Pregame: Illinois vs Iowa, Tuesday, February 25th, 8:00pm CT, FS1
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Did Will shoot 41% from 3 at Evansville last season? Humrichous is better /s
Illini92and96
- Austin, TX
We’re moving to the pack line defense. With the lines being the free throw lane. Nobody gonna dunk on us!!!
To be fair, I have issues with that myself. My wife thinks I'm losing it, but what does she know? She's happy and stable!
We are a Country Club school. (cue Caddyshack "So I got that going for me...")
Works for me!
I think we are still a basketball school.
Underwood needs to get on board with that, now.
Underwood needs to get on board with that, now.
Let's forget Duke and lock in on Iowa. This is the must win game of the year. We absolutely have to have it, no question about it.
Purdue is in a free fall as well. Absolutely no reason that we can't get both of those games at home. Michigan, without Morez, has too much size. His injury is going to really show itself there.
Close the Duke thread and let's lock in on Tuesday.
Purdue is in a free fall as well. Absolutely no reason that we can't get both of those games at home. Michigan, without Morez, has too much size. His injury is going to really show itself there.
Close the Duke thread and let's lock in on Tuesday.
Iowa is such a terrible road team though.
@Michigan (85-83) L- probably best game they played. Freeman had 13 pts
@Wisonsin (116-85) L
@USC (99-89) L
@UCLA (94-70) L
@OSU (82-65) L
@Rutgers (84-73) W. This was a good win.
@Maryland (101-75) L
I think IL is at least 10+ pt favorites this game. Granted Iowa has lost some blowouts to teams that also blew out Illinois (WI, MD) and they beat Rutgers while IL lost. But still can’t see this game being close. Iowa is very unathletic. This is game IL should control on the glass.
Drag them into the mud on every possession, stop trying to win track meets.
Illinois pulls out the old school 4 corners offense on every other possession only shooting 3 pointers with less than 5 seconds on shot clock...say a prayer and hope for a rebound.....defense we say a prayer they somehow miss....we go back down and this time we just rest.... let everyone catch their breath.....let the shot clock run out without even attempting a shot but we are ready to attempt defense again. We lose by a score of 47 to 27 and Brad is tickled pink we made 9 , 3 pointers and kept it closer than the last two games....baby steps guys...baby steps!
I am tired of hearing how good we are defensively. Bull-sh-----t. This team has let guys stand out and shoot 3's all night long and nobody has stepped up to shut them down. Guys drive down the lane consistently and there is no one to shut it down. This team is demoralized after that showing on Saturday. I think Sandfort and Dix bury us on our home floor. This will end any hopes of winning another game this year. Loss to Michigan, Purdue and 1 game in BiG leaves us with No NCAA appearance. Sorry, just the way I see it.
I'm already there win or lose. I don't think I've ever seen a team play this badly for this long and turn it around. Would gladly be wrong.
Note that I separate my pessimism about the trajectory with being a fan. I like our players and coaches, and am bummed for them. Part of bball is figuring out how to play so that the team is more than the sum of the parts. Very rewarding to see it unfold. Usually that starts with a leader --our best teams have had Ayo or TSJ for example, and those guys were both ballers and leaders. I see good players on this team, and some dogs that don't quit (DGL, Morez for example), but as a unit, don't feel like it's there when we need it. And as others have noted, you need outstanding coaching to develop that when the unit lacks it, and bluntly, I haven't seen it. Staff needs to figure that out.
Duke is a top team, maybe the eventual national champ. But that beatdown wasn't all Duke.
altgeld88
- Arlington, Virginia
Neither here nor there, but I'm pretty sure he played 3 seasons at NAIA Huntington before Evansville even lol.
It is derelict not to factor in Will's defensive deficiencies. He is worse on D than BH. It is too bad that Chester and Sencire didn't overlap with Will to show him how it is done.
OrangeBlue98
Iowa is not in a great spot right now (LvilleILL1)
- Des Moines, IA
As mentioned above, Humrichous actually started at a NAIA school. But I don't particularly worry about where a player starts out. Marcus Domask started out at Southern Illinois. Dalton Knecht started at a junior college, then went to Northern Colorado before starring at Tennessee.
Humrichous was undoubtedly a portal miss, but it wasn't because he played at Evansville.
Couple of things. We were told to be patient during recruiting that the staff was “cooking“. And by all accounts, we killed it recruiting now we are at a point where multiple fans are calling for the head of every Coach saying things like Coach has lost his fire he’s too soft.
Interestingly, one of the biggest strengths of Coach has been his ability to survive in adapt. My question is is this new Underwood where he’s more reserved, easier on the players just that. In the 2023 season multiple people suggested he was too hard. He needed to go easier on the young guys. Who’s to say this is not him adapting to that. Paul Klee said himself that you can’t coach the European players like you can American players. Reading between the lines that tells me he cannot get after them so is this “lack of fire“ just his adaptation to that?
I do agree that staffing changes need to happen. But I don’t think canning somebody fresh off in the lead is the answer. Period I highly doubt I’m in the minority in this thought process.
Interestingly, one of the biggest strengths of Coach has been his ability to survive in adapt. My question is is this new Underwood where he’s more reserved, easier on the players just that. In the 2023 season multiple people suggested he was too hard. He needed to go easier on the young guys. Who’s to say this is not him adapting to that. Paul Klee said himself that you can’t coach the European players like you can American players. Reading between the lines that tells me he cannot get after them so is this “lack of fire“ just his adaptation to that?
I do agree that staffing changes need to happen. But I don’t think canning somebody fresh off in the lead is the answer. Period I highly doubt I’m in the minority in this thought process.
Question for the coaches/insiders out there: What's the proper adjustment Illini coaches should be making to counter the blitzing double team opponents are throwing at KJ every time we try a high ball screen. It's been killing us for several games now. How should we counter it?
We all hate the offense, but its been top 20 since January even with the terrible shooting. Its been good enough to keep us afloat. It really is the defense.
Bounce off and screener short rolls.
One thing we have going for us this game is that Iowa simply doesn't have strong physical perimeter defenders and we've had a lot of success against those types of teams. Granted it was earlier in the season when we faced them, but I think part of our issues are that we struggle with physical defenders. That said, while Iowa is 244th in the country at guarding the 3 and 341st!!!! at guarding the 2, they do turn teams over a lot and they shoot the ball at an elite level.
Our defense has shown no signs of being able to stop Iowa, however Iowa is also one of the worst rebounding teams in the nation. So the key to this one is to try limiting the turnovers and destroy them on the boards. It'd also be nice not to allow Iowa to shoot wide open threes as they'll drain those at over a 50% clip, but gotta pick my battles as we're just not capable of that right now
Our defense has shown no signs of being able to stop Iowa, however Iowa is also one of the worst rebounding teams in the nation. So the key to this one is to try limiting the turnovers and destroy them on the boards. It'd also be nice not to allow Iowa to shoot wide open threes as they'll drain those at over a 50% clip, but gotta pick my battles as we're just not capable of that right now
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