Thank goodness for sports
Thanksgiving week of a twisted year. Thanksgiving dinner with just my wife and I due to Covid-19, which is running wild in Lincoln.
But there’s still lots and lots of things to be thankful for this year, even if a lot of other things this year were messed up.
One thing for me at least, and lots of other sports fans, there were sports to be watched and that was good.
The Huskers had a football game and three basketball games. I got to watch a couple of games of my other favorite college basketball team—the KU Jayhawks.
I will say that I recorded the KU games and watched them after watching the Nebraska game. That was sometimes difficult but it worked.
The Jayhawks started their season with a bang, playing the number one team in the nation, Gonzaga. They got beat by 12 and gave up 100 plus points.
That is kind of scary but I have faith in them that they will improve some over the year.
They did win their second game but Kentucky is up next. They haven’t worried about rankings or shying away from competition early in the season.
But enough about them. What about them Huskers?
The Huskers football team played better than last week in my opinion but not good enough to win.
I went to a coaching clinic once and one of the speakers made the comment that “If you keep on doing what you’re doing, you will keep on getting what you’re getting.”
That was something that stuck with me and I saw it come true a lot, sometimes with good results and sometimes with not so good results.
But if you look at the Husker football program right now, they a good example of what the speaker was trying to get across to the group.
The Huskers are still making miscues at very crucial times in a game and those are leading to losses.
The miscues at Iowa were fewer in number last Friday, but the timing always seemed to be a killer. I think the ones that bother me the most is the illegal motion penalties on offense.
How can you keep jumping offside, or split ends starting too soon or whatever over and over?
I also wondered how the Iowa bench clapping in a stadium almost empty would interrupt the Husker players.
I also hope we get the offensive center trained to snap the ball right to our quarterback. It is not as easy as you might think, but I would hope by the time you are playing at the college level that it would be worked out so that it wasn’t something that happened every game.
You look at the game that was tied at half, but we had a bad snap or two, a muffed catch on a punt and it is just enough to get beat by six and lose to Iowa for the sixth year in a row. There were some good things.
Our two quarterbacks threw the ball much better, our defense did a pretty good job but we didn’t get a W out of it because of the things we didn’t do.
So it is on to the next game, at Purdue Dec. 5. Hope we can put a complete game together then.
The Husker Men’s basketball team did win two and lose one over the last week.
They opened with McNeese State on Wednesday and looked really good most of the time.
Just like last year, there are a ton of new players and I hope that they can blend their talents together and become a very competitive team during the year.
Against McNeese State they almost scored at will in their 102-55 win. Five of the players—Kobe Webster, Teddy Allen, Trey McGowens, Lat Mayen, Dalano Banton and Shamiel Stevenson—all scored in double figures.
The Huskers forced turnover after turnover and then scored off them. McNeese State had 27 turnovers and the Huskers had 43 points off of the miscues. The Huskers shot 59% from the field. Pretty good start for the season.
McNeese State, I might add, had just got back on campus on Nov. 15 due to Hurricanes Laura and Delta that had caused nearly $200 Million in damages to the campus, which included the Cowboy’s two-year old arena.
The Huskers didn’t play really poor in their next game against Nevada, but they lost on a shot with about six seconds left. What they didn’t do was shoot well, not even close to what they did in their first game.
They didn’t get as many steals against Nevada either so they didn’t have as many easy points. They still had a 10-point lead in the second half and let it get away and ended up with the loss.
If you live and die by the three-pointer, it is good when you are hitting them and it is a horribly wicked death when you don’t.
On Saturday the Huskers played North Dakota State. The Huskers got off to another great start there as the threes were going in and they jumped off to a 19-4 lead.
Again, the Huskers had some balance as Teddy Allen, Trey McGowens, Lat Mayen and Dalano Banton all scored in double figures.
It might be a better year this year, or least it should be a better year this year because I really think they have more talent than they did last year.
The Big 10 will still be tough and it will be interesting to see how the Huskers will stack up with the other teams. The Huskers seem to have a little chemistry going and they passed the ball well. Hope it continues to get better.
Locally, the Plainsmen teams will get into action this weekend. Got an away game at Hershey on Thursday and a home game this Friday with Potter-Dix.
There will be limited seating for the home games and you can go to the PCS website and see what those restrictions will be. Mr. Picquet has stated that he hopes this situation is just for December and will be lifted or at least modified by January.