Northwestern 68, Illinois 66 POSTGAME

[PlayAZ]

And there it is....

We had a fast break towards the end (and I apologize for forgetting exactly who), defender in front of him completely wiffs on hitting our player or the ball, still gets called for a foul and we get an and 1. If the tables were turned, this board would be talking about that for a week.

Bottom line is, most sports fan feel wronged by officials. If you happen to be a Bears fan, I bet you're at least miffed a little by what happened on that catch fumble no clear recovery, yet that's how the rulebook states officials need to call it; Eagles fans I'm sure thought that was all kosher.

Also, before you claim a disparity, we had 19 fouls against us, NW 22.

Sarcasm meter is broken sorry....pure sarcasm due to that is normally the cry wolf answer we all hear.

 

[The Dave]

Here is the secret....

I was so incredibly depressed for about 48 hours after the FAU loss (yeah, yeah, an almost 50-year-old man shouldn't get that down over a CBB game) that I literally now expect us to lose EVERY SINGLE B10 game except maybe versus Rutgers (losing to them might send me in to a funk from which I never return...). With this extremely low bar (I think the bar has not only been lowered in my mind, it's been buried 6-feet under) I have actually been able to enjoy the last two games and see some progress being made. Not in all areas, but overall I see the team competing better than they did earlier in the year and we came very close to winning 2 B10 games.

I strongly recommend you truly and honestly reset your expectations, it allows you to enjoy life and Illini Basketball more. Yes, it's disturbing we see the same issues as last year (losing games in the last 30 seconds) but we are again very freshman heavy so I kind of expect it.

I am NOT saying there weren't a LOT of things to complain about in this game, but those have been hashed (and rehashed) by many others on this board. Let's look at some positives:

1. Adonis: He actually contributed and was valuable in this game! That's a first this season. If he can do this consistently and mentor Kane, then he's a great 1-year add for the team.
2. Ayo: Seems to have the bulb flipped. He's put together a string of good games. No reason to think it won't continue. He seems to be the only one on the team that can drive to the hoop and finish with consistency
3. Demonte: While he didn't finish at the rim well, he was finally aggressive in the offense, attacked the basket, and got to the line. I really hope this wasn't a one-game aberration and it becomes consistent for him. Which leads to....
4. Fouls: There wasn't a huge foul disparity in this game. I believe we did a little better than usual in limiting the number of fouls we committed and we got to the line (and converted there) pretty well. The refs were bad (phantom calls, missing obvious calls) but they were pretty equally inept on both ends.

 

[NBB1979]

I don’t consider him an elite scorer. He’s too streaky, and doesn’t really shoot a high enough percentage to be considered elite. He’s more a high quantity scorer, but needs to put up a lot of shots to do so. That’s not very good team play.

Trent averages 1.23 points per attempt (PPA). I’m not doing calculations for every player because I don’t have that much time - but the rest of the team averages 1.14 PPA combined. He’s better than average - maybe ELITE is the wrong term - but he’s a top option to score. He was at 1.30 points per attempt prior to this 3 game lull.

My point was simply that something changed - we heard he was told to do more distributing ... since that rumor, in 3 games, we’ve got 0.87 PPA Trent Frazier. He averages 3.2 Assists per game and has 10 over last 3 games. So it’s not like you’re seeing better assist numbers either.

I want pre-FAU Trent doing what Trent does - that’s my main point.

 

[Deleted member 29907]

Here is the secret....

I was so incredibly depressed for about 48 hours after the FAU loss (yeah, yeah, an almost 50-year-old man shouldn't get that down over a CBB game) that I literally now expect us to lose EVERY SINGLE B10 game except maybe versus Rutgers (losing to them might send me in to a funk from which I never return...). With this extremely low bar (I think the bar has not only been lowered in my mind, it's been buried 6-feet under) I have actually been able to enjoy the last two games and see some progress being made. Not in all areas, but overall I see the team competing better than they did earlier in the year and we came very close to winning 2 B10 games.

I strongly recommend you truly and honestly reset your expectations, it allows you to enjoy life and Illini Basketball more. Yes, it's disturbing we see the same issues as last year (losing games in the last 30 seconds) but we are again very freshman heavy so I kind of expect it.

I am NOT saying there weren't a LOT of things to complain about in this game, but those have been hashed (and rehashed) by many others on this board. Let's look at some positives:

1. Adonis: He actually contributed and was valuable in this game! That's a first this season. If he can do this consistently and mentor Kane, then he's a great 1-year add for the team.
2. Ayo: Seems to have the bulb flipped. He's put together a string of good games. No reason to think it won't continue. He seems to be the only one on the team that can drive to the hoop and finish with consistency
3. Demonte: While he didn't finish at the rim well, he was finally aggressive in the offense, attacked the basket, and got to the line. I really hope this wasn't a one-game aberration and it becomes consistent for him. Which leads to....
4. Fouls: There wasn't a huge foul disparity in this game. I believe we did a little better than usual in limiting the number of fouls we committed and we got to the line (and converted there) pretty well. The refs were bad (phantom calls, missing obvious calls) but they were pretty equally inept on both ends.

#4 is why we were able to keep this close and almost win. We've been hamstringing ourselves each and every game with the HUGE FT disparity

 

[TheVille]

Good Riddance
https://deadspin.com/northwestern-officials-to-shrieking-superfan-how-abou-1831658663