How Nebrasketball went from an NCAA team to an NIT 5-seed

There’s a lot of angst in Huskerville about why the Nebraska men’s basketball team failed to reach the NCAA Tournament despite a 22-10 overall record, a 13-5 conference record in the Big Ten and a 16-1 record at home.

From this uneducated vantage point about 250 miles south of Lincoln, Nebraska’s slide from the Big Dance to the National Invitation Tournament — as a No. 5 seed, mind you — comes down to five of the nine regular-season losses. I’m excluding the Big Ten Tournament beat-down by Michigan because, based on the fact NU was not a First Four Out, the Big Red would likely have had to win the tournament and gain the automatic qualifying bid. And, as you can see, the five losses on this list fall in two categories — tough losses to NCAA teams and losses to teams NU should have beaten:

1. Nov. 23: UCF 68, NU 59. Shooting 25 percent in the first half and trailing by 18 at half was too much to overcome for the Big Red. It didn’t help the Huskers’ Big Dance chances that the Golden Knights finish the regular season 19-13, with their best win Dec. 3 against then-No. 24 Alabama (an NCAA Tournament team). UCF, by the way, did not make either the NCAA or NIT brackets.
2. Dec. 9: Creighton 75, NU 65. Huskers held a five-point lead at half, built the advantage to eight early in the second half and trailed by three with just over 1 minute left but couldn’t seal the deal…a mantra in several close losses for Nebraska, both on this list and off. Had NU won here and, I think, any of the next three games on this list, Creighton AD and NCAA Tournament Selection Committee Chair Bruce Rasmussen would have had a lot more pause before leaving the Cornhuskers out of the NCAA Tournament (and putting Oklahoma in the tourney…but I digress…).
3. Dec. 16: Kansas 73, NU 72. Nebraska’s best of several chances at the coveted Q1 win anywhere on its schedule, and it goes to the very last second before coming up short. At the time, it was Nebraska’s third loss in four games, including an 86-57 thumping by Michigan State to start the early-season skid. Had either Anton Gill’s 3-pointer or James Palmer’s follow-up in the final 20 seconds gone in, this win could have been enough to push NU into the Last Four In category. If it hadn’t been for the next two defeats…
4. Jan. 22: Ohio State 64, NU 59. The third loss on this list to an eventual NCAA qualifier, and much like the Creighton game, the Huskers battled toe-to-toe with the then-No. 13 Buckeyes before Ohio State pulled away in the final four minutes. The loss offset a career game for Palmer, who went off for 34 points.
5. Feb. 18: Illinois 72, NU 66. Nebraska came into the game on a six-game winning streak following the Ohio State loss and verbally marked the Illinois battle as a game it had to have with questions about its post-tournament direction already swirling…and then it just could not shake Illinois. In fact, the Illini were the team with the finishing kick, outscoring NU 14-5 over the final six minutes to pull the upset. NU then won its final two regular-season games, but in my mind this is the game that sealed the Huskers’ fate as a non-NCAA Tournament team.

While the NCAA’s decision to leave Nebraska out of the 2018 tournament may have surprised a lot of people, those that saw an NIT Tournament bid as at least a decent possibility were shocked the Huskers fell all the way to a 5-seed, meaning no first-round home game and a likely second-round battle with a top seed — in this case Baylor — if they get past Mississippi State on Wednesday night. The general statistics — no Q1 wins, a 2-3 overall record against Q2 teams, six wins against teams with plus-.500 records — don’t help, but I think NU becomes an NIT top seed just if it can beat UCF and Illinois. And I think NU gets into the Big Dance by winning one of the other three games.

Instead, Nebraska goes to the NIT for the 18th time and the first time since 2011. Hopefully, the Huskers feel spurned and roar through the tournament, getting their first title since 1996. My guess is the season ends well before that, capping a year of disappointment on several levels for the Big Red. At least it looks like Nebrasketball is trending up — finally — after a couple years where the so-called eyeball test had NU starting to circle the drain like it has done so many times in the past.

