Arizona State 45, Illinois 14 POSTGAME

[AHSIllini32]

Originally Posted by pizzaman

I went to bed at halftime, oldtimers do that. The first half defense looked unprepared and that's a coaching issue. The offense was about as I expected with 2nd and 3thd line QB's running the show. At halftime I think ASU's QB's had 100% completion and that won't happen again even if the receivers are open.

Bottom line, they are not THAT good and the Illini are not THAT bad.

This sums it up.

Originally Posted by uinuke81

The B1G is horrible and we are in the bottom half of it.

No we aren't.

[Lake Camelot]

Originally Posted by Mix Tape

Wow Illini football - vanilla AGAIN.

Get ass whooped on national TV..... AGAIN



YaY go team .

Thanks for your awesome input.

[DaytonIllini]

The Defense absolutely sucked. Most horrendous defensive effort I have seen. I don't recall who was ripping me for predicting 28 ASU points but wow were you overrating this disaster.

Defensive Coordinator absolutely sucked. No adjustments that did anything. Players so open they are the only player on the screen. That isn't being a step slow, that is having completely blown schemes. See the big dude with 87 on his jersey. You MIGHT want to start covering him after he torches you time and time again. Maybe?

Spencer Harris is horrendous. The kid NEVER blocks anyone. Somehow they even had him on returns where he was physically thrown into the return man by the guy he was supposed to block. This kid should not see the turf again until he bulks up.

Posters that think this game would have been different with Nathan at the helm? Wow. Did you watch the defense? Did you watch the last 6 games of last season? Nathan can and has looked as bad in the past frequently.

I think it is terribly unfair to blame this debacle on:

(1) Osei - this was the first game he really played in his career. I don't see why anyone would be excited about him as a QB but he pleasantly surprised me. Yes, he was HORRENDOUS, but first game. Oh, and it should be his last game at QB. He simply doesn't have time to become serviceable before he runs out of eligibility and all you're doing is taking reps away from ROT, who REALLY needs them.

(2) ROT - statistically not horrendous but kid you have got to lead. You cannot let the clock wind down to zero. See that huge countdown in the endzone. Pay attention to it!

(3) Offensive play calling - you are extremely limited with ROT and Osei in the game right now. We were destroyed before they quit screwing around with Osei. Sure you could dial ROT up for 40 passes in the second half but all you'll do is crush his confidence and man does he need confidence. Excellent chance Nathan will not play the whole season.

One last thing. Did I mention our defense is horrible?

[AHSIllini32]

Originally Posted by DaytonIllini

The Defense absolutely sucked. Most horrendous defensive effort I have seen. I don't recall who was ripping me for predicting 28 ASU points but wow were you overrating this disaster.

That was me and I was expecting Nate to play. Did you see the post where ASU had 24 points on 4 drives without having to go more than 53 yards? You don't think Nate would have preventse short fields for ASU?

If you do then you're just wanting to ignore the fact that a team missing their starting QB impacts the entire team. Yes the D played bad but you're giving way to much of a pass to the backup QB's.

It's not surprising that you're coming here with all negative stuff though.

By the way, VK's UNC D gave up 28 points to a WF team that scored 20 against Liberty the week before and gave up 426 yards. We all loved VK but the man's not infallible.

[sirspotticus]

Originally Posted by Lake Camelot

I think defense was the big problem this week. However my other disappointment is that I think Tight End is one of the teams strengths and you barely notice them in our offense. I think we may see some transfers for that position. I thought that would make up for our lack of receivers this year.

YES! But I've been feeling that way since Uh-Oh was on the field.

We're two games in and still waiting for Wilson, Harris and Millines to be involved in the offense. Last night they totaled 1 reception for -3 yards.

[cjcastan]

Yikes, somedays you're the hammer, somedays the nail.

Only watched til halftime as it was late and I had a feeling it would only get uglier.

Hopefully the team and coaching staff can develop a short memory. Maybe watch this tape one time then delete it.

When does Basketball start again? lol

[DaytonIllini]

Originally Posted by 256ILLINI

Good lord... I'm glad I started to fast forward on my DVR after watching that game. Did Tim Banks bet on this game or something? They were wide open constantly.

Thankfully this only counts as 1 loss, but it hurts as bad as any loss since the 09 Missouri game for me.... and it makes me question whether Tim Banks knows a thing about football or not. Also, I'd give anything to have Koenning back.

