Andrew White and Nebraska Basketball

College sports are hard to figure out. It’s all in the mixture.

You take one middle aged coach, mix in some 20 something kids, and top it off with thousands upon thousands of screaming fans and you have what we refer to as entertainment.

Sometimes that mixture leads to something great like at Villanova winning the National Championship. A great dynamic of coaches, players, and fans that lead to an entertaining spectacle.

Other times you get what happens at Rutgers and you have to fire your coach who was also a former player. A guy who actually loved the program.

Nebraska seemed to be at that point where they could have a good mixture to make something great. They’ve got experienced coaches, talented players, and thousands upon thousands of fans.

Problem with Nebraska right now is that we really don’t know exactly what goes on in between the first two steps. Thus is the case with Andrew White and Tim Miles.

Andrew went through the NBA tryouts after this past season. This was no surprise to many as we knew he wants to play in the NBA someday. Lucky for Nebraska, he decided to wait and come back to college to finish out his eligibility.

All said and done, right?

Wrong

For some reason, Andrew was not happy and will not once again leave the team and it looks like the final decision was not known to his coach.

The dynamics of coaches and players and be a weird mix. A lot can happen from when they are recruited to when they actually get on campus and play for a season or two. Sometimes the dynamics work and you have a great product. Other times the two parties realize it was a bad situation and the results suffer.

It’s hard to say what exactly happened but I can’t imagine what was going on between the two was good. To possibly pass on talking to the coach and going straight to the Athletic Director is not something I would consider good. Is it on Andrew White for being immature or is it more on Tim Miles for not being open enough for Andrew to talk to? It’s a tough call to make.

One thing that is really thought provoking is the fact that this is really late to transfer. The guys are in summer workouts right now and leaving in the middle of it is usually pretty rare. Something happened in the last couple of weeks to spark this. Maybe it was something new, but most likely something that had been boiling for some time.

Are we going to miss Andrew White’s talent next year? Of course, he was our highest scoring player. He was needed to help lead this very young and talented team on the court. But the coaching staff knew he might be gone anyway with Andrew sniffing out the NBA draft.

No matter how you look at it, the ability for Nebraska to perform well next year now rests a little heavier on the likes of Tai Webster, Ed Morrow, and Jack McVeigh. Guys who are talented and should do just fine without Andrew on the court.

Hopefully they can bright together their talents and Nebraska will have the right mix to make a good team.