Not that I can see, frankly. When you're 5-14, that's just the reality of it.
Culture is the sum of a lot of little things, and we on the outside aren't really in a position to understand the inner-workings of the team on an intimate level, but when a team has a positive culture it's pretty obvious to watch, you've got mental toughness, resilience, attention to detail, confidence and player leadership. We've got some talent, we've got a lot of want-to, but we quite clearly lack those other things and have done so for a very long period at this point.
I've said this for awhile, when either of our sports are actually onto something good, it's gonna hit us all like a thunderbolt, it's gonna be so blindingly, undeniably obvious. We've all just forgotten what it looks and feels like.
I, for one, think that the team culture appears to be much improved over the past two years, though certainly not yet back to the winning attitude that used to prevail. At least, this is how it looks to me from outside. Consider the points you mentioned:
Mental toughness: By and large you don't see this team hanging its head. Even late in a losing game,
most of the team are still hustling and working their butts off. That's a massive improvement over the Groce teams, which tended to quit if they got down, which happened a lot.
Resilience: A lot of this is wrapped up in mental toughness, but I think the one big thing that still needs work is recovering after taking a punch from the other team. The effort is usually there, but we tend to enter desperation mode when the other team has a run and we get really sloppy. This is definitely an area that needs improvement. We need to weather the storm and punch back. Instead we flail.
Attention to detail: This comes in spurts for us. You can see us from time to time this year really putting it all together and the offense hums. We then go on big stretches where we get really sloppy. Whether that is due to desperation or complacency, I don't know. Either way, I am encouraged that we have started to see some flashes of what this should look like this year. I am, of course, discouraged that we can't seem to reliably put it all together for an entire game except against Minnesota.
Confidence: Winning will fix this. I think it helps that we have a bunch of guys who won a lot in high school, but the prolonged losing we've been doing seems to have shaken that confidence. We just need more Ws to fix this, IMO.
Leadership: This has been a weakness for a while, and in large part it has been because our upperclassmen have left or simply not been of the right personality to really carry the torch. Nichols has been a ghost this year. Black was fiery but I can't honestly say I recall seeing him rallying the troops. Finke was super passive. Shoot, even Hill wasn't really a vocal leader. Wonderful player, but, at least externally, he seemed to be more of a "lead by example" kind of guy. The point is that this deficit has been years in the making. I am hoping that people like Frazier and Bezhanishvili (and Dosunmu if he stays) can grow into those sorts of players, but time will tell.
Of course, this is just one fan's opinion based on watching these guys on TV. What do I know?
If the Illini could hit some shots and 3's the whole season would turn. Trent used to be the guy you thought when it left his hands you felt it would go in. I don't know if conditioning is messing with shooting, ...but something is.
The problem, in my opinion, is that consistent success requires that you don't rely on one player being "the guy." Sure, maybe you have a star who you want to take the last shot more often than not and on whom you can depend in a high-leverage situation. But, in the ebb and flow of a standard game, you really can't be relying only on a single guy to hit his shots. Scoring has to come from multiple directions if you want to keep a defense honest. Last year is a decent example because we really only had Frazier and Black reliably putting up numbers, and if they had an off night or the opposing defenses shut them down, we had to hope for a miracle performance from someone else like Nichols. That's not a path to consistent success.