[Husker] Texas A&M at Nebraska - 7 p.m. at the Devaney Center

[nustlnorris at aol.com]

Doc Sadler's Cornhuskers return to the Devaney Center tonight for the first time since the Big Monday blowout loss to Kansas to face a team that beat the Jayhawks in Lawrence last Saturday.  Texas A&M, in my opinion, has to be considered the best team in the conference up to this point.  They followed up their win in Lawrence with a convincing 100-82 win over Texas in College Station last Monday.
 
Most probably are aware that this will be a match-up between the previous two UTEP head coaches.  A&M's Billy Gillispie and NU's Sadler are best buds, with then-assistant Sadler taking over for Gillispie when the latter took the A&M job.  What Gillispie has done at A&M has to rank with the most unbelievable turn-arounds in recent college hoops history.  A&M went 0-16 four years ago in the league and look at 'em now ... ranked a very deserved #6 and #7 in the country.  He took a trainwreck of a program and has transformed them into a legit multi-title contender.
 
A&M point guard Acie Law IV is probably the only player with any chance of challenging Texas freshman sensation Kevin Durant for player-of-the-year honors (Durant has won the player of the week award eight times??!! -- is that a misprint?).  I would expect Jay-R Strowbridge and Jamel White to draw the defensive assignment when NU goes man.  Law is definitely the straw that stirs A&M's drink.  He's averaging about 17 points per game, ranks third in assists and 6th in field goal percentage (for a guard that's very impressive).  But more than that, he's the unquestioned leader of a team that's having a precedent-setting season while putting up some obscene team stats.
 
A&M leads the league in scoring defense (56 pts. per game - NU is 4th), scoring margin (20-plus per game), free throw percentage (74 percent - NU is 4th at 72), field goal percentage (50.4 percent - NU is 3rd at around 48), field goal percentage defense, assists (NU is 3rd) and assist-to-turnover ratio.  They're a good defensive rebounding team with 6-9 Joseph Jones and 6-10 Antanas Kavaliavskas anchoring their baseline.  They'd be a better offensive rebounding team, I suppose, if they'd miss more shots.  A&M is second in the league in 3-point field goal percentage with NU hangin' at 3rd.
 
Looks like a bad matchup for the Huskers, but it should be a high-strung environment tonight at Bob's House (as of Friday afternoon, 11,000 tickets were sold).  NU's impressive recovery from the Kansas debacle (wins on the road vs. Mizzou and Tech) was partly due to the fact that the Huskers were matching up with a couple of teams that were not great rebounding squads.  Aleks Maric is going to have to play light years better tonight than he has in recent games for the Huskers to have a chance.  I would be surprised if NU doesn't continue to throw some zone, maybe even more box-and-one in with their man-to-man defense.  The scary thing is that A&M is a very good interior passing team.  They're just plain good.
 
The Huskers are a 6-point underdog in tonight's game (televised in Nebraska on Fox Sports Net).  No matter what happens, you'll probably see the highlights on ESPN later this evening.  
 
There's no way I'd predict a Cornhusker victory, but I didn't think they were going to win in Columbia and Lubbock, either.
 
Dave Norris
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