blackdog
- Champaign
Plummer might have not been the best defender but he at least tried to follow the scouting report and improved his effort 100 times over from where he was at the start of the season.
Illini Basketball
- Status
Plummer might have not been the best defender but he at least tried to follow the scouting report and improved his effort 100 times over from where he was at the start of the season.
Fighter of the Nightman
- Chicago, IL
I agree now, but I'm not sure I would have agreed in 2019-20 when we were starting to get good again. I grew up seeing a Sweet Sixteen as "two wins in the Tournament," not some quasi-mythical "Second Weekend status" that people are now treating it as; it was equidistant between a Second Round loss and an Elite Eight loss, and none of them were the Final Four. You get to hang a banner and have the confetti come down and hoist a trophy for a Big Ten title. Now, we already have a Big Ten title, we should have another one and we have a BTT title with Underwood already, so our fan base's perspective has obviously shifted a lot toward wanting a Tournament run. However, I think if we had a series of #7 to #10 seeds and a couple of Sweet Sixteens, people would be just as mad that we weren't consistently competing for conference titles and getting high NCAAT seeds.
Ideally, we will return to the 2001 to 2006 stretch of both.
How quickly kids forget. Hope it turns out better than Adam and Andre.
Trent and Ayo (and Kofi) are a personality type of being positive, mature, talented, and showing commitment to your craft and your teammates and coaches. They came into the Illini program already that way. Coaching is easy when you have players like that coming into your program. Coaching is not so easy when those player metrics are a bit lacking.
It’s tougher when a coach has to hope that a player ‘matures’ once he arrives. This can happen of course. But that’s never a given.
Give me eight guys with the Ayo-Trent personality and I’ll worry about teaching free-throws and handling late-game pressure later.
I really like Underwood and want him to get into a groove and stay here for a long time. But save Ayo, there has been no consistency for top level guard play that will translate to success in March. I'll give him that Loyola was a fluke, but even if he ran that to E8 it doesn't change the argument for his tenure. He needs to recruit startable HIGH SCHOOL level PGs and keep them until they go pro. Underwood will never win with upperclassmen transfers. They simply aren't here long enough to help his system thrive. There's half a dozen major misses at the position that are gone. Sure, every situation is unique... Figure something out.
The 20-13 argument doesn't really play for me. John Groce took us to 20-15 and was fired. Brad Underwood also put up 20 wins this season but it took an extra $2,500,000 to help him do it.
But this doesn’t fit my preconceived notion that he is a horrible person who gets off from yelling at 19 year old kids!!!!! It can’t possibly be true!
Whoa, I need to get into landscape mode on my phone more oftenI'm sorry, your avatar prevents me from reading anything you post.
Agreed! Mike Latulip shared some great insight into Coleman’s NBA stock earlier this year. He said something along the lines of, “guys like Coleman need to focus on being great at the things which caught the attention of scouts in the first place - locking up guys on defense, cleaning up the glass, and hitting 3’s in rhythm of the offense”. I imagine he’ll get similar feedback from scouts and that Brad & co will want the same out of him. It’s all between the ears with Coleman.
If the 18 year old's entering the military (a whole lot more serious profession) where the stakes are infinitely higher are considered adults, then the players are most certainly adults getting paid a pretty penny to play . . . . and a whole lot more than those entering the military.
We can't pretend like Adam Miller playing for a completely depleted team (he was basically the only guy that stayed and he didn't play last year/already burned his free transfer) that was almost entirely guys that followed the Coach from Murray State or other schools' rejects would shot as poorly had he been with Illinois the past couple years.
With how much promise both Miller and Curbelo showed as Freshmen, there's no way a better coach isn't turning that into an elite backcourt as Juniors. The fact is that transferring didn't work out for either of them, but that doesn't mean it worked out for us either. And the fact that current Freshmen can see what little good transferring did for those guys, and still want to transfer out anyways... well.. not great.
People need to look at things from the standpoint of how an objective fan would. No neutral fan in the country is looking at Brad Underwood right now and thinking that there's an elite coach there. I'm not saying that to be mean, to be a hater, to be illogical or overly emotional, that's just the stone cold facts of where we're at and how I'd look at Underwood if he was the coach of some random team in a different conference that fancies itself a Basketball school.
Better than Groce is not good enough. I'm not saying there is zero goodwill for winning the Big Ten, but we also need to make a Sweet Sixteen. Another season like this year's, fine, keep him around since it's another NCAA Tournament. A dip though? With all the guys that transfer out? Then nope, he's out of here.
With how much promise both Miller and Curbelo showed as Freshmen, there's no way a better coach isn't turning that into an elite backcourt as Juniors. The fact is that transferring didn't work out for either of them, but that doesn't mean it worked out for us either. And the fact that current Freshmen can see what little good transferring did for those guys, and still want to transfer out anyways... well.. not great.
