All year round, former Husker and NFL veteran Adam Carriker is taking the pulse of Husker Nation. In the "Carriker Chronicles" video series, he breaks down the latest NU news, upcoming opponents, player updates and recruiting information, and he offers his insight into the X's and O's and more.
In Friday's episode, Carriker gives his gut reaction to Nebraska's loss to Michigan in the Big Ten tournament.
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Here's a transcript of today's show:
Welcome to the Carriker Chronicles, the people's show. We're checking the pulse of Husker Nation, brought to you by Nebraska Spine Hospital.
We were going to do this gut reaction outside, but it is windy as all get out, so we came inside to my very fancy indoor basketball court, be jealous. Here's my gut reaction to Nebraska vs. Michigan basketball game in the Big Ten tournament, which just ended, ladies and gentlemen. Now Michigan, coming into this game, they had some good wins this year, their record is 25-7 overall, 13-5 in the Big Ten. They're going to the NCAA tournament, it's not a question for them.
Nebraska coming in, that was the question: were they going to do enough to get into the NCAA Tournament? They're 22-9 on the year, 13-5 in the Big Ten. Now Nebraska's had a pretty good offensive season so far this year. They're averaging 73 points per game. Now the Wolverine defense is the ninth-best statistical defense in the entire country as well. This is two of the best defensive teams in the country that were going head-to-head today.
One of the differences I saw, there were two things that stood out to me, No. 1 was Michigan just seemed to do the little things, and that made a big impact on the final score of this game. For example, 50-50 loose balls, Michigan just seemed to get every single one of those or almost every single one of those. Now we had beaten this Michigan team by almost 20, by 20 points earlier this season, and the Huskers trailed by as many as 18 during the game today. It didn't help that the last 10 minutes of the first half, Nebraska only made three field goals. They did, however, go on a 9-1 run at one point to get back into the game. You always felt like they were one short burst away from being in the game and possibly having a chance to win the game.
Now the biggest difference that I saw, and I looked at the halftime stats, and this is the biggest difference I saw, was the shooting. Alright, at halftime Michigan had made nearly 50 percent of their 3-point shots, and they shot over 40 percent field goal shooting percentage, while the Huskers were 1 of 8 from 3-point range, which is only 12 percent behind the arc and they were only about 25 percent shooting from the field. That was the biggest difference in the game today and why Michigan won and are moving on in the Big Ten tournament vs. the Huskers.
Now here's what I propose: we beat them by 20, they beat us by a large amount today, let's have a tiebreaker and the team moves on, right? I'm kidding of course, but the question is: will Nebraska be getting into the NCAA tournament? So here's what I'm going to do this weekend, I'm going to take some time, dive into the stats, the analytics, I'm going to talk to some people I know, and I'm going to compare Nebraska to some of the other teams they'll be competing with to get into the NCAA tournament in just over a week. And I will give my thoughts on Monday morning 8 a.m. central time, Facebook, Twitter, Omaha.com/carriker. Do not miss that. Now, I'm going to try this again. Maybe today I will make a shot. Did it go in? No! Did it go in? Ahh! Am I even close? No wonder they call me the Dennis Rodman of my team. I give up. Go Big Red and throw the bones!