Southern University Jaguars
Date: Tuesday, December 20th - 7:00pm - Pinnacle Bank Arena - Lincoln NE
2015-16 Record: 22-13 (11-7 SWAC)
2016-17 Record: 4-7
Head Coach: Roman Banks (6th year)
Nebraska plays its last game before the Christmas holiday on Tuesday. The Huskers will be taking on the Jaguars of Southern University in Pinnacle Bank Arena.
This will also be the last game before conference play starts up next week so let’s hope the Big Red gets whatever bugs (and there are a lot of them) clean up before the big boys of the Big Ten start up.
Southern University is actually having a down year so far. They are coming off a 2015-16 season where they won the Southwestern Athletic Conference Tournament where the stunned the regular season champion Texas Southern in the semifinals. They then went on to play in the NCAA tournament where they lost to Holy Cross in the first round.
This year has been a bit of a struggle for the Jaguars. Especially considering they had a decent amount of last years team coming back. They started the season off with three straight losses before going on a three game win streak that had them beating Tennessee Tech, Paul Quinn (yep, that’s a school), and Florida A&M. Two losses followed this before picking up one more win on the season against Ecclesia College.
The Jags are lead by senior Shawn Prudhomme at forward. He is leading the team with 18.6 ppg while also bringing down 6.5 rpg. Next to him down below is junior Jared Sam. The 6’9” sophomore forward averages 13.6 ppg and 7.6 rpg. These two together can create the most problems for the Huskers.
Guard Tre’lun Banks, who made the 2016-17 preseason SWAC second team, is averaging 12.2 ppg and 5.6 apg. He has been a good constant player for them the past few years and will most likely be handing the ball for most of the game.
This is the point where I say the Huskers should have little problem tanking down the Jaguars. They’re not as athletically gifted of a team and has played vastly lesser competition. Nebraska’s defense and guards should have little problem getting in to score and it should be an early night.
However, it is hard to say that as of late. Nebraska’s apathy on the court and their ability to go into long dry spells on offense have doomed them in many games this year. At first, it was against pretty decent and even excellent competition. The South Dakota win was ugly and the loss to Gardner-Webb was depressing.
Take what you can out of this game. The easy wins for this team are coming to a close. The Big Ten slate is right around the corner and it won’t be forgiving.