Penn State 74, Illinois 52 POSTGAME

[Illiniguy13]

Alstork shot fine at Wright State (~38% from 3), but now is struggling to hit 25% from three. The hoop didn't change, but his coaching did.

AJ has people in his jock the moment he steps on the court, but we can't run a set play to get him an open look.

Finke shot fine the past two years, but now is struggling. One thing changed.

If only there was someone who was paid to help freshman like Smith and Damonte transfer to the college game...

Low talent level? Black was a top 45 recruit, Smith was top 100, and AJ/Frazier/Williams were near top 100. Plus, two top 100 guys transferred and a 5* decommitted when Underwood came on. The roster when Underwood signed had talent. If the talent is not there now, who do you blame?

Underwood already has more 20 point losses than Self, close to Weber (3). It would be one thing if they were to significantly better teams (Purdue, MSU), but they are to Wisconsin and Penn State, two teams that are not "out talenting" us by any means.

Illinios noticeably has trouble in-bounding the ball, a fundamental play that most Junior High teams have one fallback that they know they can execute and get the ball in play. Illinois suffers from long stretches of not scoring a damn point. How are there not set plays designed to stop that? What is our go to play to get Black a high percentage look or a guard a good driving lane for layup/foul chances? We don't have these simple plays.

I accept there will be growing pains with a new coach. I expected this team to be on the bubble, even after the transfers, but with an upward trend towards the end of the year. We are not seeing that. It is a coaching issue at this point.

The competition changed & as has Alstork's confidence. You can tell in his body language. And AJ has passed up a lot of open shots, he just doesn't have a quick release at all and he can't create off the dribble. The scouting report is out on him. Finke has gotten some pretty decent looks from 3 and he hasn't connected. I don't think you can blame Underwood from that. And if it hasn't become blatantly obvious that we are lacking talent as a whole, I don't know what else to say. This roster was by no means loaded. And I don't know what Penn State team you were watching last night, but Tony Carr is likely a 1st round pick and Watkins is probably an NBA'er as well. Happ is the most skilled big man in college basketball, while we don't have a center outside of Ebo.

 

[Illini B-Ball Fan]

Limited good to report: We had more rebounds and Leron had a good game with 18 points and didn't foul out. The bad: We had a worse FG%, 3-FG%, FT%, fewer assists, blocks, steals, more TO's, and lost again.

http://fightingillini.com/documents/2018/2/11/Penn_State_72_Illinois_52.pdf

 

[haasi]

I put all the freshman in Underwood's bucket. He had the opportunity to turn them away, but chose not to. It will likely be one of those things that flips discussion to discussion (they make a good play - clearly Underwood's guy; they do something dumb - blame Groce).



I never offered up a comparison of what Groce would have done this year, I think that is pointless. I am just looking at this year and seeing a team that is trending down.



I'll agree we are short on talent, but so far we are short on coaching still.

I don’t disagree. Ultimately, coaches going to get judged on results. So far, although many things beyond his control (including bare roster that Groce left) Underwood hasn’t delivered. I think we can safely say jury still out on Underwood, but nothing that he’s done here so far inspires great confidence.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Future Walk-On]

Positive: Orange Krush kids are actually still showing up...although looked like the one's in corner were sitting most of the time.

We don't play with noticeable effort and heart.

Question: If AJ and LB are shooting such high %'s from 3...why do they not shoot 3's? AJ should be at least putting up 6 attempts a game.

Never seen an offense just stand there like we do.

 

[Illini B-Ball Fan]

I don’t disagree. Ultimately, coaches going to get judged on results. So far, although many things beyond his control (including bare roster that Groce left) Underwood hasn’t delivered. I think we can safely say jury still out on Underwood, but nothing that he’s done here so far inspires great confidence.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Things sure have changed in 4 short months and hopefully BU can turn this program around, yet it appears it will take a lot of time and a lot more changes.

 

[dbeverly26]

As long as we're airing our various grievances, am I the only person who is unreasonably and exceedingly annoyed by the very demonstrative female Illini fan who has courtside seats in the lower-left (across from the Illinois bench) corner of the TV screen in our home games?

She is constantly standing up, pointing all over the place, barking commands at our players, squawking at our opponents, squatting like Urban Meyer, and seemingly trying to simultaneously coach and officiate the game at all times.

I blame her and her distracting antics for our poor performance this season.