You mean the Koennig who gave up 30+ points to NU last year? Or the one that allowed Minnesota to move against us at will last season?

We have an overly aggressive group of defensive players. Misdirection allows teams to exploit this. You could see Black Cat last week get burned twice badly when he bit on what he thought would be running plays only to release his coverage assignment. Fortunately those plays were incomplete last week.

This defense will choke up disasters from time to time if they don't become more disciplined. That was true last year under VK as well. What was alarming to me was the inability to tackle demonstrated by several of them. That I did not expect. We had broken tackles throughout the first half.

[DrewD007]

it didn't matter if there was a short field or not. They were moving the ball at will against our defense. I'm still shell shocked. Never in a million years would I imagine our defense looking so bad. Hopefully we can chalk it up to the desert/time change,etc otherwise this is gonna be a long year.

[DaytonIllini]

Originally Posted by AHSIllini32

That was me and I was expecting Nate to play. Did you see the post where ASU had 24 points on 4 drives without having to go more than 53 yards? You don't think Nate would have preventse short fields for ASU?

If you do then you're just wanting to ignore the fact that a team missing their starting QB impacts the entire team. Yes the D played bad but you're giving way to much of a pass to the backup QB's.

It's not surprising that you're coming here with all negative stuff though.

By the way, VK's UNC D gave up 28 points to a WF team that scored 20 against Liberty the week before and gave up 426 yards. We all loved VK but the man's not infallible.

This D gave up 500+ yards and the other team only tried for 3 quarters. They didn't barely squeak into the endzone. Their drives could have been 200 yards long if the field was that long. we were not close to stopping them. Their first 4 drives were:

68 yds, 65 yds, 60 yds and 84 yds. That accounted for 21 points and would have been 28 had the RB not fumbled on the 1. That was not on our QB's. That was on our defense. 110% on our defense. I'll give you the two Osei picks but the game was over by then.

[illinidarrin]

The only positive was the run game. They had 232 yards rushing lastnight. I'm glad we are playing a bad Charleston Southern next week.

[DaytonIllini]

Originally Posted by illinidarrin

The only positive was the run game. They had 232 yards rushing lastnight. I'm glad we are playing a bad Charleston Southern next week.

+1

[Calilama]

Originally Posted by Lake Camelot

The thing that disappointed me was the number if times wr's were open by 10-15 yards. That makes me worry about Banks. But time will tell.

I am worried about Banks as well...that was a poorly coached scheme...these are virtually the same players that looked like an NFL defense under Vic....coaching matters...this is your time in the spotlight Coach Banks and your guys are not flying to the ball with bad intention...when guys watch your D after a couple of cocktails and start thinking " Jeez, that receiver was so open I could have completed the pass"....you are approaching a career problem

On a totally unrelated note I wish Nate would lose the shoeblack cross under his eye...not that I care about his religiosity but the Lord has clearly indicated he has no interest in the passing game having sent us Tim Tebow as an apocalyptic sign of same

go Illini

[ncoillini]

Originally Posted by lexwaldez

I'm sick, it's late, there's some scotch involved and I don't have time to catch up on the posts but I did want to get some thoughts down.

1. How refreshing was it to finally watch a well executed, up tempo, spread offense that wasn't totally predictable and looked fairly well balanced? It wasn't ours, but it was nice to see how an offense SHOULD be run. Were their players really that much better athletes than ours?

2. I thought the offensive line made some mistakes and there's some inconsistent play, but there were times where I thought I saw some improvement.

3. Play calling. For those that thought the first game was a tight playbook. WRONG. We're garbage. Sure some will say "But there are a lot of BIG teams that are worse garbage!" Might be true but I wouldn't hang our hats on it. We really looked to put our players in the worst position possible at times. Way to play to our weaknesses. It's like in the first quarter we weren't even interested in trying to make it a game. We're so predictable at times. Predictably horrible. That's not true. I was quite surprised at how unprepared we looked.

4. Time management. Zook's second offensive outting tonight wasn't any more impressive than last week's against Western Michigan. Ooops. It's easy to get confused when watching an Illini game. Four delay of games. We had a delay of game penalty on a punt. I just... up tempo? It's like they're frozen out there. Was I the only one that saw fear and confusion written all over players faces in those... well you can't call them huddles. They just all sort of mill around looking at the side lines. Embarassing.

