Michigan 79, Illinois 69 POSTGAME
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No, it's your really depressing, very negative opinion.
Nah, if it's not the truth, it's at least a well-informed opinion.
IlliniDent
- Chicago, IL
No, it's your really depressing, very negative opinion.
:thumb:
Painful to read, people don’t understand how big of a hole we were in
Really old timers will remember the Slush Fund years, Harv Schmidt, Benedict Gene Bartow and how Lou Henson took 5 (!) years to get us to the NCAA after being hired.
If Underwood is serious about all that "dream job" stuff, and if Whitman stays committed to him, he is going to succeed here. But it is going to take time. He is trying to play Sweet Sixteen style NCAA basketball with a bunch of freshmen and a bunch of guys who have never won anything at this level in their lives.
I'm encouraged by what I see the team do every so often. I'm encouraged that Underwood is a fierce competitor. I'm encouraged by the incremental growth I see in the players.
This roster has massive holes in it. No true center. No true power forward. No real bulk inside what so ever that would be mistaken for S16 power. No cadre of lightning-fast great swing men, "Kendall Gill / Deron Williams types" to make up for it.
Believe it or not, the Big Ten (oh sorry, the B1G) is still one of the Top 2 or Top 3 conferences in the country. You just don't walk in and win with the guys we have on this roster without some significant personal growth happening on all their parts. And as we've seen, that hasn't happened yet.
BU has won everywhere he's been but here so far. Give the man some space. He's competing. He's trying roster combinations. He's attempting to get the inexperienced and the chronic underachiever to play the game right at a very high level. Do we want that, or do we want to sleepwalk to 15 wins with no expectation of any more?
Let's step back from the ledge and let the season play itself out. Those were two very difficult road games in a row. I will be amazed if this team, given Underwood's coaching track record, doesn't figure it out soon and go on a run, *including* a run of an upset or two, a signature win or two.
We are ranked 8 in offensive rebounding per game out of 351 and 109 total rebounding...for a "undersized team", that is something at least.
http://www.ncaa.com/stats/basketball-men/d1
The ads are based on your internet history...
Oh word? That make *so* much sense.
So check it (and this is embarrassing)... But I got an uncle named Milfred. Good guy, real stoic, no non-sense, one of these dudes who be cleanin his rifle in his down time and you always kind of wonder why. Like, you don't hunt, why you stay cleaning your gun? Anyways, we used to play ball together before his knee just couldn't do it anymore, and you know, when you hoopin with someone and y'all runnin on the break, you don't have time to pronounce every damn syllable in they name. Especially if I'm ballin with my Greek friends, like Andronicus or Xenophanes. So, when I hooped with my uncle, I would shorten his name, and just be like, "yo Milf, lemme get it down low", "who you d-in tonight, Milf?", or "alright Milf, lemme see your best Charles Oakley impression". And - like I said, this mad embarrassing - I hadn't the slightest idea why random dudes would always bust out laughing at us when we played together. Until, one day, I needed to go pickup my uncle at his job cuz his pickup truck wouldn't start, but I couldn't for the life of me remember where his office was. I thought the internet might be able to help. See, I'm not real good with technology, man. And for some reason, I thought if I searched his name and some words relating to his job, Google would tell me where his office was. So I typed in 'Milf', 'hamster', and 'experiments'. My uncle is a biologist and they do a lot of animal testing at his work.
Needless to say, the search results taught me a lot about the modern world.
Yeah, all this is mad strange to share on a basketball forum, for sure. But, this is how it relates to the game today: being a sports fan reflects human life most vividly in the way that it guarantees suffering. If you a fan of a team, you gonna suffer. It's literally unavoidable. In sports, your team loses, they play like sh*t, they get clowned. In life, you lose your job, your car breaks down, your partner leaves you for an Indiana Hoosiers fan. The thing is, when sh*t gets bad, we like to analyze, dissect, debate, make 3D prints of why things are bad. And it usually leaves us feeling worse. Sometimes the best way to deal with a hard situation is to bring the humor out of it, until things get better.
Things *will* get better.
-On3
Laughed, then cried.
Illini_1979
- Oregon
Enjoyed this immensely. Thanks.
This is the same Minny that just suspended their center who makes a huge difference. J Smith had two chances to join the Illini, he didn't lets move on to the players who bleed orange and blue.