I've been waiting for her to get tossed from a game all season, and finally got my wish. The whole Tanya Alford act is a bit annoying, tbh.

Since we seem to be choosing sides here, I'm in the camp that believes talent is the biggest issue on this team, and by a wide margin. If nothing else, this season has taught us just how underappreciated Malcolm Hill was during his time here.

It's really unfortunate that this team didn't get a break or two in the early B1G schedule that might have delivered a couple of wins. I think that we'd be having a different conversation, and that the team would be playing with the intensity that we saw earlier in the year.

And while I believe that Underwood is ultimately accountable for motivating his team and bears the responsibility when they come out flat in winnable games, I also think that the difficulty of motivating in these specific circumstances shouldn't be understated. The team's busted their butts all year with almost nothing to show for it. Just like it's tough to continue to play defense when you're not scoring, it's tough to come out of the gate and play hard when you've lost so many games where you've played relatively well. Pair that with a group of upperclassmen who have not won consistently at this level and you've got a recipe for some struggles.

I don't have anything against any of the players on the current roster, but from where I stand, the quicker we cycle out the vets, the better. There will be growing pains if we have to rely on first-year players, but I think that we'd benefit from bringing in a bunch of guys who are too young to know that they're supposed to lose.

I'm sure that there are things that Underwood could have done differently in his first year, but with a clear-eyed look at the situation I have trouble laying this all at his feet.

 

[BRucks]

Agree with all the above. I think with the right talent, BU could take us to great heights. I hope the early fails at recruiting turns around quickly because beat downs at home against Penn State should not happen at Illinois.

With the right talent I could take this team to great heights. We can't keep letting the top Illinois preps go to other B10 schools.

 

[Deleted member 631370]

I've been waiting for her to get tossed from a game all season, and finally got my wish. The whole Tanya Alford act is a bit annoying, tbh.

Since we seem to be choosing sides here, I'm in the camp that believes talent is the biggest issue on this team, and by a wide margin. If nothing else, this season has taught us just how underappreciated Malcolm Hill was during his time here.

It's really unfortunate that this team didn't get a break or two in the early B1G schedule that might have delivered a couple of wins. I think that we'd be having a different conversation, and that the team would be playing with the intensity that we saw earlier in the year.

And while I believe that Underwood is ultimately accountable for motivating his team and bears the responsibility when they come out flat in winnable games, I also think that the difficulty of motivating in these specific circumstances shouldn't be understated. The team's busted their butts all year with almost nothing to show for it. Just like it's tough to continue to play defense when you're not scoring, it's tough to come out of the gate and play hard when you've lost so many games where you've played relatively well. Pair that with a group of upperclassmen who have not won consistently at this level and you've got a recipe for some struggles.

I don't have anything against any of the players on the current roster, but from where I stand, the quicker we cycle out the vets, the better. There will be growing pains if we have to rely on first-year players, but I think that we'd benefit from bringing in a bunch of guys who are too young to know that they're supposed to lose.

I'm sure that there are things that Underwood could have done differently in his first year, but with a clear-eyed look at the situation I have trouble laying this all at his feet.

Great post.

Do I think these kids have given up? It's very possible. But not because they don't care. Sooner or later, losing takes a mental toll, and I'd bet that string of heartbreaking losses early in the season really killed this team emotionally.

It's hard enough for a team to come back with a gut check moment time and time again. It's harder for a young team without a lot of experience winning games to do it. At some point, losses mount and the whole thing snowballs into an avalanche of losing. That's what I think we're facing now.

I feel for them. But I also realize that this system may not be the right fit for everybody.

 

[mattcoldagelli]

Not to single out bobbob, but his post is the longest. We can try to analyze what is going wrong without being dishonest and blatantly reductive. For example:

Alstork shot fine at Wright State (~38% from 3), but now is struggling to hit 25% from three. The hoop didn't change, but his coaching did.

Another change: playing in the B1G and not the Horizon League. May be significant.

AJ has people in his jock the moment he steps on the court, but we can't run a set play to get him an open look.

I mean...yeah. AJ is a shooter. Defenses are going to work very hard to stop him from getting open looks. Saying "run a play to get him an open look" is helpful in the way yelling "hit somebody!" is helpful for a struggling football defense.

Finke shot fine the past two years, but now is struggling. One thing changed.

