Northwestern 70, Illinois 66 OT Postgame

[DeeIL89]

Not only did Ben went 1 of 9 from 3, he also only had one rebound. Not good when you are 6'9 and only have one rebound.

 

[TheodoreRex]

Fun stat- Ben H 39 minutes 1-9 from 3: 5 rebounds, 3 total points. Morez 12 minutes- 3-4 fg's, 5 rebounds, 6 points. Anyones else notice what I notice??

 

[OrangeBlue98]

Have to win enough games before March to get into the tournament. We'll see if Underwood can make the right decisions to let this team win enough games to get to that point. Hope that happens, but I'm now skeptical.

 

[illiniswish09]

Depends upon what you mean by "more chances." If you mean spot minutes in situations when we need to break a zone or when the other team doesn't have a great scoring threat at power forward yes. If you mean starting like he has previously, absolutely not.

I know I’m in the minority but I’ll give him till January as a starter. If a situation like tonight occurs again then obviously you’d be foolish to keep him out there/continue starting him. First B1G game. I’m giving him a shot to respond next game. Although Wisconsin does start two 7 footers so Morez may be getting a start regardless of what happened tonight.

 

[illinifan1987]

unbelievable stubbornness on Brad's part. His postgame he flippin doubled down on it saying something along the lines of Ben's stats shooting the 3. Ok Brad, you go with your stats and I'll go with my eye test and feel for the game. Your boy is getting cooked on d and is 1-9 from 3 (they are literally picking on him and trying to get matchups against him). But nah, we'll keep our 5 star stud who plays his freakin butt off on the bench

It seems like we have a Luke Goode 1.00001
Only this Luke is starting

 

[The Sprouting Divot]

My nine year old has now witnessed an Illinois loss at NW three years in a row.

As we were walking back to the car, he declared that he didn't want to go to the game in Evanston next year, and that we should instead go to the game in Champaign where our home court advantage is better.

 

[Illini2010-11]

He also somehow keeps his players for 7 years. We need to find a middle ground there. Turning the entire roster over every season simply isn't sustainable.

We are looking at completely different types of recruits. NW builds program off of selling high quality education to recruits that are not the highest level, but certainly still talented. They can then develop them and be fairly competitive but not championship caliber.

They also have much different program expectations, so this model works very well there for Collins (his coaching style is perfect for this model). It simply will not work in Champaign (or other high-level power programs), especially with the way the portal and NIL works now. I suspect that is why Collins has stayed in Evanston. Hopefully once this portal situation stabilizes a bit, we will see a bit more roster stability. It is still the Wild West when we are recruiting the highest level talent, and then players leave for more playing time and NIL elsewhere after season.

 

[abchew2]

With this being the NIL era now I think it’s fair to look at players through the lens of ROI. The numbers I’ve seen floated that we offered Ben shout making a bigger impact than he has so far. I hope he can find his stroke because if it isn’t reliable we are an early exit. He has shot a good percent up till now but I think this was his highest volume game. So hopefully this is more of a one off. He had open looks which he was brough In here to hit.

 

[PNWIllini]

Conference road games are a different animal. We’re talented, but inexperienced. We’ll learn from this.

Hope so. I need to trust the coaching more and the befuddled beaten up contingent of naive, confused players less. Hopefully they can grow from this. Alabama and now Northwestern have both demonstrated if you hit Illinois with physical play, Illinois won’t have a good enough answer. Nobody takes charge even though some players look good. The team is not playing its game and will be a lot easier to beat.

We have to impose our will more. That was a tough game to watch us never launch.

 

[EyeoftheIllini]

Why do you call 2 time outs and draw up contested step back 3’s????

Illini never seem to get some of the looks other teams get out of timeouts, but if one of those contested 3s was the one Riley launched from 2 feet beyond arc, I don’t think that was how it was drawn up. Terrible shot/decision by Will.

 

[Battle89]

Incredibly depressing Uber-back-to-the-city postgame rant thoughts:

1. Props to NU student section. They’re always surprisingly good and honestly more (physically) active than Orange Krush. Guess it’s that dorky energy, lol.
2. Major props to Chicago Area Illini fans. As I posted in the game thread, non-student crowd had to be no less than 70% Illini fans. The entire upper section was pretty much ours. I’d genuinely hate that if I were an NU player for my home games, but obviously it fired them up.
3. Part of me wants to accept that “we are young” and just enjoy the ride … but it’s so depressing having LITERALLY zero idea which of these young guys will stick around. To endure the hiccups with the young guys, you need the optimism (and assurance) that you’ll see them all in a couple years kicking a$$. I HOPE I do, but let’s not pretend it’s as easy to shrug off “growing pains” losses as it used to be pre-NIL and transfer portal. Because it’s not.
4. Great place to watch a game! If NU didn’t have a crap history, that would be a much more iconic venue. There really isn’t a bad seat in that place. With that said, it’s not as loud as you’d expect given how closed in it is.
5. NU students that I interacted with were surprisingly - errr - dumb? compared to what I was expecting. For being such a phenomenal school, I was shocked what meatheads many of them sounded like in the crowds exiting the arena. “How far is Champaign?! I bet it’s FAR! You guys gotta drive FAR, hope you’re not intoxicated, HAHA.” Bro, you think 70% of your home arena was filled with solely Illini fans who drove multiple hours? It was a pro-Illini crowd because we have way more fans than you in your backyard.
6. At the end of the day, you can’t excuse away that loss. We folded, we were soft when it counted and we didn’t lose to some home team that was on fire and playing in some hostile environment. We just choked, period. We’ll be fine, but … damn. That was rough.
7. I liked these NU uniforms, and while I used to think their gothic gimmick was kind of lame … it’s won me over.