People need to look at things from the standpoint of how an objective fan would. No neutral fan in the country is looking at Brad Underwood right now and thinking that there's an elite coach there. I'm not saying that to be mean, to be a hater, to be illogical or overly emotional, that's just the stone cold facts of where we're at and how I'd look at Underwood if he was the coach of some random team in a different conference that fancies itself a Basketball school.
Better than Groce is not good enough. I'm not saying there is zero goodwill for winning the Big Ten, but we also need to make a Sweet Sixteen. Another season like this year's, fine, keep him around since it's another NCAA Tournament. A dip though? With all the guys that transfer out? Then nope, he's out of here.
Seems fairly clear why he left
I gotta be honest. I was MF’n Jayden after that play as well. Between some of his choices and most of Mayers choices, i was well above my MF’n percentage from last year.
Wish the kid well. But sincere and ty proved to be dogs. Jayden was a chew toy on defense.
Wish the kid well. But sincere and ty proved to be dogs. Jayden was a chew toy on defense.
Imagine if the portal had been around when uninspiring freshmen and sophomores such as Luther Head, Kendall Gill, Roger Powell, Robert Archibald, Chris Gandy, Warren Carter, Larry Smith, and many others were playing. Do you think any of those guys would’ve made it to their Illinois degree?
It’s a different era now, and while I personally think it’s a good thing for these young men to have freedom to transfer and make money on their names, images and likenesses, many of them will be making rash, immature decisions that may ultimately stunt their growth both on the court and in life.
It’s a different era now, and while I personally think it’s a good thing for these young men to have freedom to transfer and make money on their names, images and likenesses, many of them will be making rash, immature decisions that may ultimately stunt their growth both on the court and in life.
Has there ever been one single successful player that hasn’t received a boatload of trash talk (and ‘harsh’ talk) from all directions? Look, nobody wants to be criticized by a coach. But a coach and the player are supposed to be walking the same road together... to become a better player and to win games. You have to believe that the coach has your back even as he criticizes you. And if you don’t have that kind of trust in a coach then you have no business playing for him anyway.
In our blacktop and pickup games we can be called all kinds of creative and harmful names. Does that stop us from playing and then going back to the court the next day? If it does... then we are no kind of a player. Trash talk... ‘harsh’ talk... is a much a part of this game as backboards and nets.
If we haven’t been called every name in the book by the time we get to high school then we haven’t spent nearly as much time as we should out on the court.
This has been covered (a lot) but Groce was not coming off the heels of B1G championships.
ChiefGritty
- Chicago, IL
IMO this is the critical piece not just in coaching but in all leadership.
Why do people think that kids are MORE likely to make "rash, immature decisions" AFTER a year in college than the well-thought out, mature decisions they must have made in high school? (not attacking the original poster, but the idea).
The transfer portal shows one thing - the system NEVER benefitted players. So now a young person makes a bad decision? At least they have the freedom to make the decision.
I do, however, sympathize with those who don't like the direction in which the sport is going, and for those people, I can give you one bit of good news-- I will stay OFF your lawn!
Dee_4_Three_83
- Mahomet, IL
Those farmers insurance guys are TOUGH.
All kidding aside, I think BU does come from this school of thought. I just personally think anyone who uses fear as their primary form of motivation is missing a lot of other strategies.
Good luck to you Hawk!!!!!!!!! I will be rooting very hard for you in the NBA!!!!!!!!
Who would you all say is the best "trash talker" among the players on the current Illinois team?
Because we’ve seen it, more often than not, not work out in the player’s benefit. This is not to say it never works out — Podz, just to name one example — but do you really believe Adam Miller has benefitted more by going to LSU than if he had stayed and grown in one system? Maybe Curbelo needed to stay and get yelled at more often instead of going off and showing up his new coach by eating popcorn on the bench.
Of course, these are just a couple of recent examples close to home. I’m guessing TSJ’s decision to transfer will benefit him greatly. Matthew Mayer? Probably not so much. Hard to say. But the examples I posted earlier (Head, Gill, et al) all benefitted by sticking out their rough early years and staying at their chosen college until the end.
Lol burn it!!!!!
sacraig
- The desert
BuT hE yElLs A lOt
I was always under the impression that if a coach needles, picks, yells at you, that he is just driving a player he likes to do better. Be the best he can be! If there is no negative comments, then he doesn’t care about you as an athlete. Safe to say, I got my !!! chewed out a bunch! Cowboy’s up, and played harder. These kids appear to grow up wanting that second place trophy!
You want Skyy’s to go with that too?.
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