Excited for tonight!
- Thread starter NUCat320
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Seriously, if Collins plays this lineup tonight NU will win.
Its a big "if" because I don't think they have ever been on the court together in a Big Ten game...
Ryan Greer, Chase Audige, Ryan Young, Miller Kopp and Pete Nance.
Young, Nance and Audige need to play 30 minutes. They are the three best players Collins has.
The key to success is to limit the playing time of Boo Buie and Robbie Beran. Performance statistics make it very clear that they are actually hurting the team by playing.
Use Matt Nicholson. He is just rotting on Collins' bench and his upside is tremendous, but he has to play or he'll probably transfer. You'd think a team that gets dominated on the boards would give a 7 footer a shot.
Its a big "if" because I don't think they have ever been on the court together in a Big Ten game...
Ryan Greer, Chase Audige, Ryan Young, Miller Kopp and Pete Nance.
Young, Nance and Audige need to play 30 minutes. They are the three best players Collins has.
The key to success is to limit the playing time of Boo Buie and Robbie Beran. Performance statistics make it very clear that they are actually hurting the team by playing.
Use Matt Nicholson. He is just rotting on Collins' bench and his upside is tremendous, but he has to play or he'll probably transfer. You'd think a team that gets dominated on the boards would give a 7 footer a shot.
I like that lineup. I think that’s the best group of five that NU can put on the floor based on what I have seen.
I enjoyed every part of this game.
1. beilein: “mouse in the house” “run your best play here Chris”
2. The Barn: I don’t remember seeing the script ‘The Barn’ on the court before
3. Not a lot of funny faces because of the mask, but we got a good late closeup
4. HISTORIC FIRST WIN OF THE DECADE
5. (added, because I forgot to list initially) NU gets to show up as a ‘bad loss’ on the Gophs tourney resume
Nicholson is not ready for B1G play. 7 footers who don't weigh more than 225 pounds cannot compete athletically in this conference.
Nice to see Boo get it together.
My God the turnovers. Some of the worst I've ever seen.
I thought CC pantsed little Richie P.
Nice to see Boo get it together.
My God the turnovers. Some of the worst I've ever seen.
I thought CC pantsed little Richie P.
This team has had to deal with the hardest schedule of any team in KENPROM HISTORY. I am not saying that they have been great but they are not as bad as peothat schedule might have an effect
So now true Freshman that come in ranked 200+ in the class and playing behind 2 upper class man are risks to transfer?
You might as well tell us everyone is a risk since that is reality with any losing team. I know you’ll get a lot of comments on your post because transfer talk is a big thing around here. You can come back and tell us you were correct next month.
Very bizarre that a new account was created yesterday just to stan Matt Nicholson.
Clearly someone associated with him, it happens, they want to see their guy get time, I get it. I guarantee you that Collins was abundantly clear about what his role would be this year before and after he committed. Nicholson has played in one game when he got meaningful minutes and we were outscored 8-0 during that stretch. He's not ready for Big Ten play yet, like most freshmen big men.
Use your eyes. Nicholson is a solid 250, taller and stronger than Ryan Young. Much bigger than Pete Nance. In his few minutes of action, he has looked athletic enough and aggressive.
Buie was 5 of 13 from the field. He and Beran should be benched. We won because Ryan Young dominated the post and Minnesota missed a lot of shots.
I don't know the kid. I do know that the Big Ten is a league of physical play and Pete Nance and Robbie Beran get pushed all over the court. Any decent coach plays his freshmen in meaningful spots. This kid could pick Robbie Beran up and throw him onto the bench, where he belongs.
Nicholson is 7 feet plus and 255 lbs. It is criminal that he isn't playing at least 5 minutes a game ,especially given the blowouts NU has suffered. What is the worst thing that can happen? Kofi Cockburn dunks on him? He isn't going to learn anything in practice with Collins, mainly because NU doesn't have anybody who plays a physical Big Ten style in the low post. For him to develop, he has to play some minutes, just like Ty Berry.
You: "We won because Ryan Young dominated the post."
Also you: "NU doesn't have anybody who plays a physical Big Ten style in the low post."
