The Men’s Husker Basketball run is over, although their 20-win season will likely garner an NIT bid. Nebraska came out with a solid game plan and held tough with KU until the last 10 minutes. Doc Sadler was visibly hot at the officiating was T’d up late in the game on a pair of *off-setting* technicals.

I was going to live blog the game like our football games, but I thought better of what would have likely been:

Tip Off
dribble
dribble
dribble
pass
dribble
pass
pass
dribble
shoot
rebound
shoot
score
inbounds pass
dribble
dribble
dribble
dribble

eh, you get the idea. By the way, FTW = For The Win. Thanks to my gamer brother-in-law for hooking me up the jargon.

Andy Christensen, whose arrest for suspicion of first-degree sexual assault over the weekend capped off a bad PR weekend for Husker Football, had his bond reduced today to $300,000 from $500,000. He has been free on bond since Tuesday.

Due to the nature of case, I’m turning off comments on this post and would ask that our readers abstain from any derogatory remarks towards Christensen or the alleged victim.

In the opening round of the Big 12 Mens Basketball tournament, the Huskers beat Mizzou 61-56. A bit of sloppy play in the closing minutes turned this into a nail-biter but solid defense kept Nebraska in the lead until the final buzzer.

Nebraska is back in action tomorrow, March 14th, at 6:00 PM against the second seed Kansas Jayhawks.

I’m sure Brad will be along shortly with his game recap, but let the record reflect that I, Administrator, watched a full half of basketball and lived to tell about it. Is it football season yet?

Farewell Alecs Maric

Sunday was Senior Day at the Devaney Center and NU’s lone Senior, Aleks Maric didn’t disappoint.  Maric, who was very emotional before the game, finished with game highs in points (17), rebounds (16), assists (6), and blocks (2).  He also threw in a near game high of 3 steals in a blowout win over Colorado, 68-49.  Here’s to you big guy!!   I have been tough on Maric sometimes, but I was very glad to see him sent out this way, he deserved it!  The crowd of 12,000 let Maric know what he means to NU which caused a flow of emotion from Aleks and his parents.  Maric talked about getting a little teary eyed before the game.

“Very emotional, I’m not going to lie. We spoke about it in the locker room. We told each other to keep our emotions behind and try to be a man, and if one person lets the tears go, it’s going to go down the track, so it’s my fault. A river started coming out of my eyes actually.”

That, my friends, is what college athletics is all about.  Building relationships, being part of a team, and enjoying the experience.  Nebraska finished 7-9 in conference and is the seventh seed in this weeks Big 12 tournament.  NU plays Thursday at 6P.M. against Missouri, who they split games with during they regular season.  The game is on ESPN Plus, so I am hoping that means also on KXVO here in Omaha.

I haven’t really been a die hard basketball fan since MJ retired ( there is video of me at my oldest daughter’s birth watching him in the finals against Utah), but I have always been an NU basketball fan.  With writing these posts I have come to respect this team more and more each week.  They play hard all game and defend like no other Husker team in history.  They have a cohesiveness about them, no infighting or discouraging words, you never see someone so upset they are out of control, and they respect and buy into their coaches system.  Doc Sadler has put a product on the floor that we can all be proud of, even if it doesn’t translate into an NCAA Tournament bid (YET!).  All the kids are respectable young men, on and off the court, with a team GPA average of 3.016.  I love Coach Sadler’s honest explanations of his team and his genuine pride in their accomplishments.  Sadler is a man that believes in being successful on and off the court and his most exciting Husker moments are soon to come!  I heard Kent Pavelka on the radio say last week that early in the season NU seemed like it was trying to make the conference games competitive, and towards the middle and end, they believed they were going to win every game.  You could see the transformation and I believe this team will be very, very good and athletic next year.  I can’t wait!

Thanks to all who contributed to dialogue in these posts, hopefully with a run in the conference tourney and then some post season play, there will be more to come.

[see the box score courtesy of huskers.com]

The New York Times accompanied T.O. and Bo to Grand Island to watch them work the room. There’s not a lot in the story, we don’t already know. But their photojournalist took some nice shots.