On the above post, I was wrong in saying it was points per possession. Rather, it is points per shot taken. My bad.
Maryland 91, Illinois 70 Postgame
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Stop shooting the bad ones, anyway. From five feet beyond the arc (though we did make one of those!) or from someone who hasn't been making them (cough--Boswell--cough) off the bounce, early in the shot clock.
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I agree only if we are 100% healthy, which is rare, so I'll take 90% healthy. Any less than that, its another lost. This is the mind set until this team proves otherwise.
Dick player? Wow. Sorry. Sick. Sick players sitting on the bench. Are they not contagious?
A couple of thoughts:
1) Worst time (if there is a good time) for Tomi to be out, with MD's front court.
2) A classic case of one (rigged) loss turning into two.
3) We have what, four freshmen in our top seven or so rotation? No matter how highly rated they are, experience is a great equalizer. What's that saying about freshmen?
4) My opinion is that the lethargy we was last night was more a function of health rather than disinterest. I don't see any evidence of any Mayorisk attitude.
5) Those that think Brad should go off on the players like we have seen in the past don't seem to understand the mindset of extremely young players, no matter how gifted. I believe that Mr Jordan's freshman campaign was somewhat rocky early on.
Brad has taken on quite the challenge...remember when many were saying that this team was built for year two?
1) Worst time (if there is a good time) for Tomi to be out, with MD's front court.
2) A classic case of one (rigged) loss turning into two.
3) We have what, four freshmen in our top seven or so rotation? No matter how highly rated they are, experience is a great equalizer. What's that saying about freshmen?
4) My opinion is that the lethargy we was last night was more a function of health rather than disinterest. I don't see any evidence of any Mayorisk attitude.
5) Those that think Brad should go off on the players like we have seen in the past don't seem to understand the mindset of extremely young players, no matter how gifted. I believe that Mr Jordan's freshman campaign was somewhat rocky early on.
Brad has taken on quite the challenge...remember when many were saying that this team was built for year two?
Illini in Italy
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Yeah, and if you believe those numbers, I’ve got some dry land in the Everglades to sell you. Queen is one happy meal short of being clinically obese and Reece is an athletic masterpiece, but both those guys are quite a bit bigger than Morez and Ben.
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We’ve been struggling to slow down Reece for 3 years. No one should have any illusions that Hum was going to give him problems.
Young teams can be complicated. You’ve got to be able to play through absences. We competed for 30 minutes, but it all fell apart down the stretch. Just no answers for them in the paint.
Gotta learn from it and get better. You can’t hang your head and feel sorry for yourself. We won’t win many games in this league playing as uninspired as we did last night. These guys need to come in ready for a fist fight & play with some confidence.
We’ve seen what they can be when they come out hot. They’ve got to learn to take a punch & get up fighting. So far this season, we haven’t done that. It’s part of the learning curve. Hopefully we find it before March.
I got you, Brah 
Yeah … everyone who’s getting paid to do a job (coaches, players, et al) needs to act like a “professional” and bring fire/passion to their work. … or find a different line of work.
That's all it takes
I haven't received the flu shot in over 10 years. I got so f'n tired of getting bedridden sick, for a week+, right afterwards. And I mean EVERYTIME. The longest that I've been sick since? 3 days...take it for what it's worth
If puppies don't make ya smile. Sumnt wrong
Yelling more and bringing more outward "fire" for us to see does not make effective professionals and leaders. The elite 8 seemed to work well for the new "no fire/passion" Underwood. Brad and the Illinois basketball program will be fine.
How many more wins this year would this year's team have if Brad was yelling more and taking trash cans to a pizza parking lot? How did the old Brad who was full of passion work in 22-23? These players have never played togther before this year. We have surpassed my expectations I had in November; hope we can keep doing it!
How much $$ will it take for Ty to burn his redshirt?
No desire to enter into a pissing match, but fire/passion <> yelling. The intended meaning is drive/desire. “Yelling” is not professional behavior IMHO.
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We lost the rebound battle, the shooting battle and they stole THE ball 10 times from us...
that is all a great recipe for a blowout loss at home and Igniting an Illinois loyalty BOARD MELTDOWN.
I'd take our loss over what the Puds did to scUM (road). Win the rebound and FT battle...get demolished in every other category. 14...count them, 14 steals!
Someone posted "we're just people who care." That comment misses the mark. We are fans, and many are hard-core fans. That's a different breed from someone who cares. The world over, teams have legions of hard-core fans, throughout Europe and South America for sure. Here in the good ole USA, it's not to the point where we have to build a moat around the court or the field of play, but in some cases--Penn State, Alabama, LSU, Tennessee. OSU and so many others in football--I sometimes wonder. I often wonder if it's America's true religion; after all, that's where the money and the passion go. I often wonder why hard-core fans aren't listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual as victims of a mental disorder. And when it comes to Illini football and basketball, I count myself among that number. And (for me) it's been that way since the early '50s. When we beat Stanford 40-7 in the (1952?) Rose Bowl I was already old enough to be giddy for a few days.