Ebo
I didn’t bother reading the posts earlier in on this thread, so sorry if redundant:
At this point I think i’d rather see more minutes for Ebo over Finke. Ebo gets more rebounds, is a factor defending the paint, and has good hands to finish those lob and layup plays.
I didn’t bother reading the posts earlier in on this thread, so sorry if redundant:
At this point I think i’d rather see more minutes for Ebo over Finke. Ebo gets more rebounds, is a factor defending the paint, and has good hands to finish those lob and layup plays.
I think I'm with you. Finke has played himself out of the rotation at the same time Ebo has played himself in.
Finke:
Pro - veteran, has B1G conference play experience
Pro - works hard
Con - suspect defense
Con - shot isn't falling
Con - not rebounding
Ebo:
Pro - unexpectedly reliable offensive weapon for a freshman big (only in paint)
Pro - shot-blocker
Pro - runs the floor like a gazelle
Con - is raw and will make mental mistakes and get schooled by experienced conference bigs
Con - not a shooter
I think Ebo deserves more minutes in the face of that.
I just can't express how disappointed and perplexed I am with Finke's slump. We know he's better than this, and I don't know what the deal is. Was he simply a better fit for Groce's offense than Underwood's? The dip in 3P% in particular is really bizarre for a junior, especially a RS.
Somebody mentioned elsewhere that they'd like to see Finke the elder go to GCU and finish out his college career there. I'll state strongly I'd be sad to see that - aside from desperately needing size on our team, I still think this is a head thing for Finke and his shot will start to fall again. But yeah, I think Ebo's proven he's ready for more minutes.
Correct, I think we'll see more Ebo if Finke continues to struggle. BU is smart enough to know when to make changes, especially when we're at the bottom of the conference standings.
I doubt that Underwood would have recruited Finke.
That's certainly a reasonable worry, but I think I've seen more plays where the contrary is true. Just check Dan's .gif threads from the past two games to see examples of Ebo catching passes that Egwu (God bless him) would have fumbled. I don't think Eboigbodin has Nnanna's hands of stone, and that's what has me excited about his future.
With what looks like a 10 man rotation now, it will be interesting when Illinois plays teams that only go 7 or 8 deep and their key players are over 35 minutes. It would seem to give us the advantage if we keep the aggressive defense and avoid too many fouls. It seems that most of the teams played so far are going almost as deep as Illinois. I do not recall anyone that played 35 minutes against us.
Deleted member 29907
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Haven't seen that concern at all - in fact he caught a (not so great aimed at the crotch) pass from one of the guards during a pick and roll in the Minnie game (finished for a dunk) that i was really surprised he pulled in.
Jordan had some really nice assists. 11 turnovers & one assist by the starting guards is not a formula for winning. Lucas, was better than either, he had 6 assists & 3 TO's.
I turned the game on around the 16 minute mark in the second half. West coast livin' can be tough on midwest fandom
Can somebody tell me what was working in the 1st half? Because the portion of the game that I caught wasn't especially competitive.
What was working in the first half was our defense... But michigan adjusted
Man, this forum was so full of hope and positivity just a couple weeks ago, but now... Those that are so miserable should become a cubs fan or something.
In earlier games, he definitely had several instances of “Nnanna hands” but not so much the past couple of games. Good sign of improvement!
Deleted member 631370
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Eh......this place has been pretty gloomy since the Wake Forest, NW, and Maryland losses. Only the Mizzou win changed the mood -- but only temporarily.
Most people, I think, understand what this season is -- and what it isn't. Sure, some came out guns blazing demanding an NCAA tournament and rapid improvement and yada yada yada. For them, this has been nothing short of catastrophic. But for many others (myself included), this has been the painful start to the BU era that we sort of expected.
I had us going 10-3 in the non-conf, and 9-9 in Big Ten play. That latter prediction doesn't look like it's in great shape, but I didn't think an 0-4 start was at all unlikely.
Smith and Alstork haven't really panned out the way I expected thus far, but on the flip side, Frazier and Leron Black look better than expected. On the whole, the defense is a bit better than I expected; the offense worse. But the general trajectory is where I figured it would be. And when you consider we haven't lost a game by more than 10 points yet, there's really no reason to panic.
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