I'm still steaming today, so I'm going to venture into a territory I don't normally go to which is meatball/hot take time on what is wrong with the Illini.
1. Mayer is a clubhouse cancer- he dogs it on defense, has poor attitude/just wants to do his thing, and he's gotten others on the team to follow his lead. Not because they agree with him or think of him as a leader but because they're like eff this, if he doesn't have to play within the team, neither do I. I think there was a reason why we were playing our best as a team when he was struggling and playing less minutes a game. Interesting that 4 of his 6 highest minute games and 3 of his 5 highest scoring games were losses. We start winning again when Underwood puts him in street clothes
2. CoHawk is not who we want him to be, he is who he is. As the most senior member of our team he's expected to be the responsible, fundamentally sound, mentally strong leader, who can captain the offense/defense effort. That's not him and has never been him. He's not any of those things and doesn't have those capabilities. The mere suggestion of any of those additional responsibilities overburdens him. Where does CoHawk excel? When he's given simple straightforward tasks. "Coleman go out and shut down Player X defensively." or "Coleman, go out and crash the boards on offense". That's when we get good CoHawk. The minute we put more on his plate is the minute he starts overthinking, attempting to do a little bit of everything but nothing well and losing focus on what is important. Simplify his role and instruction for what he needs to do on the court.
3. RJ has needs to understand how to be an effective player. Show him film of the two times last night he made a quick first step and drive to the basket, leading to an open layup for him and an easy assist for an open layup on an effing loop for 48 hours. Then tell him to either do that while playing with effort on defense or just sit on the bench. His choice.
4. Skyy is a freshman PG. In the B10. Historically, those players struggle. Hard. Skyy is no different. Kid needs time. Also, it generally takes at least 18months to truly start feeling like yourself after an ACL tear. Clark just hit that mark. We need to back off him as fans a bit. Goal for him needs to just be steady improvement and a hope that he can be a capable PG next season and not jump ship.
5. Underwood. Yelling no longer works with the upperclassmen of this team. They've tuned you out. Use the bench as their motivator instead. Simple as that. Continue teaching up the underclassmen in the way you see fit as they're the future of this program and you're going to have to rebuild your team culture and identity with them as the upperclassmen don't have it.