Actually, our entire approach to offense and defense changed. And our roster changed - for this team to be successful, Finke was going to have be one of the leaders and fill some of Malcolm Hill's void. This is more nuanced than just comparing shooting percentages.

Low talent level? Black was a top 45 recruit, Smith was top 100, and AJ/Frazier/Williams were near top 100. Plus, two top 100 guys transferred and a 5* decommitted when Underwood came on. The roster when Underwood signed had talent. If the talent is not there now, who do you blame?

I don't know why we would give recruiting rankings precedence over what we see with our own eyes. Rankings are about how HS players will project as college basketball players, but guess what? We don't have to project! We're watching them play college basketball.

And what we have is a team that cannot shoot. We are barely clearing 30% from 3, which is just shockingly bad. We need guys who can make shots, guys who can create shots, guys who can alter shots. I'm oversimplifying but these are the things that win college basketball games, and we are deficient in all of these skillsets regardless of how many of our guys fell inside the top 100.

Underwood already has more 20 point losses than Self, close to Weber (3). It would be one thing if they were to significantly better teams (Purdue, MSU), but they are to Wisconsin and Penn State, two teams that are not "out talenting" us by any means.

Here's some bad faith. You conveniently skip over our most recent coach in arguing this point. It's almost as if comparing Illinois basketball now to Illinois basketball at its highest point in program history is comparing apples to oranges!

Illinios noticeably has trouble in-bounding the ball, a fundamental play that most Junior High teams have one fallback that they know they can execute and get the ball in play.

DO we have noticeable trouble inbounding the ball? Or did an inbounds play gone awry cost us 1 (arguably 2) games and people are now hyper-fixated on it? This is a honest question.

Illinois suffers from long stretches of not scoring a damn point. How are there not set plays designed to stop that? What is our go to play to get Black a high percentage look or a guard a good driving lane for layup/foul chances? We don't have these simple plays.

See above re: shooting.

Also - we DO run these plays! I know I'm not the only one seeing a regular stream of cutters to the lane who are not either being seen by a ballhandler on the wing, or being seen too slowly. We run handoffs to Trent for the express purpose of getting him the ball on his way to the basket. It is not like we go through these scoring droughts because we don't get any looks, it's because we don't make them. (I'd also argue, although our offensive rebounding percentage is actually good, we don't convert as many of those misses into easy, stop-the-bleeding putbacks that we should/need to)

 

[breadman]

As long as we're airing our various grievances, am I the only person who is unreasonably and exceedingly annoyed by the very demonstrative female Illini fan who has courtside seats in the lower-left (across from the Illinois bench) corner of the TV screen in our home games?

She is constantly standing up, pointing all over the place, barking commands at our players, squawking at our opponents, squatting like Urban Meyer, and seemingly trying to simultaneously coach and officiate the game at all times.

I blame her and her distracting antics for our poor performance this season.

Oh man! Now you just gave me a reason to watch the game AGAIN (since I do dvr all the games)!!!
At least I have something else to focus on. This is really going to be torture.

 

[Peoria Illini]

Also - we DO run these plays! I know I'm not the only one seeing a regular stream of cutters to the lane who are not either being seen by a ballhandler on the wing, or being seen too slowly. We run handoffs to Trent for the express purpose of getting him the ball on his way to the basket. It is not like we go through these scoring droughts because we don't get any looks, it's because we don't make them. (I'd also argue, although our offensive rebounding percentage is actually good, we don't convert as many of those misses into easy, stop-the-bleeding putbacks that we should/need to)

I think for the most part, our cuts suck. Especially the first and second cutter when we reverse the ball. For one thing, it takes us too long to recognize the reversal, so we get a late start, then it's as if the guys never believe they will get the ball, so they jog through the cut and just concede that the pass will go to the pinch post for a wrap around handoff. They will never be open if they are just jogging through the cut.

 

[Deleted member 631370]

I don't know why we would give recruiting rankings precedence over what we see with our own eyes. Rankings are about how HS players will project as college basketball players, but guess what? We don't have to project! We're watching them play college basketball.

And what we have is a team that cannot shoot. We are barely clearing 30% from 3, which is just shockingly bad. We need guys who can make shots, guys who can create shots, guys who can alter shots. I'm oversimplifying but these are the things that win college basketball games, and we are deficient in all of these skillsets regardless of how many of our guys fell inside the top 100.

