Indiana 23, Illinois 20 Postgame

[RockfordIllini]

So of course I’m disappointed in the loss but after a couple of sleeps I’m actually still feeling pretty optimistic about this year.

Let’s remember…
Vegas O/U is at 4.5 wins
We were almost universally picked to finish last in our division
We were an underdog against IU
We are going unlikely to be favored in more than 1 or 2 of our conference games

I think a lot of fans felt that we would be better than predicted. And, although we didn’t get the win and had a lot of self inflicted wounds, I don’t think anyone would argue we were clearly more talented than Indiana, and outgained IU by almost 100 yards. All of which is to say, so far I think we’ve shown that we are a lot more talented than a 4-5 win conference bottom feeder.

A lot of the stuff that cost us the game can be fixed. Will we fix it? Remains to be seen. But we’ve clearly shown we are more talented than the punditry thought.

 

[EyeoftheIllini]

But if you have access to the replay you will notice that the official calls nothing on the original 'catch'. He doesn't signal incomplete until after the bobble towards the sideline.

I’ll have to take your word on when the initial signal was, but, c’mon you honestly think the issue with the catch was whether he was in bounds or not on th re-catch? Hightower was on the ground with defender touching him. Play was over then one way or another, and what happened when he was getting up had no bearing. Plus, whether he was in bounds would have been easily discernible with the replay if that was the issue.

And according to Brando, nothing was called on the field. Just another one of the stupid thinks he said that night. If it wasn’t signaled a TD, did he think the call on the field was intentional grounding?

Again, I’m much more disappointed with the Illini’s play the rest of the way after that then I am mad about the call. Yes, you got screwed by a call, but you had more than a half to overcome it. Put your big boy pants on (both players and coaches), stop shooting yourselves in the foot and win the damn game. Unfortunately, the team isn’t as good as many of us thought — and least not yet. Hopefully they clean up their mistakes and beat VA.

 

[krushalot2005]

Alright everyone, how about we just claim the victory? We technically should have had four more points, it’s kind of like Michigan claiming the 2020 Big Ten basketball championship. Seems like it’d be par for the course for the Big Ten/Kevin Warren.

 

[Boomauer]

But if you have access to the replay you will notice that the official calls nothing on the original 'catch'. He doesn't signal incomplete until after the bobble towards the sideline.

This is correct. It looked like he ruled the ball was incomplete because the ball came loose and was headed out of play ...although it was caught inbounds again. I don't think the official had any idea if it was a catch or not...he was looking for an out....bad split second decision on his part. Now on replay the only possible way to call it incomplete is if you rule his arms were not under the ball...that it was a trapped ball. The booth couldn't tell 100% it wasn't trapped so they went with the easy call....call on field stands.

 

[DaChief4ever]

4-7.....road looks pretty rough during the Big 10 season.

 

[CHI 1086]

Unfortunately prevent D is a staple in all levels of football. We’ll see it again. Maybe next week!

To make up for the money much down call...

 

[CHI 1086]

I thought the TEs were supposed to get involved in this offense?

They did...they fumbled...

 

[JFGsCoffeeMug]

Again, I’m much more disappointed with the Illini’s play the rest of the way after that then I am mad about the call. Yes, you got screwed by a call, but you had more than a half to overcome it. Put your big boy pants on (both players and coaches), stop shooting yourselves in the foot and win the damn game.

You don't have to choose between them. You can be mad about the missed call and also be mad at how we played in the second half. It doesn't need to be either one or the other.

 

[EyeoftheIllini]

You don't have to choose between them. You can be mad about the missed call and also be mad at how we played in the second half. It doesn't need to be either one or the other.

True, but I didn’t say I wasn’t mad about it, I said I am more disappointed ithan mad. And I never said others shouldn’t be irate if that is how they feel.

 

[GBIllini]

True, but I didn’t say I wasn’t mad about it, I said I am more disappointed ithan mad. And I never said others shouldn’t be irate if that is how they feel.

How about numb, which is how I started to feel half way thru their last drive when I realized we weren't going to come out of the prevent defense. Barring a big play by one of our dbacks I could see what was coming.