You had me until #7

 

[rtbritt]

When we were down one, we fouled. How much time was left? I surely am misremembering how much time was left, because during the game, I was wondering why we fouled. Maybe there was under 30 left?

 

[PNWIllini]

Northwestern successfully got us slowed down all night. We were unable to create open shots. We played tentatively and slow.

 

[Battle89]

Wish we had Ty for this game. I think we win that game if he was on the roster

If Brad didn’t play Morez he sure as !!!! wouldn’t have played Ty. Pardon my French but I was there and am still really pissed.

 

[PepeSilvia]

Humrichous should never see the floor again. Awful at both ends of the floor.

We are at a point where we do not need transfers from mid-level MVC programs.

Yeah because Domask totally wasn't the 2nd best player on an elite 8 team last year and one of the better Illini in recent memory.

 

[EyeoftheIllini]

I’ll let Brad be stubborn right now. You gotta give guys chances to overcome sh*t. If this was February/March then it’s a completely different story. Maybe even January. We need Ben to reach our ceiling.

JMO

This had the feeling of a game Brad was coaching more for later in the season than to absolutely get the win tonight. Seemed like he wanted to see how these guys handled adversity in a tight game. As much as we want to see the Illini win every game, a perfect season is always very unlikely. I’ll take this loss if it means growth for the team and a successful run in tournament.

 

[Battle89]

People say this and I get it, but … is getting on a bus and having a new rim to shoot at that psychologically damaging to players?? I was there tonight (section 217 in case I was by any of you!!), and the non-student section crowd was like 70% Illini fans. If these guys were in any way rattled by 15 rows of dorks in white shirts while their own fans far outnumbered them, they’re Charmin soft…

Damn Fighter, and I almost asked during the game where you were. Bad on me. I was in 218!

217 is that small corner section. I was the guy in the front row looking like he wanted to jump from the balcony all through overtime.

Bet we weren’t more than 20-30 feet apart.

 

[stlrunner]

When we were down one, we fouled. How much time was left? I surely am misremembering how much time was left, because during the game, I was wondering why we fouled. Maybe there was under 30 left?

I think it was under 30 seconds, but there was about a 9-10 second difference in game vs shot clock. So it seemed like we were gonna play it out, but then fouled an 87% FT shooter to go to the line.

 

[GallopingGhost]

I hate letting teams just easy switch and iso 1:1 letting guys get to the spots they want

Idk I liked watching Domask do it last year

 

[AndyKaufmanstutor]

How so?

 

[AndyKaufmanstutor]

We brought in two guys who can only shoot spot up 3s. If Brick house is ice cold, why not let the pony-tailed ginger get some attempts?
Did we seriously lose to a team whose best player jumps when he shoots free throws? And their second best player is a Freddie Mercury look-alike? I should have watched re-runs of Lawrence Welk tonight

 

[BashCtIllini]

Yeah because Domask totally wasn't the 2nd best player on an elite 8 team last year and one of the better Illini in recent memory.

Domask was 1st or 2nd team all MVC every healthy year he played. Humrichous was honorable mention. Remember, he spent most of his career playing on a team that Montverde would destroy.

 

[Noblesville Illini]

Hamer

Why doesn’t our head coach make the decision instead of a guy a few years removed from college? Help me understand.

 

[PepeSilvia]

Apparently you didn't watch the game. It's OK - if you don't want to deal with reality, I can't help that.

Humrichous is not a Big Ten player. There was a reason he was at a mid-level MVC program.

Maybe not but Marcus Domask was also at a mid-level MVC program(SIU is a long ways from their glory days).

I'm not expecting Hun to be Domask but Domask also had a bit of a slow start and didn't really get going to until January(outside of the FAU game).

 

[Battle89]

I think there's waaaayyyyy too much blame shifted to Ben.

KJ's threes were killer, but otherwise he had a tough game. Started very sloppy, complained about calls, got abused on D, especially in OT.

What happened to scoring under 7 seconds?

I know we play the percentages giving up mid-range twos but that's how we lost the game. As Collins said, 'they couldn't throw the ball in the ocean,' especially from three-point range, but we refused to double in the post.

Riley is a black hole on offense. He's gifted but he left many guys standing wide open and took tough shots.

Lots of blame to go around in my opinion.

That allowing the midrange two was top of mind when I made my pregame Pleasantville comment about them not missing anything. My fears came true.