5. Defense. They did not look great. It's not the end of the world but I don't have a lot of positive things to add. I'd call it a decent effort.

6. Positives. No swinging gate.

PS - for those that think Nate would have made a difference I'd have to agree. The game would have been different. I don't think the outcome would have been different. ASU might not have taken the foot off the gas as early and we might have scored a bit more, but there's no way I think we win out there more than one out of ten times. We were outplayed on offense, defense and special teams. An impressive win for ASU; they played very well and should be commended for their efforts.

ASU ran an O that I expected at Illinois this year. IMO, there is enough talent on the roster to run this scheme at Illinois. The D made the TE look all world, the ILLINI have 3 good TE's. The Offensive scheme was offensive.

[AHSIllini32]

Originally Posted by Calilama

I am worried about Banks as well...that was a poorly coached scheme...these are virtually the same players that looked like an NFL defense under Vic....coaching matters...this is your time in the spotlight Coach Banks and your guys are not flying to the ball with bad intention...when guys watch your D after a couple of cocktails and start thinking " Jeez, that receiver was so open I could have completed the pass"....you are approaching a career problem

On a totally unrelated note I wish Nate would lose the shoeblack cross under his eye...not that I care about his religiosity but the Lord has clearly indicated he has no interest in the passing game having sent us Tim Tebow as an apocalyptic sign of same

go Illini

Let's wait and see about the rest of the year before we start criticizing how a guy approaches his job, especially when he's been very successful at his job in other stops.

And the Nate eye-black thing shouldn't matter to you one way or the other. It's his preference.

[DaytonIllini]

Originally Posted by AHSIllini32

Let's wait and see about the rest of the year before we start criticizing how a guy approaches his job, especially when he's been very successful at his job in other stops.

And the Nate eye-black thing shouldn't matter to you one way or the other. It's his preference.

I think you have to be extremely critical of Banks after last night but I don't see why you wouldn't wait and see how the season plays out so I agree with you on this. There is only so much a guy can do in game. Although he could have had someone cover 87 at some point!

[SCillini]

Originally Posted by DaytonIllini

The Defense absolutely sucked. Most horrendous defensive effort I have seen. I don't recall who was ripping me for predicting 28 ASU points but wow were you overrating this disaster.

Defensive Coordinator absolutely sucked. No adjustments that did anything. Players so open they are the only player on the screen. That isn't being a step slow, that is having completely blown schemes. See the big dude with 87 on his jersey. You MIGHT want to start covering him after he torches you time and time again. Maybe?

Spencer Harris is horrendous. The kid NEVER blocks anyone. Somehow they even had him on returns where he was physically thrown into the return man by the guy he was supposed to block. This kid should not see the turf again until he bulks up.

Posters that think this game would have been different with Nathan at the helm? Wow. Did you watch the defense? Did you watch the last 6 games of last season? Nathan can and has looked as bad in the past frequently.

I think it is terribly unfair to blame this debacle on:

(1) Osei - this was the first game he really played in his career. I don't see why anyone would be excited about him as a QB but he pleasantly surprised me. Yes, he was HORRENDOUS, but first game. Oh, and it should be his last game at QB. He simply doesn't have time to become serviceable before he runs out of eligibility and all you're doing is taking reps away from ROT, who REALLY needs them.

(2) ROT - statistically not horrendous but kid you have got to lead. You cannot let the clock wind down to zero. See that huge countdown in the endzone. Pay attention to it!

(3) Offensive play calling - you are extremely limited with ROT and Osei in the game right now. We were destroyed before they quit screwing around with Osei. Sure you could dial ROT up for 40 passes in the second half but all you'll do is crush his confidence and man does he need confidence. Excellent chance Nathan will not play the whole season.
One last thing. Did I mention our defense is horrible?

I think everyone realizes how bad the D was. Missed tackles and blown coverages all night long.

Spencer Harris actually made the key block on Young's TD run.

Osei looked good running, but he is not a passing threat.

O'Toole needs to see the play clock winding down, but we also had a delay penalty before the first play of one series and on a 4th down punt. That is on the staff.

Beatty's playcalling was conservative and predictable. We decided we wanted to not get blown out too bad, as opposed to calling plays to take some chances downfield. It didn't matter, since our pass blocking was overall, pathetic, and we were blown out anyway.

Yes the D was horrible!

