Northwestern 70, Illinois 66 OT Postgame
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OrangeBlue98
Iowa is not in a great spot right now (LvilleILL1)
- Des Moines, IA
The irony that a user with this screen name is minimizing a bad loss like this is definitely not lost on me.
I’m fine with losing. You didn’t see me saying anything about the Alabama game. You just can’t lose games against Northwestern when half the road crowd is your own fans and the talent advantage is so large. As I said earlier, we get an annual gift with Northwestern as our natural “rival”. Need to take advantage of that.
And I never said don’t ever get MVC transfers. Just get better ones than Humrichous. A player like Domask should be the floor for those types of players.
I’m fine with losing. You didn’t see me saying anything about the Alabama game. You just can’t lose games against Northwestern when half the road crowd is your own fans and the talent advantage is so large. As I said earlier, we get an annual gift with Northwestern as our natural “rival”. Need to take advantage of that.
And I never said don’t ever get MVC transfers. Just get better ones than Humrichous. A player like Domask should be the floor for those types of players.
@Dan, maybe you should consider changing the site name to IllinoisLunacy instead of Loyalty. It's one game lost (albeit a bad loss by the end of the season), and the majority of posters today have gone off the deep end. Maybe Xanax all around for everyone?
That’s what fans of every team do.
A must when you shoot the number of 3s we do is offensive rebounding. Brad eluded to this in his postgame. When 3s go in you do not have to do much but ... you have to go hard to the boards when they are not falling. We lacked some grit tonight. Ben's legs may have been dead playing that many minutes. Rez and Tomi did have a good stretch so would have liked to have seen more of them together for the rebounding. Boz had a rough game offensively and Riley gets lost in knowing what he can do vs knowing what to do still.
There were two critical points for the illine I could have blown this game apart but that led to their demise.
Up 46-36 and Ben H gets a wide open look from corner for a 3 and misses.
Northwestern immediately goes on a 7-0 run.
Up 55-50 with 2 mins left coming out of a timeout we take a wild 3 pointer and miss and then immediately foul to give Northwestern two free throws?
Need to run some decent offense in that siutation..... even if you don't score you run some clock and you make Northwestern come down and have to score without getting two quick free throws
Up 46-36 and Ben H gets a wide open look from corner for a 3 and misses.
Northwestern immediately goes on a 7-0 run.
Up 55-50 with 2 mins left coming out of a timeout we take a wild 3 pointer and miss and then immediately foul to give Northwestern two free throws?
Need to run some decent offense in that siutation..... even if you don't score you run some clock and you make Northwestern come down and have to score without getting two quick free throws
True but that’s where he needs to demand it. He’s willing to defer to KJ too much in crunch time. KJ should be the lead ball handler but Bos needs to know when he needs to steady the team.
Can't nitpick to that extent. You give us Boswell, I'll ante up Tomi just making a free throw with under a minute to go and we win. One free throw. When autopsies are done on these types of losses, we go back and see that every guy had at least one play that they should have made, but didn't.
Would have liked to see us spread the floor on offense a little more and allow KB or KJ take their man to the bucket…forget the high ball screen, have Tomi or Rez hang out along baseline forcing their defender to either guard them or go stop the drive… make NW bigs stop the drive, then kick it out for the 3, or dump off to one of our bigs for the slam…just a thought 
Maybe the worst coached game ive ever seen from Brad. Let Northwestern do whatever they wanted and didnt force them out of it. Our out of timeout playcalls were horrible and we got no easy looks. We went away from pick and roll and were unable to get any easy buckets, unlike NU.
Obviously the player didnt play great, too many missed layups and poor execution but this one is on Brad imo.
Obviously the player didnt play great, too many missed layups and poor execution but this one is on Brad imo.
Yeah, its either that or being a raving Homer, thinking we are a top 10 team.
I think Underwood is generally less stubborn than most coaches. That said, it’s obvious that Ben is a liability on defense.
Good points. That play with 2 mins left when we were up 5 was so frustrating. NU starts 4 seniors and a junior and they play a ton. That definitely showed in crunch time.
Can we already determine that Underwood and staff made an egregious mistake bringing in White instead of relying on Ty? Right now, I'd take Ty 100 times out of 100 over White.
White has shown exactly why he was part of a losing program before. He does very little winning things and a lot of losing things.
White has shown exactly why he was part of a losing program before. He does very little winning things and a lot of losing things.
In a tight game against a physical, veteran team, you can’t miss 9 layups. You make 1 and you win the game. Learn from it, have a shorter leash on Ben, more Morez and beat the Badgers.
Realistically, most here and anybody with any sort of common sense knew that given the complete roster overhaul and the relative youth of this team, it was going to make for an extremely bumpy ride in November and December, but the goal was to be clicking in February and March. All of this should have been 100% expected.
Now that the ride is bumpy and the types of mistakes, that were expected, are being made.....people are forgetting the original expectations and are cliff diving.
This is the first time that this group, has been in this type of game, on the road, together.... literally ever.
So, realistically, trying to make heads our tails out of the next 25 games, when we've only played 8 is ridiculous.
Our biggest problem last night was ball movement. When we had it we were getting good shots although not hitting them as well as we usually do. When we started dribbling too much we became stagnant and and ended up taking poor shots.
Lol.
I'm one of the realists on the board. Heck, half the board won't see this post because they have me on ignore.
But that's just plain wrong. Realistically we are finding our way and no one really knows where it ends up. Anyone with sense knew it would be bumpy.
I've stated many times that if we finish top 10 as some project it would be one of the best coaching jobs in our history.
People routinely overrate our talent and then routinely underrate the importance of team chemistry.
