This group of young men are at a point where their three experienced leaders MUST decide the legacy they want to leave and bond together to lead this team to excellence. Before the season started, a stated that I wondered who was going to be the leader. Also, while acknowledging the elite skills provided by the roster, how could those skills be used to offset the obvious holes that every player must overcome such as free throw shooting, defense, three point shooting, passing, etc.
This group, it would appear, has the talent to beat anyone, but lacks in areas that can be exploited in a long schedule of challenging opponents. Some stumbles will occur and are expected. How they bounce back will show us much about their character and even more about the leadership of the coaching staff. They must get to work bringing out the best in their team in many ways.
Before the season started, I also stated this would be BU's most challenging puzzle. He must fit all the pieces together to max the potential of this team. As we have seen with our own eyes, that just is not an easy task, and maybe one that no one can do to the satisfaction of most. But Underwood's responsibility is to those players, to get them to grow into to better players as well as better people. It is proving to be as tough of a task as I expected.
Yet, there are a myriad of goals for this team that can be reached. Will they? Not a soul knows. But we will be watching to the end to see if this is a true bunch of Fighting Illini.