And here's the thing with talent.......for those who love recruiting rankings, this roster has the lowest # of top-100 kids since the Lon Kruger era. And I stopped tallying up our roster pre-Bill Self, so for all I know, this may have fewer top-100 kids than any roster Kruger had.

We have a whopping total of 4 top-100 kids -- and 2 of those 4 were ranked near the bottom of the top-100 or just outside of the top-100 (Aaron Jordan and Trent Frazier). The other two are Leron and Mark Smith.

When your most talented kids -- simply using recruiting rankings, because that's what you cited -- are a 6'7 guy forced to be our go-to inside, and a freshman who very clearly hasn't adjusted to the college game yet, how talented are we exactly?

And give me a break with this "he had JCL and DJW and Tilmon here, so who's fault is it if he lost them?" nonsense. You (Bobbob) know darn well that kids often transfer out when a new coach comes aboard, and there are circumstances well beyond the new coach's control that prove decisive.

A lot of your argument has some merit, but let's keep it within the realm of reason here.

 

[pruman91]

I've been waiting for her to get tossed from a game all season, and finally got my wish. The whole Tanya Alford act is a bit annoying, tbh.

Since we seem to be choosing sides here, I'm in the camp that believes talent is the biggest issue on this team, and by a wide margin. If nothing else, this season has taught us just how underappreciated Malcolm Hill was during his time here.

It's really unfortunate that this team didn't get a break or two in the early B1G schedule that might have delivered a couple of wins. I think that we'd be having a different conversation, and that the team would be playing with the intensity that we saw earlier in the year.

And while I believe that Underwood is ultimately accountable for motivating his team and bears the responsibility when they come out flat in winnable games, I also think that the difficulty of motivating in these specific circumstances shouldn't be understated. The team's busted their butts all year with almost nothing to show for it. Just like it's tough to continue to play defense when you're not scoring, it's tough to come out of the gate and play hard when you've lost so many games where you've played relatively well. Pair that with a group of upperclassmen who have not won consistently at this level and you've got a recipe for some struggles.

I don't have anything against any of the players on the current roster, but from where I stand, the quicker we cycle out the vets, the better. There will be growing pains if we have to rely on first-year players, but I think that we'd benefit from bringing in a bunch of guys who are too young to know that they're supposed to lose.

I'm sure that there are things that Underwood could have done differently in his first year, but with a clear-eyed look at the situation I have trouble laying this all at his feet.

I still remember when I was promoted to a sales manager position and inherited a staff of over 80 agents how overwhelming it was to change people's habits and work ethic.....I had to change the "culture" and loser mentality that my agents had...all the training and motivation techniques won't work unless there is a buy in by the staff involved....also, it wasn't difficult to see who had it and who didn't .....I'm sure BU has made up his mind already about what is needed to rectify the situation and has plans already in force to achieve what he needs to turn this trainwreck around....

there are players on the team that would be better served to transfer to a mid major program and that is on the previous staff...give BU a couple years to do his makeover before yelling for his head....to have to rebuild a team on the nationwide stage takes time and I think he can do it.....

At least I hope he can....this season got old a long time ago with the goaltends, poor inbounds decisions and the flat out quitting by some players on the team....

I'll still watch the remaining games but my optimism has flown the coop....

 

[dbeverly26]

Great post.
I feel for them. But I also realize that this system may not be the right fit for everybody.

There are some mismatches, to be sure. From a coaching perspective, I could see why Underwood might want to implement his system now even if there's a mismatch in talent. There will be guys who stick around, and they will ultimately benefit from having time in the system.

Given the circumstances, you might be able to make the argument that slowing things down and shortening the game would be beneficial once you've accepted that your team is less talented than many of your opponents. But at the same time, there's no system that can compensate for a lack of shooters, big men, and athleticism. It just boils down to where you want the deck chairs on the Titanic at that point.

I've always believed that guys should be given the opportunity to stick around for four years if they want to, but there are a handful of guys on this roster where the mutual benefit of a transfer is pretty clear. It's just a matter of who will actually make that decision at this point.

 

[FeelYourPaign]

Very small sample size it's only his second year at high D1 level. I believe in the system and it takes time. WV struggled it's first couples years when Huggins took over and same goes for South Carolina with Martin. We run the same system you even glimpses of it right now when they execute. One thing everyone needs to keep in mind is neither of those teams ever has a top class they build for fit and Underwood is doing the same here. Patience people we are still riding the storm but it will be over soon. Im excited about this team just like I was the first year Lon Kruger's took over. Maybe not next year but by year three we will be seeing a damn good team out there we can all be proud of. The brand of basketball is changing at Illinois and you all are gonna love it. So hang tight and keep supporting our Orange and Blue.