More Morez please. MORE-REZ
The high-low between him and Tomi is a good way to slow down/break an opponent’s run. Bill Self loved doing that…I remember the Augustine to Brian Cook high-low fondly for a lot of layups. Need to work on it more but should be an option aside from 5 out NBA style offense.
The high-low between him and Tomi is a good way to slow down/break an opponent’s run. Bill Self loved doing that…I remember the Augustine to Brian Cook high-low fondly for a lot of layups. Need to work on it more but should be an option aside from 5 out NBA style offense.
That was huge as well as missing key FTs.
Everyone knew and said before the season that we were going to have some growing pains. Last night was some growing pains. We are young and new to each other. I knew when I saw the number of seniors on NW starting lineup that we would probably lose this game on the road. We have too much talent on this team to worry about being .500 in the conference. We lost this game last year and went to elite 8. Not need to worry yet. Don't get me wrong I hate losing to NW almost as much as I hate losing to Iowa.@Dan, maybe you should consider changing the site name to IllinoisLunacy instead of Loyalty. It's one game lost (albeit a bad loss by the end of the season), and the majority of posters today have gone off the deep end. Maybe Xanax all around for everyone?
Also, the one handed, soft passes and cross court passes that almost all of our players make, drive me nuts.
I agree, but unlike 02-03 we may lose 85% of our roster next year. As to NW game, road wins in the BIG are GOLD. This was one of the easier games on our schedule to bank some of that gold. We got our lunch money taken instead. Not getting any easier from here on out.
Agreed, also your two best 3pt shooters shoot 15 threes and hit just 1 at a percentage of below 7%! Plus Boswell was 0 for 3 and so to even have a chance is actually a surprise when we shoot that bad from 3.
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I was at the game and I was as frustrated with Ben and BU as anyone. I was very critical.
A relatively poor night's sleep later, we have to realize that inserting Morez opens up a whole new set of problems at the point of his career.
Does he do a better job than Ben when it comes to not getting bully balled? Absolutely.
However:
1)As a freshman, he still makes a ton of mistakes, one being silly fouls. There is absolutely no way to know that he's able to play D straight up and not get slap happy.
2)You simply can't have him in the game, YET, because he's God awful from the foul stripe and he would have been a target whenever he touched it. Missed free throws are basically a turnover.
3)When Morez would have been stronger in the paint, when the ball swings you're asking an awfully big man to be guarding an uncomfortable distance away from the hoop. This can lead to a lot of wide open looks and blow bys.
4)We were in a scoring drought and needed some of those open looks to go down. We also need our guards to be able to get into the land and finish or draw a foul and get to the line. None of that happened. Don't think that Morez solves that.
Ben, KJ and WR all got exposed defensively. They all did. Ben is getting singled out because he was the guy who was 1 for 9. In OT, it was KJ being abused.
Do I think that Morez would have solved one problem? Yes. Do I think that we become weaker in the last two minutes of a game with him in there? Yes.
If he would have gone 2-6 from the foul stripe, people would have melted down that he shouldn't have been in the game and they would have been right.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that Ben won't shoot that way again this year. If BU pulls him for missing shots, now you'll have a guy looking over his shoulder because he's afraid that misses result in benching. Can't have that either.
It's WAY too early in the year to be throwing guys under the bus when we knew, all off-season, that the start to this season was going to be challenging.
A relatively poor night's sleep later, we have to realize that inserting Morez opens up a whole new set of problems at the point of his career.
Does he do a better job than Ben when it comes to not getting bully balled? Absolutely.
However:
1)As a freshman, he still makes a ton of mistakes, one being silly fouls. There is absolutely no way to know that he's able to play D straight up and not get slap happy.
2)You simply can't have him in the game, YET, because he's God awful from the foul stripe and he would have been a target whenever he touched it. Missed free throws are basically a turnover.
3)When Morez would have been stronger in the paint, when the ball swings you're asking an awfully big man to be guarding an uncomfortable distance away from the hoop. This can lead to a lot of wide open looks and blow bys.
4)We were in a scoring drought and needed some of those open looks to go down. We also need our guards to be able to get into the land and finish or draw a foul and get to the line. None of that happened. Don't think that Morez solves that.
Ben, KJ and WR all got exposed defensively. They all did. Ben is getting singled out because he was the guy who was 1 for 9. In OT, it was KJ being abused.
Do I think that Morez would have solved one problem? Yes. Do I think that we become weaker in the last two minutes of a game with him in there? Yes.
If he would have gone 2-6 from the foul stripe, people would have melted down that he shouldn't have been in the game and they would have been right.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that Ben won't shoot that way again this year. If BU pulls him for missing shots, now you'll have a guy looking over his shoulder because he's afraid that misses result in benching. Can't have that either.
It's WAY too early in the year to be throwing guys under the bus when we knew, all off-season, that the start to this season was going to be challenging.
Totally agree with this. We just kept dribbling into the trap after the high pnr. It screamed for ball reversal and/or big man slashing to rim. Morez did it a couple times with success. Was so frustrating to watch in person. Also don’t understand why we didn’t really post Tomi at all in 2H.
MadtownIllin
- Madison, WI
Couple of observations:
1) NW forced our offense to run 30 feet out (especially in 2nd half) which made for poor shot selection
2) they really only had 2 guys who carried their offense (especially in 2nd half and ot), so why not double them to get the ball out of their hands and force someone else to beat you? It wasn't so much the fadeaway shots that Barnhizer made it was that we allowed him to get to that spot..
1) NW forced our offense to run 30 feet out (especially in 2nd half) which made for poor shot selection
2) they really only had 2 guys who carried their offense (especially in 2nd half and ot), so why not double them to get the ball out of their hands and force someone else to beat you? It wasn't so much the fadeaway shots that Barnhizer made it was that we allowed him to get to that spot..
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