Premium ContentMouse over Home then click on Premium Content for information.Poll: What do you think about Doc Sadler's future at NU?
A friend called me Sunday afternoon. He calls a lot — usually to talk fantasy football. This time he called because he had just skipped a funeral (re-scheduled due to the Saturday snowstorm) in order to attend the Nebraska basketball game at the Devaney Center.
He sat through a 13-minute span in the second half in which Nebraska scored four points. He endured consistently awful shot selection. Afterward, he called me and said, in hindsight, he wished he would've gone to the funeral.
We've all seen a lot of uninspired Nebraska basketball over the past 13 seasons. But the last 20 minutes at the Devaney Center ranks pretty high on the list. The Huskers didn't just get stomped by a mediocre team, they showed signs of quitting.
Like a loose ball that turned into a Minnesota fast break lay-up — Tony McCray showed little effort to grab the ball or to get back on defense. Like a Husker possession where Dylan Talley had Bo Spencer open in the corner — instead, he took a 23-footer that missed the rim. Spencer looked at Talley like, “What was that!”
There's a lot of people looking at Doc Sadler the same way.
Sadler is backed into a corner. His seat is heating up. Choose your metaphor. If he can't find a way to motivate his guys — it doesn't help losing Jorge Brian Diaz for the season — then he's staring at 5-13 in the Big Ten. Tom Osborne would have almost no choice but to fire him, especially considering the dearth of young talent in the program.
Even Doc's defenders are abandoning him — only 6,683 showed up Sunday. What they saw may have been the first steps of a long march to a coaching change.
Some might even call it a funeral.
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