Nebraska basketball: James Palmer Jr is ‘marked man’ according to Iowa coach

The Nebraska basketball team is on a roll, thanks in no small part to James Palmer Jr.

The Nebraska basketball team would not be where it is without James Palmer Jr. That might seem like an obvious statement, but to some degree the man better known as JPJ has flown under the radar this season.

The transfer guard started the year as a nice complimentary piece and has grown into the team’s go-to scorer in the last month.

After the Huskers’ win over Iowa, Hawkeyes head coach Fran McCaffery paid him the ultimate compliment.

"“He has been a go-to guy in our league, and it’s hard to be that guy when you’re marked. And he is marked, and he’s still doing it. You’ve got to give that kid credit.”"

McCaffery commented on why his team lost 98-84 on Saturday night. You do indeed have to give Palmer credit.

He’s not getting anything close to the credit he probably deserves. Palmer’s rise coincides with the fall of Glynn Watson.

The point guard started the season as the lead scorer for the team. His struggles over the course of the year have led to the Cornhuskers searching for someone to pick up the slack.

To the team’s credit, “the man” has been someone different depending on the night. Now it looks like the program has found someone it can lean on every night.

Palmer is averaging 17.2 points per game but that doesn’t tell the whole story.

The guard is averaging 19.3 points per game in conference and that number goes way up when you look at his recent surge.

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There has been exactly one conference game where Palmer hasn’t scored at least 10. That came in a 1 for 9 shooting night against Penn State where he scored just five points.

He was benched late in that overtime loss, much most experts’ chagrin. It’s true the team might have won if he’d been left on the court.

That benching might have also been a kind of wakeup call for Palmer. Since that benching, Palmer has averaged 24.6 points per game.

He scored 34 against Ohio State and he scored 28 against Iowa. Perhaps even better, he’s shot over 50% from the field in four of those give games.

Rutgers is the outlier there, and his 18 points still played a part in the Cornhuskers winning a close game. As the Nebraska basketball team heads down the stretch with dreams of an NCAA tournament dancing in their heads, James Palmer Jr. is going to have to continue to get it done, despite being the team’s “marked man.”