 

[rrillini]

We outgained them in yards and time of possession and should have won the game without the turnovers and penalties. Kind of reminds me of the Zook years where errors always did us in!

Zook was not a sharp "game" coach. I remember a game where we went for a 2 point conversion when it made no sense mathmatically.

 

[illinoistradition]

Zook was not a sharp "game" coach. I remember a game where we went for a 2 point conversion when it made no sense mathmatically.

And then forgot why he did it when they asked him in the postgame. IU 2011. The beginning of the end.

 

[Warren Carter Fanclub]

The prevent defense on the last drive sucked....HOWEVER.... I have just as big a problem with their prevent OFFENSE in the 4th Quarter. They have to start showing some killer instinct with a small late lead. Happened more than once last year also.

 

[BWBW]

Watched the recording after returning from a cruise. Hightower got robbed and so did we. There were indeed dropped passes that should have been caught. A certain tight end should only block from now on.

Our offense has a chance to jell and we certainly need a lot better chemistry between our QB and receivers. We also need a better RB rotation, McCray was out but we are supposed to go four deep. Use 3 and 4. If we aren't four deep, we are in trouble.

Some have made a comparison to the Zook years, which isn't exact but certainly fair. I'd like to compare Bazelak to Jeff George. He has a good arm and found a way to win. Not an exact comparison, but I think it is fair.

 

[Dan]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1566851950670483457

 

[Cook]

1) agreed its a low bar. i was originally going to include that as a caveat in my first response but figured everyone on here would understand that. will be more explicit next time.

also, who are we supposed to compare him to? CJ Stroud? last year is where we are coming from and our first year with BB; i think it's a reasonable point to look at in evaluating anything with this team.

2) appreciate comment on stats, i only used those to support what my eyes saw (both individually and teamwise).

how did you grade it out? out of interest, i rewatched our offensive possessions and stand by my take- overwhelming majority of throws were on time/target, like could not have been thrown better, which included ~3-4 drops (maybe ~25). there were 2-3 a bit behind but easily catchable and then 2-3 bad throws and then a few throw aways.

to me, that's not 'off target and behind receivers on most of his throws' which is what you first stated and what i was responding to

still disagree with and confused by your last sentence

i'm with your frustration, personally i think there are other much lower hanging fruit to correct vs QB play but we all have different takes on it. hopefully everything gets better incrementally through the year

I L L

I appreciate the reply and will agree we just see it differently. I probably should have said "off target on a lot (instead of most) of his throws" in my original post, but no way "the overwhelming majority of throws were on time/target."
FWIW, in today's presser Lunney said basically exactly what I was trying to say starting at 6:09.

 

[rrillini]

So of course I’m disappointed in the loss but after a couple of sleeps I’m actually still feeling pretty optimistic about this year.

Let’s remember…
Vegas O/U is at 4.5 wins
We were almost universally picked to finish last in our division
We were an underdog against IU
We are going unlikely to be favored in more than 1 or 2 of our conference games

I think a lot of fans felt that we would be better than predicted. And, although we didn’t get the win and had a lot of self inflicted wounds, I don’t think anyone would argue we were clearly more talented than Indiana, and outgained IU by almost 100 yards. All of which is to say, so far I think we’ve shown that we are a lot more talented than a 4-5 win conference bottom feeder.

A lot of the stuff that cost us the game can be fixed. Will we fix it? Remains to be seen. But we’ve clearly shown we are more talented than the punditry thought.

I pretty much agree with Rockford. Our QB play is improved. Our other improvements are spotty, but the growth as a team is positive. It reminds me of Alvarez's in Wisconsin where BB was a witness. After seeing several rebuilding projects at Illinois, this is the first that seems to have long term possibilities. The others were quick fixes and resulted with short term effects. Lets hope we continue the march to long term results. Obviously, I've been a long time witness and supporter.

 

[Chukwuwumba]

Analytics show outplayed Indiana. Seems about median compared to our winning teams.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1567159042275168256

 

[redwingillini11]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1566851950670483457

I'm sorry but keeping those conversations "private" is such a spit in the face to the fans. How many times do we have to get jobbed with no public accountability and no consequences before anything changes? B1G officiating in football and basketball is atrocious every single year. We are not the only school that suffers, but there's no denying that we have dealt with more than our fair share of it.

