First off, since Nebraska fans may or may not even know their team has a basketball game tomorrow, let’s talk football. As we all know, National Signing Day coincided with Mullet Wednesday this week. The Huskers had a nice coupe, despite missing on many of their top targets. Though, according to Bo Pelini, it doesn’t matter (when speaking about Owamagbe Odighizuwa):

“It’s his mistake,” Pelini said. “Honestly, I don’t get all caught up in all that. I don’t get all stressed out about whether they’re going to come. If it’s right, they’re going to come. You can drive yourself crazy over the whole thing. In the end, it’s a crapshoot if he’s going to be as good as anyone says he was anyway. I thought he was a pretty good player. But in my mind the kids that don’t choose to come here I don’t believe do themselves a service because I believe we’ll develop them better than the other guy. That’s just the confidence I have.”

Even Better Off Red admits, this one adds to the list of cringe-worthy Pelini moments.

Moving on, the Hawks will welcome in the Huskers tomorrow for one final tune-up prior to the tilt in Austin on Monday. It’s a classic look-ahead game, but even if we are indeed looking ahead, we shouldn’t have a problem moving to 22-1. Normally, I wouldn’t care how this one transpires. Win and move on, no big deal. But after what transpired Wednesday, I’d like to see some things.

1. Return of Xavier Henry – Sooner or later, we’ve got to get something. We’re a great team with or without him, but we’re at another level if he’s clicking even on most cylinders. We’d like to see the whole package, but more than anything, I’d just like to see his stroke come back. If we can get him driving and drawing fouls and attention, all the better. But a simple return to being able to count on him knocking down a few open triples per game would suffice. For now.

2. Tyshawn Taylor – Politely, please use your fucking brain. If we ever get you right between the ears, you’re going to be quite a weapon, on this level and the next.

3. Using the Bench - ScipioTex returned from his hiatus with a couple nice posts, one of why Texas should feature a seven man rotation (7-11 Plan), that also relies on patch-work minutes from their next four. We’re not in that exact position, but we’re close. Right now, we look like this…

The Heavy Lifters: Collins, Aldrich, Morningstar, McMorris
The Regulars: Taylor, X Henry, Markieff, Reed

That’s all well and good, but we’ve got talent and fouls sitting on that bench that we’re not using. I know Bill likes to tighten his rotation, and I’m all for that, but we’ve got to start leaning on a couple others with regularity.

First of, we’ve got to get Collins down to 30 minutes per. And I’d like Aldrich to be somewhere in the 25-30 range. There will be nights we can exceed this, but no one should be averaging over 30 with any consistency. For reference, check out the ‘07-’08 season:

Chalmers – 30
Rush – 29.7
Robinson – 27.5
Arthur – 24.7
Jackson – 24.3
Collins – 23.8
Kaun – 17.7
Stewart – 11.6 (although wieghted heavily from early season when Rush was out/recovering)
Aldrich – 8.3

That’s perfect. And that team didn’t have the extended depth of this one. It had better quality, but not quantity. And yet we used an 8-9 man rotation every night, occasionally pulling in a Jeremy Case, Tyrel Reed or even Matt Kleinmann. For some reason this year we’re stuck on 8, we’ve become almost reluctant to use Xavier, and Bill has to practically be forced to go to Robinson, Johnson, or Withey. All have their shortcomings, but all are plenty capable of contributing. If nothing else, they can give us minutes. Even if we want them out of the game as fast as they come in, they’ll let our main guys grab a seat. Over the course of a season, that advantage is not a small one. They anger Bill, they anger me, and they anger you, but they remain a necessity. If we want our guys fresh at the end of games and the end of March, we’ll buy them some time on the sidelines whether we like it or not.

Nebraska is not a good team and should not give us trouble. We’re coming off two hardfought OT road wins and we’re in for something similar Monday night. We need to play this game with a comfortable lead and work in the rest of our rotation. I’d like to see it become a regular staple, but that won’t happen until he develops some trust with them, and there’s no better opportunity than tomorrow’s game.

(Related thought not specific to tomorrow: I like Elijah (and I called for a last second alley-oop to him Wednesday), but we’re probably not going to be working in another guard anytime this season. What I firmly believe we need, thoguh, is a fourth big. We need someone to play Aldrich’s role in ‘07-’08… not someone we count on to carry the torch, but someone to come in, go hard after boards, play some D and keep us fresh. I think Robinson’s perfect for that, but we’ve got to let him emerge.)

Thoughts?