Pitchin' with Pritch: Plenty to choose from

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I hope everyone had a very good Thanksgiving! My family got together the day after Thanksgiving in Lincoln. This time of the year is filled with all kinds of sports events, and since our family is kind of into sports, it just made the time together even better.

You certainly have a choice of things when this time of the year rolls around. If you like all sports, it is really good and even if you just have a couple of sports you like, you get to choose from professional football, college football, professional basketball, college basketball, college volleyball and just those choices can keep you busy.

Last Friday we watched the Huskers end their season and even though it was a tough way to end it, I felt like the future appears to be much brighter than it has been in for some time. The loss to Iowa was one of those that makes you go back and think, “If we had made this play or if we had made that play” it might have been the difference in ending with a W instead of an L. 

I know as a coach, I hated to watch game films of games that were like the Iowa game because you sometimes start second guessing yourself about your preparation for the game, or maybe even your technique that you try to get your players to use, but that game never changes no matter how many times you watch it. 

There were not many games that I couldn’t watch after a loss but some were harder than others. Some however, Lincoln Christian in the finals of 1991, I have only watched once. That was enough. Maybe after some more time passes I can watch it again, but 28 seasons is still too soon.

I had hoped to spend more time with my sons while we were in Lincoln, and we did get to use the basketball season tickets and watch the Husker men play Western Illinois Saturday afternoon. I don’t know what to think about the Huskers yet. 

My son Troy and I watched KU play on TV Friday evening and they didn’t look real good at times, but you know they will come around and play well. They play a pretty difficult pre-conference schedule. 

The Huskers have run away from a couple of teams they have played and then defeated Seton Hall, and I think Seton Hall will have a decent season this year. Then the Huskers played Texas Tech and got out-played, out-hustled and out-scored by a bunch. Texas Tech had a number of new players but had some good players returning and they just did everything better in that game than did Nebraska. 

Then Saturday against Western Illinois, even though they won by a wide margin, it looked to me like they forgot who their teammates were or were afraid of them, because at times it looked like it was every man for himself. I realize that in today’s basketball, at most levels, everyone loves the three-point line, or maybe they are afraid of it. I am not sure because they shoot the ball a lot before they ever cross it. 

I still watch the teams that are considered “Blue Bloods” in college like Duke, KU, North Carolina etc. and they actually have a post player they throw the ball to and they do that a lot. 

I think that makes sense but it is just an opinion. I am pretty sure that Coach Miles does not care what I think about his philosophy of basketball, so I am not waiting on a phone call from him.

Just for a closing thought on types of games that would be hard for the losing coach to look at again and again. The Texas A&M and LSU football game would have to be included in that grouping I would think. 

Texas A&M won in seven overtimes. LSU had picked up a fumble and ran it back with 10 minutes in the game to tie the game and then scored with six minutes left to lead in the game. 

LSU then appeared to have intercepted a pass that would have secured the win only to have the play overturned because the A&M quarterback had been downed before he threw the ball. A&M then scored with no time left to put the game into OT, and seven OTs later LSU lost the game 74-72. 

You have to see it to believe it. You can google it and watch an eight-minute clip of all the things that happened to LSU and it is unreal. 

I have no feelings about LSU one way or the other, but to lose that game the way they did had to be a killer, and yet for LSU to keep fighting back after things looked completely unwinnable had to be a feeling no one could describe.

 

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