 

College Football, Week 3

Thoughts from an, um, interesting weekend in college football:

1. Alabama apparently doesn’t need defense that badly. The Crimson Tide surrendered around 600 yards of total offense to Texas A&M on Saturday, but still came up big when it had to for the win. Johnny Manziel was spectacular again, but AJ McCarron performed at a winning level. Again.

2. Maize and Blue feeling blue. It was bad enough Michigan needed a wayward pass at the end of the game to edge past lowly Akron on Saturday. Visions of Appalachian State are still vivid, though. At least Michigan won. The same can’t be said for a lot of the Big Ten.

3. Dear Old Nebraska U. Remember when I said I didn’t trust Taylor Martinez or Bo Pelini? This was why. Calls for Pelini’s job are now officially warranted.

4. Strange Doings in the Desert. What do YOU make of the Wisconsin-Arizona State ending? That takes the cake as one of the weirdest ending sequences I have seen.

5. Longhorns get processed. Again. After a shredded-beef defensive consistency against BYU, Texas got grilled again by Ole Miss. Mack Brown’s rear end is starting to get grill marks now as well. Sorry, but I’m not going to miss this rare opportunity to rub it in.

College Football, Weekend No. 1

Random — extremely random — thoughts about the first weekend of Division I football (while in progress, mind you):

1. Is anybody going to challenge Alabama for the national title this year? Somebody is, but who? A lot of smart money is on Georgia, with some on Texas A&M. I’m not ruling out LSU, at least for the regular season, but I’m thinking Alabama takes home its third straight title. At least for now.

2. Speaking of Texas A&M, wasn’t that Johnny Manziel autograph session-NCAA inquiry just about the dumbest thing you saw the past few months? Well, maybe the first-half suspension against Rice ranked up there as well. Or the Miami-Frank Haith goof. Or (insert NCAA-related controversy here).

3. It’s a little late, but thank you, Jay Bilas. Now let’s just blow up the NCAA and start over. With the realization that athletes need to be paid something for what they bring to universities across the country.

4. My vote for Heisman: Jadeveon Clowney. Who’s yours?

5. Stadium expansions are becoming the rage, with Nebraska, Kansas State, Washington, Texas A&M among the universities either completing renovations or in the process — either of actual construction or in the fundraising stage. Practice facilities have been the major upgrade of choice for years, but now — with some stadiums in desperate need of work and others just simply getting dressed up to keep up with the Joneses — look for a lot of fundraising projects and a lot more in the way of big renovation announcements over the next decade. Then look for new stadiums altogether as the next phase of the recruiting arms race develops.

6. A lot of people are saying North Dakota State’s win over Kansas State wasn’t as much of an upset as you may think. A lot of people are saying NDSU was fairly evenly matched against the Wildcats, who lost Heisman Trophy candidate Collin Klein and others to graduation last season. OK, but that being said, K-State just opened the seats on a new renovation project…and unveiled a new statue of revered head coach Bill Snyder. After that closing drive — 80 yards, 18 plays, 8 minutes 30 seconds (let that one marinate in your brain for a few days) — to win the game with under 40 seconds left…there may be a statue of head coach Craig Bohl at some point sooner than expected. Hey — it’s a 1-AA win over a D-I school (and yes, I did that on purpose). And K-State fans may hate reading this, but the way the Bison won that game was pretty darn impressive. Some pundits are calling for other D-I schools to stop scheduling the Bison. Maybe NDSU should jump up a division instead. Nah.

Hope for more of those moments this season.

Time to Chop Some Names

Posted May 12, 2013, on http://www.IndySportsLegends.com.

Recently, Jason Collins became the first current player in America’s major sports to come out as gay. With that cultural marker now past, a lot of attention is turning to racially sensitive sports nicknames as the next hurdle to clear.

Daniel Snyder’s comments saying the Washington Redskins would never change their nickname may be popular and based in team history, but the statement is a dumb one when you look at the bigger cultural picture.

