IlliniKat91
- Chicago, IL
I'm adopting them as my team from here on out. If it can't be Champaign, it might as well be Corvallis
Loyola Chicago 71, Illinois 58 Postgame
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We have been a number 1 seed 4 times. This is the toughest one to take. When we got down 9-2 to start I knew we were in trouble and then only scoring 16 points at the 5 minute mark to go in the first half was troubling. We never really made a run at them. Oh well, what a fun year. Go Illini!!
Unfortunately or fortunately we will never know. Just have to prepare better next time.
Deleted member 11228
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Not really. He didn't start winning/making tournaments until Krutwig was a freshman. Before that he never made a tournament. He had an average record. I think he's done a good job the past 4 years (ironically with Krutwig) but before that not so much. Let's hold off anointing this guy as some genius.
Well, except for ISU. And he didn't exactly light it up at UALR - no post season appearances. And his record at Loyola was pretty poor until Mr. Krutwig showed up. Did he all of a sudden get better? Maybe. But it's also possible that he caught lightning in a bottle with a guy who is criminally underrated and who makes everyone around them much better. Does anyone think Loyola even has a winning record without Krutwig?
Maybe those four years under Majerus at SLU helped Moser. Who knows!
There were three tbugaboos that haunted us much of the year and that we knew could ultimately lead to our demise:
1)Turnovers and not taking care of the ball.
2)Free throw shooting
3)Slow starts
We got away with them at some points and we didn't at others. It seemed like we had established that consistency. The way I looked at it prior to the tournament is that we could survive one of those issues, but not two.
1)17 turnovers, many of the live ball variety. We had some guys that were extremely loose with the ball. Thought we turned the corner there.
2)Free throw shooting. We were solid there, especially Kofi. He was big time from the line.
3)We couldn't have had a worse start. We did this against Nebraska, Northwestern, Ohio State(at home)...just off the top of my head. You could probably throw the beginning of second halves into that bag(a 20-0 Purdue second half run comes to mind). When you fall behind against Loyola, that's almost a death sentence. They are just so strong with the ball, they control tempo, they play defense and they never get rattled.
What we were doing well over the last two weeks, we reverted back to having some of those troublesome tendencies from earlier in the year. .
Again, we knew that the potential was there to come back and bite us.....and it did.
All in all, great year. GREAT year. That stuff needs to be cleaned up and a focus going forward.
1)Turnovers and not taking care of the ball.
2)Free throw shooting
3)Slow starts
We got away with them at some points and we didn't at others. It seemed like we had established that consistency. The way I looked at it prior to the tournament is that we could survive one of those issues, but not two.
1)17 turnovers, many of the live ball variety. We had some guys that were extremely loose with the ball. Thought we turned the corner there.
2)Free throw shooting. We were solid there, especially Kofi. He was big time from the line.
3)We couldn't have had a worse start. We did this against Nebraska, Northwestern, Ohio State(at home)...just off the top of my head. You could probably throw the beginning of second halves into that bag(a 20-0 Purdue second half run comes to mind). When you fall behind against Loyola, that's almost a death sentence. They are just so strong with the ball, they control tempo, they play defense and they never get rattled.
What we were doing well over the last two weeks, we reverted back to having some of those troublesome tendencies from earlier in the year. .
Again, we knew that the potential was there to come back and bite us.....and it did.
All in all, great year. GREAT year. That stuff needs to be cleaned up and a focus going forward.
Well, he took over Arkansas Little Rock team that went 4-24 and went 18-11, 18-12. 18-12, Took over ISU team that went 8-21 and was 17-13 with his players. The ISU situation was bad, and had a couple of middling yrs, but they were exciting to watch. Then inherited a Loyola team that went 1-17 in the conference, next yr. 15-16, 2 yrs later CBI Champs 24-13, then 15-17, 18-14 all prior to Krutwig. Final 4 with a freshman Krutwig avg 10 ppg. Moser is red hot right now, I expect him to name his school if he chooses to leave Loyola. Wouldn't be surprised to see him in Bloomington Ind.
Well, every year since 2014 with the exception of one was a winning season and that year was 15-17. 4 of those yrs were prior to Krutwig
Deleted member 11228
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Those are very average results. Moser is red hot right now but how much of that has to do with Krutwig. You can't ignore the correlation. Red hot mid major coaches like Moser don't always pan out. I'm just saying it's not a given.
Cook
- Richmond, VA
This should concern us all. In the postgame around 5 min mark, BU was asked about adjustments. His answer was something like "we put everybody in them, Ayo in shakes, establishing Kofi, didn't go early enough to Kofi, we tried everything in the bag that's made us one of the most efficient offenses, Trent goes 1-10, can't turn it over 17 times."
It was post game and he hasn't had time to watch the film and break everything down, but that wasn't a compelling answer. It didn't really address what wasn't working and what he changed to combat it. It was more like yeah we tried harder, things didn't work, it was a bad game. Good coaches can get their teams into these games, great coaches can find the angles to a competitive advantage that consistently win them. Whether that happens in the off season, pre-game prep, at half time, or anytime during a game. You have to develop multiple options in your tool box and be able to throw them at an opponent when what you initially wanted to do gets taken away. To use a football analogy- you may have planned to run the ball coming in, but when they put 10 men in the box, you have to start throwing. Trying harder to run the ball isn't going to cut it.
Exactly what adjustments would folks suggest could have been made ?
One - use Ayo as a decoy and not ball handler.
