Nebraska vs Minnesota Photos: An Emotional Night In “The Barn”

Minnesota player Dupree McBrayer lost his mother Tayra McFarlane to cancer Monday night in New York. At last night’s game, Gophers players wore black patches with “TM” and Nebraska came out in warmups with “RIP Tayra” on the front. In the postgame presser, Gopher coach Rick Pitino talked about how McBrayer’s mother had worked at Rikers Island for 20 years and retired before the season started so she could watch her son play his senior year.

Now she’s gone just as the 2018 season is getting started. Life is unbelievably cruel sometimes.

That McBrayer lost his mother on Monday and played a basketball game on Wednesday says something about how much his Gopher team means to him. He hit a key three pointer in the second half to bring Minnesota within three. The Gopher crowd erupted.

It was that kind of night.

Williams Arena, or “The Barn” as it’s called, is always a great place to watch basketball. It’s also a helluva place to come away with a win if you’re the opposing team. When the crowd gets rocking the building shakes, and the sound is deafening.

The Barn is a perfect example of why it’s so hard to win on the road in Big Ten basketball. Minnesota’s home win percentage is around 73% if I remember correctly.

Minnesota’s Jordan Murphy set the school record for double-doubles. Amir Coffey was either a real pain in the ass or wonderful to watch dependent upon which side you’re on.

I didn’t see the call that ultimately decided the game. It was at the other end of the floor. I thought it as an odd call to make with little time left, players scrambling for a loose ball (at least that’s what it looked like to me).

Nebraska received a technical at one point, apparently because Isaac Copeland threw a ball at another player. Tim Miles said he saw the tape and in the postgame presser called the technical “pretty weak”.

Miles pointed out that they can’t let this loss bother them much as “there are 16 more games like this in this league”. Amen, brother.

All together it was an excellent game. The crowd was into it, it was competitive, there weren’t any nasty incidents, and Miles and his team were praised for their class in recognizing McBrayer’s mother. The only problem was the Nebraska loss.

For the photography geeks:

This was my first time out with a Fujifilm XT2. I received it Monday and tried to play around a bit before this game. I was rather nervous about it, but when things got rolling I gave up on trying to use my older Canon 7D. It seemed incredibly bulky and slow by comparison. (Granted, it is an older pro Canon.) The autofocus on the XT2 was fast and amazing, tracked well and if there were any problems here they were because of me, not the camera.

All of these photos were shot with the 50-140 f.28, with the obvious exception of the wide angle shot which I believe is a 12mm Rokinon. The 50-140 was a joy.

At this point, I’m going to ditch Canon, Nikon, and Sony. I don’t have the budget they require for good gear anyway (I really don’t have any budget) and I was very impressed with the XT2. I hope to do a lot more of this stuff in the future.

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• Watson was called for a blocking foul. Apparently didn’t sell it well enough. Jon Johnston
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