Let’s start by stating one absolute, obvious fact. The nickname is racist.

Let’s follow that by stating an absolute, obvious observation. Americans don’t do the racist thing anymore, at least not in public. Unless you’re the Redskins and a handful of other college, high school or youth-level athletic programs who haven’t gotten with the program.

Over the past 20 years, names with Native American ties — some honorable, some questionable, some blatantly derogatory — have disappeared. In the cases of the derogatory, congratulations were deserved for leaders recognizing the negative impact of those names and working to remove them.

In some cases, the logos were just as offensive as the names. Witness the dopey caricature fostered by the St. John’s Redmen as Exhibit A:

While the Redskins catch the most flak for their stubbornness on this matter, other teams still aren’t immune for legitimate criticism. Not so much for the nickname as for the logo or team’s visual identity.

This was borne out during Major League Baseball’s spring training, when the Atlanta Braves broke out the Way Back Machine and returned with hats emblazoned with Chief Nokahoma.

I have always been ambivalent about Nokahoma. It’s a much more accurate picture of a Native American than, say, the Redmen logo or Cleveland’s Chief Wahoo…

…but there’s something unnervingly wrong about the logo that I have never been able to place.

And don’t get me started on Chief Wahoo. That branding campaign should never have been launched.

Being part Choctaw, I really don’t have a problem with certain Native-related nicknames. Maybe I should have a problem with tribal names being used (even those like Fighting Sioux indicating a warlike mentality), but I don’t. Nicknames like Braves and Chiefs and Warriors? I don’t have a problem with those.

I do have a problem when nicknames are blatantly offensive but still widely supported.

When Americans look back at the 1800s and think of Native Americans, they think cowboys and Indians, Custer’s crew wiped out at Little Bighorn and (possibly) reservations. We give lip service reverence to the individual giants like Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse of Chief Joseph. As a culture, though, we totally have blocked out the treaty upon treaty broken to gain land. And aside from Wounded Knee, S.D., we turn a blind eye to massacre after massacre.

Case in point: the Choctaws were moved from Mississippi and Alabama to Oklahoma thanks to the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek in 1830. Choctaws were given a choice of submitting to U.S. laws or keeping their legal structure and moving — and giving up some 11 million acres of land in the process. The treaty was the sixth one involving both parties in some capacity, each meaning huge chunks of territory were handed over as settlers demanded more and more land (this started well before the Treaty of Hopewell in 1786, which among other things said Americans could never live on Indian land and Indians could punish violators as they saw fit. We see how well that went over.).  The Treaty of Doak’s Stand in 1820 said boundaries wouldn’t change until the Choctaw were “civilized and enlightened” to become U.S. citizens…only to see the boundaries change with the Treaty of Washington City in 1825 and complete removal in 1831.

Back when I was a kid and John Riggins became a household name against the Dolphins, I wouldn’t have cared. Now, when I hear Daniel Snyder’s comments, Snyder’s in-your-face defiance, this litany of disrespect is what comes to mind. Not fourth-and-six from the other team’s 18 with under two minutes to go and trailing by a field goal.

No gathering of 50,000 to 80,000 people chanting and waving the Tomahawk Chop will ever honor the deaths incurred at Wounded Knee or Sand Creek or the displacement of thousands of people thanks to Dancing Rabbit Creek and other similar threads of broken treaties woven into a quilt of nationwide marginalization. Snyder’s dismissive comments continue that marginalization, whether he sees it or not.

So many things are considered offensive these days, and when those concerns are voiced, we take steps to make amends. Except, inexplicably, in this case and with this segment of humankind.

The Redskins name is racist and has to go. People adjusted to talking about the St. John’s Red Storm instead of the Redmen. We can think of another suitable nickname for the Washington Redskins.

Looking deeper, though, what a lot of us need to consider is whether the push towards tolerance includes Native Americans as well as most of the rest of humanity. The fact we’re having this discussion indicts us. It says we’re not where we should be as a culture even though other landmarks are now past.