Do you watch the games? Young gets the ball and tries to pivot and shot fake his way to the basket. He is a very unusual player. He rarely tries to dunk it. He is not a great leaper. He succeeds thru hard work and fundamentals, like boxing his opponent out. He is not the type of big athlete that all of opponents put out there. Those guys try to go right thru you and dunk the ball. We have no one like that in our rotation, although I think Nicholson is that type of player.
After seeing what Kofi did (accidentally) to that referee last year, I think Nicholson might get squashed like a bug.
Yes. The 19 2nd half points had nothing to do with the win. Young's dominant 8 points was the primary reason we won. I always enjoy people who double down on stupid.
It is not as bad as you suggest. Does it have issues? Absolutely. But they have been hit with the worst schedule in history and that has a lot to do with what we are seeing
Buie has had a bad season. He plays a lot of minutes, takes a lot of shots, turns the ball over often and plays no defense. If Bryant Macintosh can eliminate those flaws, that would be great.
However, as of now, Young and Nance are our best players.
Buie was very ineffective in the first half. In the second half he played better, thankfully. He got to the free throw line and made his foul shots. He was 4 of 9 from the field in the second half. He had one assist in the game. Remember, he's the point guard. He has the ball and tends to keep it. Thats a recipe for losses.
Young doesn't score a lot of points because 1) Buie and Audige are inept and/or uninterested in passing the ball into the post 2) Collins doesn't play him enough and 3) our offense has him setting screens 20 feet from the basket eliminating most scoring and rebounding opportunities.
The Minnesota injuries and the play of Young (and Nance) shut down their scoring in the post and forced Minnesota to shoot threes, which they missed, even when they were open. Thats why we won. We didn't play particularly well. We made our free throws. Buie was 8 for 8 in the 2nd half. The rest of the guys were 7 for 10.
My fear is that Chris Collins sees things like you do - the guy who scores the most points is my best player.
How about if you try and read more carefully. That would be a first step in cutting down on your stupid statements. I didn't say Buie was our best player or that he's had a great year. He scored 19 points in the second half and had 25 points in the game on 13 shots. Drawing fouls is a good thing. He's the main reason we won the game. It's really not complicated. But go ahead and triple down.
It's not 1994 anymore. The game has changed. Buie produced 14 points on his 13 shots. If Young scored 14 points and shot 7-13, you'd think he had a good game. Young is a pretty good player who gets the most out of his limited athleticism. He's not a good help defender. He's not very good in pick and rolls and he has 1 to 1 assist to turnover ratio (Buie's is 2 to 1). And he's not even a good defensive rebounder. He played approximately 30 minutes a game in a 4-game stretch against Rutgers, Purdue, Indiana and Rutgers and had 12 total rebounds. Buie had 13 in that stretch. If we try to run the offense through Young in the post teams will adjust and he will turn the ball over more and his shooting percentage will go down. He's a good rotation player who has been our most consistent player off the bench. Let him be.
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Personally think Audige was the #1 reason we won. Contained (with help) Carr most of the game before he scored a couple of treys at the end.
Forced the other players to carry the burden of scoring and shoot 3’s. A group missing two starters. Who could not hit a 3.
Forced the other players to carry the burden of scoring and shoot 3’s. A group missing two starters. Who could not hit a 3.
The team plays a lot better when Young is on the court. He and Pete Nance are out two best players and need to be out there together. Thats obvious to nearly everyone. Beran is the worst guy in our rotation. Yet somehow Beran plays as much as Young. Its like he's the coaches son.
Buie's flaws are obvious. Just look at the offensive production from Audige and Nance lately as Buie has stepped up his ball-hogging approach to the game. When Audige played the point he scored a lot of points too. Now he rarely gets the ball. Neither Buie nor Audige is a point guard, although Buie could be if he can learn from Macintosh. Audige will never be a point guard and the fact that Collins tried him in that role is damning. Greer is a point guard by nature.
I encourage you to look at this website to enhance your perspective...
Specifically, scroll to the bottom where the advanced statistics can be found.
WS/40 is Win Shares per 40 minutes of conference play.
Young and Nance are our best players, with performances of just over 0.1.
This translates to someone who should win about half of his conferences game (5 x 0.1 = 0.5)
Note how Boo Buie and Robbie Beran score 0.02 and 0.01 respectively. That means they are playing like guys who would win 10% and 5% of their conference games.
