Michigan 84, Illinois 70 Postgame

[Fly Illini Fly!]

What’s the narrative ???

2-4 in our last 6 ??? Getting out handed to us on our f’ing home court ??? No toughness … Getting blasted on the glass …

It’s unacceptable !!!!!!! Losing is unacceptable !!!!!

If you want to write some other narrative about how great losing is … That’s on you man …

The narrative is one of two things (no clue which one):

1) Trent and DaMonte teams never had substandard games. (factually untrue)

OR

2) Trent and DaMonte teams DID have substandard games but it’s excused simply because those two were on the team. And since it was 4 years ago.

 

[Se Il Illini]

Can we please put the "best Kenpom offense" talk to rest? Can we please stop trying to clown on posters who express concerns about this team after the close losses?

Totally outclassed and out toughed on our home floor. The Krush did their part. The team and staff did not do theirs.

Better hope we get a favorable tournament draw and a couple upsets of higher seeded teams. Even with that, we may not be a second weekend team. Disappointment once again.

Excellent post. Did I hear it right that the Illini went the last 13 minutes of the first half without a three. In my view this team is too hyper dependent on the three. Michigan had quicker and stronger athletes on the floor. And Illinois got manhandled in the lane at the offensive end in the second half. Give Michigan credit. They came to play and asserted their will on Illinois. I hate losing to Michigan.

 

[Chase321]

Kendall Gill made these same observations during the postgame show, and capped it off by saying if we keep faltering down the stretch, we could conceivably drop to a 6 seed.

Ridiculous comment.

 

[Curbelo Fanboy]

I’m fighting the pessimist coming out of me, but I feel this team’s ceiling is the sweet 16 and that’s it. I hope I’m wrong, but it seems like they peaked during their long winning streak.

The long winning streak was a bit of fools gold. The best wins were at PU and At Nebby. Both of those have fallen off since those games. And PU took a generational heater from Wagler. I bought the hype in the moment but it was a mirage.

 

[ImGonnaBeILL]

Kylan has to stop with the quick threes-

Definitely. The insane one was when Mirk had a clear mismatch in the post RIGHT IN FRONT OF HIM and he gunned it up.

Mirk luckily wound up getting the board but that was just insane to me

Kylans made some very poor decisions this season. Maybe not as poor as the financial one made entering college basketball a year early....but he's made some real head scratching ones this season

 

[Se Il Illini]

Welp.

Let's go beat Oregon and Maryland, end the season 15-5, get the bye till Friday, and try this all again. Lessons learned tonight.

I totally agree. But right now Michigan is the superior team in the Big 10.

 

[HouTexIllini]

Well, Brad's never played over an 8-man rotation so I'm not entirely sure about the latter.

About Tre White... you could make the argument his skill set would fit this team.

I think Morez could've taken the year 2 jump he has at Michigan.... however, would rather have the guys that want to be here.

That’s my problem with the staff. Trey didn’t fit and Dre doesnt bc they’re drivers and mid range shooters. Like duh, why go get them?

Petro doesn’t fit, Moretti didn’t fit, Booth didn’t fit, the other tall Frenchman, and on and on. It’s a little baffling.

 

[stevej64]

The narrative is one of two things (no clue which one):

1) Trent and DaMonte teams never had substandard games. (factually untrue)

OR

2) Trent and DaMonte teams DID have substandard games but it’s excused simply because those two were on the team… and since it was 4 years ago.

Neither would have helped in a game like this. This was a total domination of their front court against our soft !!! front court.

 

[EmeraldCityIllini]

I’ll say one last thing. I’m shocked the amount of people that say Michigan is the better team, okay maybe they are but not by this much. We got blown out at home, it wasn’t even close. We played AWFUL on both ends of the floor. You have to be able to win these types of games in order to get to the final game of the season and as of now we don’t look the part. We rolled over hard. Not one player played hard, zero leadership, zero energy. Underwood sat on the bench and pouted and made zero changes. I’m just not good with that, I’m tired of hearing credit to the other team. Now this team is going to learn a lesson from this? It’s the end of the season, lessons should be learned. The lesson was supposed to be learned from the ucla game. I had high hopes for this team and still do but come on.