I agree with this. I was disgusted yesterday watching and turned the game off before it was over. Not sure I have ever done that before. But I'm still enthusiastic about Illinois basketball and our future. If I lived near C-U, I would have season tickets and be there, loud and proud. But I don't, so I just keep watching.

 

[Innocent Primate]

I guess I’m in the camp that says coaching (or system) has very little — if anything — to do with what we’re seeing on the floor. If it did, then I’m at a loss to explain the relatively consistent performances of Frazier and Black. At this point, I would opt for sitting the rest of the starters and letting others take their place.

 

[illinifaninwi]

Underwood recruited 6 out of 11 of the current scholarship players. So your first point is factually wrong, but I get your point that a new coach is slightly bound by what he walks in to.

I don't remember us blowing any games under Groce due to the inability to simply in-bound a ball. Please give an example. I do remember beating Indiana with a very nice in-bound play though.

So you disagree that Alstork and Finke are shooting significantly worse than they previously have under different coaches? You disagree that a coach is responsible for getting freshman ready for college basketball?

Learning a new system is why you struggle against a cupcake in November. It is not why you get blown out by Penn State in February.

1) The Indiana inbounds was a total defensive lapse by Tanning Tom's team.
2) Alstork has a terrible low release. I'm honestly not sure how he made as many as he did previously other than going against much inferior competition
3) You and I will never see eye-to-eye. New systems and culture can take quite a long time to implement. Illinois has a lack of high-caliber basketball players with few positive results prior to Underwood's arrival. The current head coach has considerable proven success.

I'm banning myself from this topic for 24 hours. I just can't believe the current coaching staff is getting so much blame for the inadequacies of the embarrassing John Groce regime.

 

[bobbob]

Not to single out bobbob, but his post is the longest. We can try to analyze what is going wrong without being dishonest and blatantly reductive. For example:



Another change: playing in the B1G and not the Horizon League. May be significant.

Did you honestly think he would struggle this much? McInstosh went from Illinois State to Oregon and is shooting fine. Daniel III went from Howard to Tennessee and shooting fine. Those are the only other two guys I am seeing who transferred up from last year and are playing this year. Alstork's defense somehow transfers, but shooting doesn't?

I mean...yeah. AJ is a shooter. Defenses are going to work very hard to stop him from getting open looks. Saying "run a play to get him an open look" is helpful in the way yelling "hit somebody!" is helpful for a struggling football defense.

Or saying "just recruit shooters" is helpful to a team short on talent...

Yes, it would be easier to get him looks if the defense had to be more honest on the other players. But there was a five game stretch where AJ had 3 3-point attempts. If he's the only threat we have, we have to get him the ball in a spot he can do something with it.

Actually, our entire approach to offense and defense changed. And our roster changed - for this team to be successful, Finke was going to have be one of the leaders and fill some of Malcolm Hill's void. This is more nuanced than just comparing shooting percentages.

Isn't the approach to offense and defense considered "coaching"?

Of course this more nuanced than comparing percentages, but it also a lot more nuanced than "just recruit shooters and bigs". A coach has to put the players he has in position to succeed. We have a guy we know can shoot adequately, we have a need for outside shooting, yet we aren't able to put him in a position to succeed.

Yes, Finke is being forced to play a sub-optimal role due to the roster, but I don't accept that as the sole reason his numbers are down.

I don't know why we would give recruiting rankings precedence over what we see with our own eyes. Rankings are about how HS players will project as college basketball players, but guess what? We don't have to project! We're watching them play college basketball.

And what we have is a team that cannot shoot. We are barely clearing 30% from 3, which is just shockingly bad. We need guys who can make shots, guys who can create shots, guys who can alter shots. I'm oversimplifying but these are the things that win college basketball games, and we are deficient in all of these skillsets regardless of how many of our guys fell inside the top 100.

Because they indicate a talent level before you introduce the variable of our coaching. Or is just a strange random coincidence that all our decently rated guys are under-performing?

Here's some bad faith. You conveniently skip over our most recent coach in arguing this point. It's almost as if comparing Illinois basketball now to Illinois basketball at its highest point in program history is comparing apples to oranges!

