The Nebraska basketball team has been mentioned as a candidate for several high scoring grad transfers but one has excluded them from his top five.
The Nebraska basketball team is going to have to go back to the drawing board when it comes to bringing in a “game ready” shooting guard. When South Dakota star Matt Mooney was thinking about leaving the Coyotes, the Cornhuskers were apparently in the mix to get the grad transfer.
Now that Mooney has officially announced his departure, the Huskers are on the outside looking in. Mooney made the announcement yesterday and talked to ESPN about where he’s looking to go at the same time.
According to Jeff Borzello, the guard has five teams currently on his radar. While there is a team from Nebraska making the cut, it’s not the Huskers.
South Dakota grad transfer Matt Mooney is down to Creighton, Northwestern, Texas Tech, Utah State and Arizona State, he tells ESPN.
— Jeff Borzello (@jeffborzello) April 17, 2018
One of the best available grad transfers. 18.7 PPG this past season. @MoonSwag13
The five teams in the running for Mooney are Creighton, Northwestern, Texas Tech, Utah State and Arizona State. It especially hurts that a shooter the Huskers badly need might be heading up to Omaha.
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Averaging 18.7 points a game last season, Mooney shot 45 percent from the field and 35 percent from beyond the three-point arc. Comparing those numbers to what the Huskers did and you’re likely going to get even more depressed that Mooney is no longer considering coming to Lincoln.
Among those who saw significant playing time this past season, only Isaiah Roby (56.5 percent) and Isaac Copeland (47.2 percent) shot better from the floor. None of the Huskers averaged 18 points per game. James Palmer Jr. came closest to that output with 17.2 PPG.
There’s certainly no guarantee that Matt Mooney was going to put up the same kind of numbers with the Nebraska basketball team that he did at South Dakota. Certainly, the opposition levels impact all of those.
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The Cornhuskers adding a player of his caliber would have only helped the team’s prospects heading into the 2018-19 season. Especially when considering the trio of Palmer, Copeland and Roby are all at least looking at the NBA draft.