Rats!

--PYB was glad to see last night that Rat Solich has not lost his touch. Up 20-0 on Northern Illinois in the MAC Championship game, the Lil' General summoned his profound skills of pissing away the easiest of wins and helped the Bobcats blow their first chance at a MAC title since 1968.

Hopefully, any idiot who thought the Rat got screwed when NU axed him watched this game. Same glassy-eyed look as the sand slipped between his fingers. Same horrible clock management. Hey Frank, if you have two timeouts and the opponent is driving down the field for the game-winning score, you might want to use those timeouts to save some time for when you get the ball back.

Instead, Rat Solich saved both timeouts to ice the kicker with five seconds remaining. After the short FG, time had expired and Ohio didn't even get a last-ditch scoring chance. Gary Pinkel, however, thinks Solich worked the clock like a true maestro. It was Wow, Sheesh, Wow, Amazing!

--Go big and go home. The Nebraska volleyball team turned in its annual choke job, by losing in the NCAA's second rounded to the unranked Mildtwats from Kansas State. Looks like Lauren Cook, after her felony arrest, was just as toxic to her team as her boyfriend.

--More speed lost from the Bayou.....don't worry, we're sure Bo and the boys have a Class D walkon from Howells to replace this recruit. That said, PJ Smith was from Louisiana and was heralded as the second coming and can't tackle, run or remember an assignment to save his ass.

--Fresh off another bad loss, this time to Wake Forest, Nebraska takes on the Creighton Bluegays Sunday. Apparently, Creighton is the greatest team ever for beating San Diego State on the road and has 'that look' according to the Omaha World Herald because they are ranked for no reason in particular. Check back with us in March.

Anyway, NU lost to Oregon because it missed shots and played spotty defense and got jobbed by the officials. It lost to Wake because they exposed the Huskers' weaknesses....already. NU still, in a state of 99.9% white people, can't find a knock-down three-point shooter for drive & kick situations. The Deacons pressured Bo Spencer, Dylan Talley and Caleb Walker when they had the ball and didn't allow them to get their shots in rhythm. It was another horrible shooting night for Nebraska, who were 38.6% from the field and 6/23 from downtown. Shades of last season. Perhaps if they got JB Diaz more than 10 shots on the interior that percentage would be higher. Diaz still gets pushed off the low block too easily by even the skinniest of players.

Even more frustrating was NU's perimeter defense, as it gave up consistent wide-open threes that helped keep WF in the game in the first half. For a coach who hangs his hat on rugged defense, that kind of effort is unacceptable. However, it's been happening since the beginning of last season. Perhaps our preseason prediction of 14-16 for this team wasn't far off.

NU had better show up and make shots on Sunday, or they will get bottle blasted in Omahole. This is Creighton's Super Bowl, as we all know they'll piss the MVC conference title down its leg in February. Fear not, though, Husker fans. Brandon Ubel has been assigned to guard Creighton's top dog Doug McDermott...and they don't call Ubel "The Glove" for nothing....

Two side notes on the Wake Forest game, after watching the second half on DVR:

1. Could the court design be any worse? Over-sized ugly Iron N with an inexplicable white background behind it--like someone forgot to crop it out on Photoshop before rubber-stamping the final proof. Thanks 3:10 to Beatrice for pointing that out. Jammed in next to the N is a gaudy Big 10 logo, topped off by non-matching font Nebraska on the baseline.

2. We never thought we'd hear play-by-play man Mitch Holthus top his effort from an NU game last year, when he called Andre Almeida "The Bouncer" at least 15 times in one game. He did, though, on Wednesday, when he talked about men, women and children taking dumps for a good 45 seconds when Miles Simon mentioned the fact that the new Hendricks Center had televisions in the shitters. Simon says disgusting.

Finally, congrats to some friends of PYB for making it center stage on Deadspin. 50 Cent called and says "Damn, you big time now..."

Enjoy your weekend....PYB