A little bad faith, but more an homage to the complaints last year of the number of 20+ losses Groce was racking up.

DO we have noticeable trouble inbounding the ball? Or did an inbounds play gone awry cost us 1 (arguably 2) games and people are now hyper-fixated on it? This is a honest question.

I have no clue where one would pick up those stats. But we have had at least three higher pressure ones go very wrong (Maryland, New Mexico, last night). I would accept that once is accident, but beyond that it is a coaching issue. Plenty of options - practice them more, change them to lower risk/reward, etc.

See above re: shooting.

Also - we DO run these plays! I know I'm not the only one seeing a regular stream of cutters to the lane who are not either being seen by a ballhandler on the wing, or being seen too slowly. We run handoffs to Trent for the express purpose of getting him the ball on his way to the basket. It is not like we go through these scoring droughts because we don't get any looks, it's because we don't make them. (I'd also argue, although our offensive rebounding percentage is actually good, we don't convert as many of those misses into easy, stop-the-bleeding putbacks that we should/need to)

If the cutters are being missed, that is a coaching issue. Getting players to run the offense is what a coach does.

I'd agree on the O-reb aside; seems like we also pick up several of them relatively far from the basket. That may explain the discrepancy between the % and the points off. Though that feels like it should be a stat (pts off O-Reb/O-reb)...


I'm not calling for anyone to be fired or anything drastic like that. All I am saying is that based on what we have seen this year, it appears we are still operating at coaching deficit compared to the rest of the B1G.

I think it is too reductive and just say "we don't have the talent, not a coaching issue" when I see mistakes being repeated in February.

 

[illinifaninwi]

Did you honestly think he would struggle this much? McInstosh went from Illinois State to Oregon and is shooting fine. Daniel III went from Howard to Tennessee and shooting fine. Those are the only other two guys I am seeing who transferred up from last year and are playing this year. Alstork's defense somehow transfers, but shooting doesn't?



Or saying "just recruit shooters" is helpful to a team short on talent...

Yes, it would be easier to get him looks if the defense had to be more honest on the other players. But there was a five game stretch where AJ had 3 3-point attempts. If he's the only threat we have, we have to get him the ball in a spot he can do something with it.



Isn't the approach to offense and defense considered "coaching"?

Of course this more nuanced than comparing percentages, but it also a lot more nuanced than "just recruit shooters and bigs". A coach has to put the players he has in position to succeed. We have a guy we know can shoot adequately, we have a need for outside shooting, yet we aren't able to put him in a position to succeed.

Yes, Finke is being forced to play a sub-optimal role due to the roster, but I don't accept that as the sole reason his numbers are down.



Because they indicate a talent level before you introduce the variable of our coaching. Or is just a strange random coincidence that all our decently rated guys are under-performing?



A little bad faith, but more an homage to the complaints last year of the number of 20+ losses Groce was racking up.



I have no clue where one would pick up those stats. But we have had at least three higher pressure ones go very wrong (Maryland, New Mexico, last night). I would accept that once is accident, but beyond that it is a coaching issue. Plenty of options - practice them more, change them to lower risk/reward, etc.



If the cutters are being missed, that is a coaching issue. Getting players to run the offense is what a coach does.

I'd agree on the O-reb aside; seems like we also pick up several of them relatively far from the basket. That may explain the discrepancy between the % and the points off. Though that feels like it should be a stat (pts off O-Reb/O-reb)...


I'm not calling for anyone to be fired or anything drastic like that. All I am saying is that based on what we have seen this year, it appears we are still operating at coaching deficit compared to the rest of the B1G.

I think it is too reductive and just say "we don't have the talent, not a coaching issue" when I see mistakes being repeated in February.

I'll just agree to disagree. This is a historically bad Illinois roster. I just don't see any "good" coach doing much better.

 

[ChiefIllini]

I guess I’m in the camp that says coaching (or system) has very little — if anything — to do with what we’re seeing on the floor. If it did, then I’m at a loss to explain the relatively consistent performances of Frazier and Black. At this point, I would opt for sitting the rest of the starters and letting others take their place.

I wouldnt call what Frazier has been consistent. Hes definitely been one of the better players, but at this point hes a volume guy. Sure when he goes 7-11 from beyond the arc twice it looks great, but when 2-9 or 0-6 within that same span, thats not consistency thats volume.

Obviously theres a place for volume shooters but as OU has recently shown even if a guy can put up 30 consistently its not winning you every game.