"Sorry, Bret." on the phone does nothing to help fans believe than anything will ever get better. I mean heck, even if it has to be after the season where the B1G shows fans 10 calls that were ruled incorrectly and said we will work on preventing these mistakes in the future, that would go a long way. Otherwise we are going to have people speculating about biased refs and fixed games and all sorts of should-be nonsense every single week. That ruins the experience, and will turn people off to following this sport.

 

[ChiefGritty]

I'm sorry but keeping those conversations "private" is such a spit in the face to the fans. How many times do we have to get jobbed with no public accountability and no consequences before anything changes? B1G officiating in football and basketball is atrocious every single year. We are not the only school that suffers, but there's no denying that we have dealt with more than our fair share of it.

"Sorry, Bret." on the phone does nothing to help fans believe than anything will ever get better. I mean heck, even if it has to be after the season where the B1G shows fans 10 calls that were ruled incorrectly and said we will work on preventing these mistakes in the future, that would go a long way. Otherwise we are going to have people speculating about biased refs and fixed games and all sorts of should-be nonsense every single week. That ruins the experience, and will turn people off to following this sport.

I mean there were a bunch of bad calls in the game, several of them in our favor, and collegiate refereeing in general is not great.

But the Hightower replay is an egregious process failure and not a matter of a poor in the moment judgment call. The catch rule as written was not applied by the replay official, and that's deserving of some further scrutiny.

 

[Ransom Stoddard]

I'm sorry but keeping those conversations "private" is such a spit in the face to the fans. How many times do we have to get jobbed with no public accountability and no consequences before anything changes? B1G officiating in football and basketball is atrocious every single year. We are not the only school that suffers, but there's no denying that we have dealt with more than our fair share of it.

"Sorry, Bret." on the phone does nothing to help fans believe than anything will ever get better. I mean heck, even if it has to be after the season where the B1G shows fans 10 calls that were ruled incorrectly and said we will work on preventing these mistakes in the future, that would go a long way. Otherwise we are going to have people speculating about biased refs and fixed games and all sorts of should-be nonsense every single week. That ruins the experience, and will turn people off to following this sport.

Keeping it out of the media doesn't mean there's no accountability or consequences. The old management adage "praise publicly, criticize privately" is extremely sound. There's no advantage to the conference in telling the fans that they addressed an issue with a particular ref or crew, because the next time it happens (because it will happen) those same fans are going to criticize the league that it didn't do enough.

Don't get me wrong, I'm as angry and frustrated by that TD decision as most people, but personally I get no catharsis from knowing that a ref got suspended for it.

 

[BWBW]

But the Hightower replay is an egregious process failure and not a matter of a poor in the moment judgment call. The catch rule as written was not applied by the replay official, and that's deserving of some further scrutiny.

Hopefully, the B1G shows the clip to each and every officiating crew and replay official this week and demands they never make the mistake again.

 

[Illini92and96]

Hopefully, the B1G shows the clip to each and every officiating crew and replay official this week and demands they never make the mistake again.

I hope they have continual education as part of their process, each and every week. Mistakes will happen regardless of demands unfortunately. At least until Skynet is active and takes over college football officiating.

 

[KBLEE]

4-7.....road looks pretty rough during the Big 10 season.

Given that we have a 12 game schedule, it would be quite hard to finish 4-7.

 

[pruman91]

Keeping it out of the media doesn't mean there's no accountability or consequences. The old management adage "praise publicly, criticize privately" is extremely sound. There's no advantage to the conference in telling the fans that they addressed an issue with a particular ref or crew, because the next time it happens (because it will happen) those same fans are going to criticize the league that it didn't do enough.

Don't get me wrong, I'm as angry and frustrated by that TD decision as most people, but personally I get no catharsis from knowing that a ref got suspended for it.

Agree 100 % with bold above .........We still get an L because of inept ref's and now the ineptness has spread to the replay blind mice......

When will it stop ??????????????????????????????????????????

Never.........................................Sad but true...........................