[Groundhogday]

Quick thought: Against this sort of offense (spread passing), last year under VK we primarily played a 3-2-6 scheme (nickle DB Tavon Wilson, hybrid LB-S Trulon Henry). This allowed us to match speed with speed in coverage and get pressure by blitzing Brown and DBs. This year, not so much. Not enough DBs?

Originally Posted by AHSIllini32

Let's wait and see about the rest of the year before we start criticizing how a guy approaches his job, especially when he's been very successful at his job in other stops.

As we discussed when Banks was hired, he has had some good defenses (last year at Cincy, 2009 at CMU) and some very bad defenses (first year at Cincy, 1st two years at CMU). It seems that when he can get all of the players he needs, Banks can be successful, but when he doesn't have the guys his defenses can be really bad. I thought that this year we would have the players for Banks to be successful, but perhaps VK did a very good job of masking secondary problems.

[jackman404]

Our coaching staff looked clearly outmatched tonight. The offensive playcalling was horrible. Way too much talent on this team to be embarrassed like that. The coaching staff should be ashamed of the job they did this week.

[Clemens]

The thing that really bothers me about last night is this. during the zook years we all knew that anywhere from 2 times a year to up to 6-7 times a year zook coached teams would come out looking totally unprepared. I had hoped that this was going to stop with a new coach.

I understand that Illinois is not exactly in the top tier of teams and we're going to lose games. I just really hate it when the Illini hit the field and they look like they are totally unprepared and poorly coached and that is what is frustrating. That is what really pisses me off about Illinois football, it just seems that from week to week, we never know what to expect.

[GilThorpe]

Originally Posted by Calilama

On a totally unrelated note I wish Nate would lose the shoeblack cross under his eye...not that I care about his religiosity but the Lord has clearly indicated he has no interest in the passing game having sent us Tim Tebow as an apocalyptic sign of same

go Illini

what????

so I guess its safe to say that you have a problem with some guys voluntarily taking a knee in the locker room and saying a prayer, too? The locker room prayers I've ever heard did not ask for victory, rather asked for wisdom and safety for all.

did it occur to you that perhaps NS or others simply wish to let their religious views known to others, or do you have a problem with their freedom of expression when it doesnt agree with yours?

I dont have a problem with athiests. You dont have to believe in anything if you dont want to. Why do athiests have problems with Christians? Last I checked no one was rounding people up and forcing them to go to church.

[mdonsbach]

Probably the worst thing is Beckman gets to get annoyed at not only Nate's ankle but now Daruis and probably Miles as well.

If the media doesn't get it that he won't answer questiosn on injuries he might go crazy.

[Dan]

Illini defense 'embarrassed' at Arizona State, 45-14

Those 45 points and the 510 yards ASU compiled were the most given up by the Illini since a triple-overtime loss to Michigan in 2010, when the Wolverines finished with 67 points and 676 yards. The margin of defeat hasn't been this bad since a 32-point loss to USC in the Rose Bowl five years ago.

"It was a very humbling night," said Illini linebacker Jonathan Brown. "I'm embarrassed. I'm ready to go back to work. That performance we put up tonight is not us.

"I want to apologize to the fans. That's not how we play."

Supinie

Want

Tonight, our defense was want-less. Uninspired. On their heels. Shell shocked. Todd Graham's offense started moving the ball at will, and suddenly we look nothing like the defense of the last 15 games. Players haven't really changed much, scheme is similar, but the defense didn't really want it tonight. Poor tackling ruled the day. Arizona State barely had to deal with third down situations. We didn’t seem to want it at all.

http://alioneye.com/2012/09/09/want/

https://www.facebook.com/pages/IlliniHQcom/381368476076

[ILLSauce]

Now I remember why I hate reading day after loss threads...just got a brand new staff and all new offense...played with 2 inexperienced quarterbacks and here come the "real" fans...give me a break...

[Peoria Born]

Really thought this game would have proved that the Illini are above the low expectations people generated about them, but clearly the majority was right. The D got torched last night and the offense couldn't muster up anything against a mediocre ASU defense. Here's to hoping for a 5-7 season.

[RyanK]

A lot of people are overreacting. We went into a hostile environment with 2 unproven QBs. Those two missed many wide open receivers, and tried forcing things too much. Nathan would complete most of those throws, leading to longer drives and more rest for the defense. This would have been a much closer game with Nate playing. You guys ate acting like our season is already over.