 

[mattcoldagelli]

If the cutters are being missed, that is a coaching issue. Getting players to run the offense is what a coach does.

And I think here is where people can just end up talking past each other - taken to its extreme ends, literally everything can be called "a coaching issue." And the flipside is that you can absolutely do the same thing for talent and execution. It's how "the coach can't make the free throws!" and "FTs are a mark of great coaching!" get to live in the same universe.

The reality is, it's both. We ARE running an offense, but we're leaving a lot of high percentage looks on the table, and missing a good percentage of the ones we get. I don't think Underwood is faking his level of frustration that these things happen in practice and then vanish once the lights come on.

What do you do about it? Coach "harder"? Scream more? Then you get roasted for being too hard on everyone and scaring them into playing tentatively (see Weber, Bruce).

There's a chicken or egg thing going on where you need to win in order to learn to how to win. We've got trust issues, clearly - not just between players and coaches but between players and each other (and even players trusting themselves). It's bad! But it's also near impossible to sort this into "this is on the coach" and "this is on the players," especially in Year 1. Everything needs to improve.

 

[PlayAZ]

The problem I see is the IQ seems quite low as far as basketball sets. If a player cannot "see" the game, then the coach has to "slow" down the teaching methods to in-grain the sets. By doing so the coach is effectively taking some of the athleticism that may exist away from a player (the players issue-not the coaches) due to the player having to slowww down the learning process. It does affect the overall skill set imo, the coach cannot "slow" down the thought process during learning and expect a "faster" follow through or resolution during game time...it wont happen as the player is still "thinking" through the sets and not reacting!

 

[illini62707]

I've read some posts that said players look tentative, scared on offense. I couldn't agree more (i.e. except frazier, black). No confidence on the offensive end at all. Somebody mentioned they gave up last night, I think so, too. Bad end of half carried over the whole second half.
For the most part this team has played hard. I don't want to see this team give up! which they did last night.
This team has played good enough to be right in most games and leading at some point in the second half in many games ultimately lost. Which occurred because of turnovers, bad plays, missed free throws and loss of poise.
I was really surprised to see the last two games turn out the way it did. After beating Indiana, Rutgers and playing a pretty competitive game against Ohio St. I thought they would come out really inspired and up to play the next 2 at home. I thought both effort were poor and showed a huge lack of will to do what it takes to win.

 

[helppitch]

Did you honestly think he would struggle this much? McInstosh went from Illinois State to Oregon and is shooting fine. Daniel III went from Howard to Tennessee and shooting fine. Those are the only other two guys I am seeing who transferred up from last year and are playing this year. Alstork's defense somehow transfers, but shooting doesn't?

Your premise that Alstork is, or ever has been, a good shooter is factually incorrect. Alstork hit 3 pointers last year at about 38% (how, looking at his shot I don't know) but look a little farther into the nos. His overall shooting % (2 & 3 point attempts) was 40%. His overall shooting % from the field for his career is under 40%. Add to that, the fact he is up better competition,
in general, bigger stronger, faster opponents, it is pretty easy to see how his % has gone down even further.

 

[ChiefIllini]

So DJ Richardson was not a good shooter (38.8% overall)?

This new take that Alstork was never a good shooter is interesting. Really, someone should have pointed this out before we took him.

38.8% is not a good shooting percentage overall--below average. Now, if that was his 3 pt percentage, I would say thats slightly above average, especially (going off memory) considering how many 3 pt shots he attempted. DJ was a streaky shooter, but he had nights where he couldn't miss. Sadly, I think he improved very little offensively throughout his career here (thanks Weber/Groce!).

I think you could argue DJ was the best defensive player we've had in this decade, though if thats the case Egwu is 1b. He was fun to watch and an excellent player, and a much different player than Alstork. Maybe it's an unpopular opinion, but shooting 38% while playing half your games against B1G competition is much more impressive than doing the same against horizon league teams.

I think when we get transfers, people aren't diving deep into how they score there points , but rather looking at totals. Looking back at his percentages, I'd agree with others--they aren't great. He's obviously playing worse than his previous seasons would indicate. Learning to not be the alpha, better competition, and losing a lot of confidence is a triple threat that many players cannot overcome. Alstork isn't the first and wont be the last. He's carved a nice role, but we needed him to be a better shooter than he's been his entire career--and thats not the case.