ten teams can go it’s just that the top 2 not invited to NCAA are automatically going. And clearly with 0 in the NIT the rest of us are going to the Crown. Though I feel like we should have our staff out looking for new players for 2025 season instead.
I’m confused. Other teams have accepted invitations to the crown. Are we in, or not? Fred has been on record saying we would be in the post season.
Also, Chucky got $2 million in NIL money to go to Louisville.
Fred did not recruit well this past offseason, but unless we are willing to increase the NIL budget significantly, it won't matter who the coach is....nobody will be able to recruit here if we are not willing to spend millions of dollars on NIL. One could argue this team overachieved based on their talent level. Yes, that's a reflection of poor recruiting, but you get what you pay for.
I see Connor Essegian is lobbying for us to get Jalen Jackson from Purdue Fort Wayne. Maybe Connor should focus on becoming a better player because he was bad in a lot of big games.
I like the fact I’m learning more about our NIL commitment. Way better than not knowing anything like before. If we win the Crown, we’ll get another $500,000. Things are looking up.
But I don’t think anyone knows the real numbers and just because we spent 2.5 doesn’t mean that’s all that was available.
If Chucky really got $2 million, I wouldn't have wanted NU to top that even if the money was available.
On the other hand, Deivon Smith reportedly got around $500 to $600 K to go to St. John's. That was money very well-spent. I would guess Ja' Kobi Gillespie got something similar from Maryland. I doubt Alston Mason got any more than that from Arizona State.
NU will definitely have to up its NIL game if it wants to attract big-name transfers. But that doesn't mean there are no good players that can be had.
I’ve said this before. Good players are out there if we are astute with our funds. Curious. How much did we pay our players?
The fact that we are historically the worst major-conference program in college basketball, means we are going to have to pay more than most other programs. We don't have a tradition of making the NCAA tournament and sending guys to the NBA. Therefore, a lot of players would probably take less to play for a coach like Pitino knowing they will get a lot of exposure and be prepared for the NBA. No big-time transfer is going to be like "I'm going to take less money and go to Nebraska" when they could go to literally any other major program and have a better chance of making the tournament and the NBA.
If we are not willing to seriously increase our NIL budget, then Hoiberg is going to have to try to "Moneyball" this thing and find a bunch of diamonds in the rough. But I feel like this is what he tried last offseason and it did not go well.
I wonder if some programs that don't have much NIL will instead turn to Europe and start bringing in more international players.
I don't disagree with this, but I would also allow for the possibility that Pitino is also just a helluva lot better than Fred at identifying and developing talent.
I would guess that Brice and Gary received the largest amounts of NIL money from UNL's pot with Mast also getting something similar to those two for sticking around both this year and planning to play next year. The rest of the portal transfers probably received moderate amounts but nothing at all close to what Chucky and Sallis received. It would be interesting to know what Tonje was able to get from Wisconsin. Had to be one of the best free agent signings for the money spent.
Isn't Matty A. with Pitino at St. Johns these days in some type of recruiting position? Those two would fit quite well with each other.
Moneyball IMO was exactly what I was thinking we tried to do this year. It’s a different game where one guy can make or break your team. I don’t believe you can replace one good player in basketball with a couple of mediocre guys like we tried to do this year.
Allick, Williams, and Mast were all mid major pickups. Morgan was this year. Obviously, Fred has had better success with these type of players rather than subs from Power 5 teams. Hopefully, he goes back to that.
Why? Most of these players were not even born the last time St. John’s basketball was relevant.St John’s is a much easier sell than NU.
Did NU even reach out to Deivon Smith, or is just easier to give everyone a free pass if that question never gets asked?
St John’s has a tradition and a coach who has won at the highest level. NU? Not so much. I mentioned earlier that we don’t know who we tried to get or what we offered.
I hope he can find a mid major point guard for next season. It sure seems to have worked for some other programs.
Yes Im serious. A couple of years ago, St John’s was playing most of its games in an on-campus dump in front of a couple thousand people. It’s an attractive program now because they’re kicking everybody’s ***.
They are also located in the biggest city in the USA and most famous city in the world. And play a lot of games in Madison Square Garden. A world-class city and coach, is going to be hard to turn down to go play for a program in the middle of nowhere that has never even won a tournament game.
And yet somehow St. John's only made the NCAA Tournament field 3 times since 2002 and hasn't won a game in the tournament in 25 years.
Apparently winning at St. John's should be as easy as falling off a log, but it seems all those other advantages didn't really amount to anything until they hired the right coach.
I'm just saying they have a lot of advantages compared to Nebraska. Hiring the right coach is obviously most important. They also have tons of NIL money from Mike Repole now. When you look at all of these factors combined, no great player is going to choose Nebraska over St. John's. We can't even get Nebraska natives like Chucky, Sallis, Fidler, Kyle, etc. to come here....so why would Deivon Smith want to come here?
We can’t be charitable to Fred just because he’s a good guy. Merit has to trump that feature by miles. Feed obviously doesn’t have what it takes and I doubt he ever will. He’s been given plenty of time to show something and he’s done very little. Time to try to get someone in her who can turn it around. You don’t have to have tradition to do that. That’s a a myth
Completely ignoring St John’s history of success in basketball isn’t logical. Do you think Pitino would have ever considered taking a job at NU? I don’t.
I know I am chiming in really late on this thread, but I really do think that Fred is close to getting this thing to the next level. I think the last two or three misses at the point guard position has really hurt with Woster, Ulis and Coleman. Don't know why they didn't have success, but any one of his 4 or 5 previous point guards could have guided this team to a tourney bid easily. (Cam Mack, Dalano Banton, Alonzo Verge or Sam Griesel) I would even throw in Trey McGowens or Kobe Webster could have handled the point like Lawrence did last year.
Now he is in that ****** position of having to replace a whole lot of points and get a lot more athletic. Hopefully Mast stick around to give him at least a little bit of something to build around. I do think Essegian will get better, but he needs to get this team a whole lot more athletic to be able to defend.
Now he is in that ****** position of having to replace a whole lot of points and get a lot more athletic. Hopefully Mast stick around to give him at least a little bit of something to build around. I do think Essegian will get better, but he needs to get this team a whole lot more athletic to be able to defend.
Where did I say Pitino would have taken the Nebraska job?
My point is that Pitino took over a program that had not accomplished a damn thing in a quarter of a century and turned it around almost immediately. No excuse-making or setting of lowball expectations needed.
In hindsight I think Lawrence and Allick were the most important missing pieces from last year. The athleticism we lost from those two was not replaced. I hope Fred can address that in next year's roster.