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I wonder [really hope] if the Illini basketball team and all the coaches watched the Purdue basketball game yesterday. They would have seen how a GOOD team comes ready to play at both ends of the court. They came out with ENERGY! Purdue played tremendous defense not allowing Michigan to drive the lanes, contained Michigan's 2- 7'-0m footers for most of the game. Their offense was on fire. They demonstrated how to shoot 3's. Purdue is a well coached team. Matt Painter knows how to make IN GAME adjustments. That's why I think Purdue will once again win the BiG.
But on the other hand, the Illini got a good look in the mirror of how they look and play when they come out lifeless, with little or no effort. There have only been a few games when we have seen the Illini play at the top of their but unfortunately, we have seen the worst of this team raise its ugly head lately!
My hopes for this team have dwindled to a flickering candle about to be blown out. The Illini will, finish in the middle of the pack in the BiG and their journey to the Big tourney will be short-lived. They will probably get a 7-8 seed in the NCAA tourney if lucky but again they will underperform!
But on the other hand, the Illini got a good look in the mirror of how they look and play when they come out lifeless, with little or no effort. There have only been a few games when we have seen the Illini play at the top of their but unfortunately, we have seen the worst of this team raise its ugly head lately!
My hopes for this team have dwindled to a flickering candle about to be blown out. The Illini will, finish in the middle of the pack in the BiG and their journey to the Big tourney will be short-lived. They will probably get a 7-8 seed in the NCAA tourney if lucky but again they will underperform!
I agree with the first 3 sentences in your last paragraph, but I really don’t see all that many similarities between this year’s team and the 2022-23 team.
Those dominating road wins you mention were over a team that won 2 conf games all year (Minn) and a team that finished with a sub .500 conference record (.500 overall) in Neb. Combined those two teams won 11 B1G games all season. Oregon and IU have already won 10. And not sure how similar an 18 point win over a 7-8 (1-4) team at the time is to a 32 point win over #9 team at the time.
Shannon did miss two games that season as has KJ, though TSJ’s took place over a month later. And I don’t remember arguably the second most important player missing at least one game; well, unless you considered Epps the second most important player on that team.
People are free to be as optimistic or pessimistic as they want to be and post accordingly, but I find it interesting that the Maryland game is causing such angst other than it may have crippled any chance of a regular season championship. Did people not realize how important Tomi is to this team? Maryland was going to be a tough matchup with the two bigs, so when it was announced Tomi was out I had a pretty good idea it wasn’t going to turn out well. Sure, it got uglier than we would have liked, but, geez, Booth played 13 minutes. He had played all of 12 minutes against the previous 12 P5 opponents. Jake Davis is a nice little player off the bench (emphasis on little), but he had to try and guard players he had no chance against — illustrated by 5 fouls in 12 minutes of action.
Honestly, I learned more about Illini fans on here than I did about the team from the Maryland game. At full strength and when playing well, this team can beat anyone. At full strength and playing just OK, it can beat most teams. Play poorly or not at full strength, going to be some bumps. All of that is still true and great success in B1G and NCAA tournaments is still firmly on the table. But considering how many people on here berate AP voters for not actually watching teams and making informed votes (not aimed at you), how have those same posters not realized how important Tomi is to this team at this point of the season to the point they’re comparing this team to the 2022-23 team. I guess they spent too much time crying about the fact Tomi isn’t Daryl Dawkins tough rather than understanding how instrumental he is to what the team does both offensively and defensively.
You're not making your argument any relative if you're labeling MSU (or any of those other games for that matter) in the same category as last night in terms of "disinterested and sloppy", because they're not even remotely comparable in terms of the effort.
We've had two games that we looked like we didn't belong - USC and MD, and both were without significant components of our team, and guys sick.
You do realize that the whole "Play poorly" part is in control of the team and that's what has people frustrated. Yes, a good season is possible still. Even a great one. But they have to play better and I don't think that anyone is going to shrug and say "oh well" when the guys show up and play poorly and without energy or enthusiasm.
We lost an All-American for 6 games last year and went 4-2 with one of those losses on the road to Purdue and two wins against ranked teams. The guys who were left knew "how important" Shannon was to the team, but they played their butts off and set ourselves up for a magical finish.
We're young, perhaps sick, perhaps not at full strength. Let's go down with a fight instead of a whimper.
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