Two - Use Andre/Frazier as backup ball handler when Ayo is trapped.
Three - throw the occasional Zone/Press in there to disrupt the game.
1. Stop running the high ball screen on offense. OSU almost came back to beat us in the BTT because they figured out it allowed them to double team Ayo at the top of the key and we had no answer to it. Loyola did this to us all game
2. Adjust our defense to what they were doing with their high ball screens. They were in essence setting a double screen with a guard and Krutwig on the perimeter and rubbed their ball handler by the screeners. The defender couldn't fight through both screens and with Kofi in essence playing a soft man-man vs Krutwig the ball handler was free to penetrate. When Kofi went to pick up the ball handler it left Krutwig with a mismatch. Either go zone or get more aggressive with the guy defending Krutwig
3. Kofi has to realize when he is being double teamed and to know when and where to kick the ball out, quickly. You put a guy in each corner and at the top of the key and have someone else slash into the lane - the defense can't cover all 4 if Kofi is double teamed. If Kofi can learn to do this he will have a long career in the NBA; if he can't he will need to learn a foreign language
We shouldve went big zone
Kofi
Coleman
Grandison
Ayo
Belo
The ramblers were not that big and this lineup allows us to work in more high an low action but also to have bigger and more effective screeners on the perimeter for Ayo and Belo with the ability to punish you for trying to switch everything .
Defensively you get a weakside shot blocker in Coleman to help on defense we love to play small but sometimes you have to go big and I would've loved to see if they could've kept our bigger lineup off the offensive glass.
They kept running the same double screen
They kept running the same high post set and it was if the scouting report never said Krutwig was left handed
Just pointing this out as a person who keeps and eye on the MVC... Barry Hinson was 22-10, 17-16, 20-13 and 17-15 in his final four years at Southern Illinois, never finishing worse than 4th in conference. They turned down at least 2, maybe 3 postseason trips to the CBI or CIT. What Moser was doing before Krutwig was not exceptional.
Give him credit, but don't go crazy.
Deleted member 747903
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The key is that Krutwig was given no resistance to facilitating at the top of the key. Again it's about matchups. Giorgi matches up better with Krutwig but you need Kofi on the floor for his offense.
1988 Villanova was terrible. Up by 10 at the half. The last 2 minutes of fouling to overcome a large deficit (and ushered in the double bonus) still stings. Villanova was a 6 seed, but still.
Illinois is bigger, stronger, deeper, and more physically talented. Loyola is certainly good enough to beat a quality team, but I was baffled by how little resistance we put up. Loyola is very good at what they do, but what they do is no secret. We seemed indifferently prepared, and played, with some exceptions, with little sense of urgency.
We obviously could have switched defensive looks. We're big enough and deep enough to have put bodies on people - we left a lot of fouls on the table. We could have recognized that it wasn't Ayo's day. We've won without him. If nothing else, we have the size and strength to be disruptive to Loyola's game plan. We let them do whatever they wanted. Losing's one thing, but for a number-1 seed with two All-Americans to be hammered from wire to wire by a mid-major during the first weekend is inexplicable. Like Nick Cave, I don't believe in an interventionist God, but Sister Jean has me wondering.
Deleted member 747671
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Great post.
For a more simplistic take, just do SOMETHING different. Even if it doesn't work, give Loyola a different look. Pick them up full court to try to speed them up. Try to force transition offense, even if it's only a secondary break. Make Loyola try to setup their D even quicker. Go to a small lineup to try to space out Krutwig on defense. Give a different look on ball screens - switch, hedge, double, etc. Just try to do something different simply for the sake of making Loyola do adjust and do something different.
pruman91
- interviewing new NL's daily....I really really am
Still too early for me to replay yesterday's fiasco but, i kept thinking why kofi is playing 3-5 feet off of krutwig at the top of the elbow...i guess the thought to the staff was to allow kofi to lag back down in the paint to protect the rim...But hindsight i think more d pressure by Kofi on krutwig MIGHT have stunted that pick and roll play they ran ad nausem......Many times the ballhandler drove around the screen and had an open lane to the rim with no weakside help by the Illini......Wow, it really hurts to type or even think about that game....hurts like hell still....hurts to the bone bad......
I go back to the Oscar Robertson/Chet Walker MVC days.....some of the greatest basketball ever. My point was that Moser took over teams that were bad and built them up. Getting into the CBI was a step to the NCAA tourney. Strange that HInson wouldn't play those games. Illinois went into those tourneys in the past. Moser took a team to the Final 4 with Krutwig averaging about what Curbelo averaged this year. If you remember their Final 4 run, Krutwig was a young, slow, soft kid, couldn't jump much, who was a contributor, but not the star of that team. Moser's got this team doing it again.
I posted several weeks ago when the Krutwig to Illinois stuff was out there that we would take him in a New York minute and he would be a star in Champaign. Guys on this board were scoffing at that because he didn't play against "Big 10 caliber" teams. As someone who has followed the MVC, I would think that you would agree that the MVC has a lot of guys that would start in the Big 10. FWIW, Bradley has a kid-Elijah Childs-who is transferring and would start at UI. He was the player we needed this year. A tough 6'7" rebounder who scores. Loyola wins a couple more and they will have been to 2 Final 4's since UI. And it's pretty obvious they don't have the talent that UI has, yet they won by 13. What's that tell you.
I saw one from his Instagram story and the kid was from Iowa FWIW.
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