There are other modern statistics listed. PER is Player Efficiency Rating. Robbie Hummel uses this metric when analyzing players. Ryan Young leads the team at 19.3, followed by Pete Nance at 19.1, then a big drop to Audige at 13.1, Kopp at 12.4, Buie at 11.7, Gaines 11.2, Greer 10.8, Berry 10.8 and then a drop to Robbie Beran at 6.9.
Another good stat is ORtg and DRtg (offensive rating and defensive rating).
Surprisingly Ryan Greer is our highest rated offensive player at 111.5, followed by Young, Nance and Gaines, then a big drop to Miller Kopp, then another drop to Ty Berry, Boo Buie, Beran and Audige.
On the defensive side of the ball, Nance and Audige are our best, then a drop to Young, Berry and Gaines, then another drop to Beran, Kopp, Greer and Buie.
These numbers generally align with what I see when I watch and re-watch the games.
For what its worth, last year Ryan Young was out best player and played 26 minutes per game. This year he is playing 19 minutes a game, with essentially the same teammates. This is just a clueless coach.
The aggressive and slightly abrasive posting style of this purple white boy may rub some of the people the wrong way, but he makes some valid points backed up by data. Carry on, @PurpleWhiteBoy !
I agree. But fail to see how Greer would work out in a team struggling so much to score.
Greer is really more of a hunch. I'd just like to see Collins TRY using a point guard who is willing to set others up for scoring. With Greer playing so little (and always with the wrong teammates) it is difficult to be confident that he'd be any better than Buie, but he is literally the only alternative.
If you remember the game against Iowa in mid January, Greer played 17 minutes, tallied 6 assists, no turnovers and 10 points, going 3 for 3 on 3 pointers. Before that game I thought he looked lost out there, but in that 23 point beating, he played quite well, with a more aggressive attitude.
So Collins rewards Greer by playing him 6 minutes, 8 minutes and 2 minutes in the next three losses. Finally in the Indiana game on Feb 10, Greer plays 19 minutes, goes 4 of 5 for 9 points, registers 5 rebounds, 2 assists and 1 turnover before fouling out. We lose a close game. Next up is Rutgers. Greer plays 6 minutes and we get blown out. Then its Illinois. Greer plays 16 minutes, goes 3 for 3 for 6 points, grabs 3 rebounds, but registers no assists or turnovers. We lose a tight game. After that he plays 9 minutes is an embarrassing loss to Wisconsin. And finally, he sees 2 minutes of action in the win over a crippled Gopher team.
All I know is that in the 3 most recent games in which Greer has played more than 15 minutes, he has gone 10 of 13 from the field for 25 points, with 9 rebounds, 8 assists and only 1 turnover. Thats 52 minutes of court time.
So my hunch is that if Young, Nance, Greer, Kopp and Audige play most of the game together, we're a better team. It is entirely possible that he can't get the ball up the court against real pressure, but we need to find out.
The thing about +/- and efficiencies is that like every statistic they don’t capture certain things. It’s plausible Greer benefits greatly from other teams laxing defense on him being worried about other players. Or that he might face lineups not as good as starters do. I’m just suggesting, nothing but hunches here. But one thing is to be competent for 5 minutes to give rest, another is carrying a larger load throughout an entire game.
But ultimately I am 200% for trying something different at PG. I don’t even think the Audige experiment was so bad. But it does not seem like a long term fix.
But what about Berry? I was convinced, seeing he played zero minutes as PG, and was listed coming in as a combo guard, that the combo guard part just meant he was a SG being hyped as potentially bringing something more. I did not watch more than highlights from his HS days. But it seems he played the point in HS. So who knows? Maybe he’s clearly not capable right now and that shows in practice. But it seems like we have little to lose giving it a shot. And ultimately that might be where he ends up playing when he’s a junior.
I agree that statistics are just a general guide. I could see Berry playing the point eventually. I'm just looking at Greer as (probably) the best guy to put in that spot right now. Sadly there are only 2 games left and this year was just as bad as last year, when nobody expected that.
We were picked last by everybody at the start of the year. That's why the fool's gold 3-0 start was so surprising.
2nd to last. And if we lose against UNL we will beat that prediction. In the wrong direction