Lost Dog: Abdel Nader Is Transferring Out of Northern Illinois

After two seasons and only 10 wins, Northern Illinois sophomore forward Abdel Nader has decided to transfer. The news was broke on Twitter earlier today.

Sophmore Abdel Nader from NIU is transferring was the Huskies leading scorer both years there - will have 2 years left....

— Cavan Walsh (@cavwalsh) March 28, 2013

Nader has had a rough two seasons in DeKalb. He missed the first six games of his sophomore season after head coach Mark Montgomery suspended the team's leading scorer for violating team rules (read: his arrest for underage consumption). He also had to endure another five-win season after the huskies went 5-26 in his freshman year.

The Huskies were bad this season. So bad that the team as a whole managed to shoot just 35.8 percent from the field this past season. Things got so bad that at one point this season the Huskies managed to score just four points in the first half of a game against Mid-American Conference foe Eastern Michigan. That set a new NCAA record low for points scored in a half in the shot clock era. Who held the previous record? Why none other than the exact same Huskies team which managed to score just five points in the first half against Dayton almost two months earlier (while Nader was suspended).

Despite leading the team in scoring with 10.4 and 13.1 points-per-game in his freshman and sophomore seasons he also struggled to hit shots with any level of consistency. He made just 34 percent of his shots during both seasons. Part of that was due to him being the only real scoring threat and teams consistently double-teaming him.

The 6-foot-7 Skokie, IL. native was a decent rebounder for the Huskies, averaging 4.2 and 5.6 rebounds per game in his freshman and sophomore seasons respectively. But multiple times this season he failed to connect on even 20 percent of his shots and failed to help his team out on the boards. He only managed to snag double-digit boards twice this season, pulling down 11 rebounds in back-to-back games against Kent State and Toledo.

Being that he's just a sophomore he will have two full seasons of eligibility left when he winds up wherever he goes, but per NCAA rules if he transfers to another Division I program he'll be forced to sit out a season before he's eligible to play. Nader has yet to make an official statement about his decision and he's been fairly inactive on his Twitter account for the past few days. At the time of this posting his only tweet of the day came a few hours after the news broke and reflected he was having some trouble making decisions in other areas of his life.

Don't kno what to eat :(

— Abdel Nader (@DuleNader23) March 28, 2013

It's hard to blame a player for wanting out of such a rough situation.Top athletes often struggle to deal with not winning so it's understandable that Nader wanted out. But for head coach Mark Montgomery, coming off his first season with the Huskies, it makes his job a lot harder. The Huskies lost their second leading scorer, freshman guard Akeem Spings, quit the team in early February. That leaves freshmen guard Darrell Bowie and junior wingman Aksel Bolin as the Huskies two leading scorers. They averaged 5.9 and 7.4 points-per-game respectively.

Montgomery now has to scramble to add some last minute recruits to help fill the void. Expect another rough season for the Huskies in 2013-2014.