2-4?? With a team that other coaches and media saying can win it all? That’s COACHING. Have your players ready to play.

I quite literally have not seen one post saying the margin of defeat tonight was okay.

I also think the reason you high hopes still is because THE COACHING has given you reason to think that.

Let’s just be fair about it

 

[chudaman]

I understand everyone wants to give Andrej his walking papers given his last couple of games. But we desperately need his athleticism against the top level teams. If we don’t figure out how to get good Andrej back going again we can forget about winning a second weekend game (or maybe even getting to the second weekend).

I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt that he's still suffering from the high ankle sprain and will hopefully get better by tourney time.

 

[AirTran]

Agreed on all points. For some reason, Brad did not think Tre was a fit. He sat him for a few games with no minutes last year for some reason. Seems to happen to one player or another every year with BU.

You are making a decision Andre or Tre - I'll go with Andre/Jake/Hummer (when Z and Tomi are on the floor together. Tre fought with Brad... no one needs the sideshow.

Same with Morez v. Mirk.

Morez got the better of us tonight, but I am very, very happy with Mirk.

Sometimes the opposition is just that much better. That certainly was the case tonight.

As for your criticisms of Brad. I can say this as a 60 year avid fan of Illini basketball. Blow it out your...

(1) The guy wants to be here... not build towards someplace else.
(2) He understands the modern game (roster turnover, NIL, change in rules and how the game is played) and is credited by most as being a leader in this area.
(3) He is 11th over the past 7 years in NCAA wins.
(4) It's pretty clear what he is trying to do: build a mental tenacity personafied by rebounding and defense. We are still not at the level that UCONN showed us a couple years ago. However, we are closer to that level than we have been in 30 years. Most of the people not here (I can give you list and yes I have tracked them) we are better off, with them not here. You want Skyy Clark, Jayden Epps, Sencire Harris, Dre LG, Dain Dainja, Amani Hansberry and Nicollo Moretti (those are just the recent transfers)? They're yours.

The guy is able to recruit **** star talent and then replace them with players that are either more talented or a better fit and win 20 games every season. There are only 10 coaches in America who are better at that than he is.

Look at the skill levels the people (I hope) returning have. That is alot to be optimistic about.

I don't get it. Lou Henson was the only other modern day coach more consistent as Brad. You may not remember this, but similar to Brad, everyone wanted to run Lou out of town as they thought (and continue to see) our program should be on a par with the names similar to Indiana, Kentucky, UNC, Duke, UCONN, UCLA, Kansas, MSU, Louisville or Houston.

It took John Wooden 14 seasons reach his first Final Four with UCLA.
Dean Smith won his first NCAA championship in his 22nd season at UNC.
It took Mike Krzyzewski 11 seasons win his first NCAA championship at Duke.
It took Jim Calhoun 13 seasons the University of Connecticut to win his first NCAA National Championship.
Tom Izzo has won 1 NCAA championship.
It took Bill Self 15 seasons a head coach to win his first NCAA championship. It took him another 14 years to win a second.

Brad has been trying to get Illinois to a consistency level, getting the final 16 on a fairly regular basis. You don't win championships without getting your talent level (and mentality) to the upper echelon level first. But other than the Henson era - we don't have the legacy (and donors) the other schools have. But we are making up some of the distance.

Brad has a better understanding of that and is trying create a fit a Illinois. If you don't think that has built a base and we are actually improving off the base, maybe you need to find another school or team to root for.

 

[the juiceman cometh]

Pretty frustrated BU let Morez get away.

That's not what happened though.

BU had him locked up to come back and Dusty May did what he's starting to develop a reputation for doing, the same thing he tried to do with Braden Smith. Just turns out Braden ended up being truer to his word/signature than Morez.

 

[Se Il Illini]

My weekends being ruined by Illini losses is really getting old.

You know. I am an old dinasour. One of the advantages of that is that I will sleep tonight. And if the wind is not blowing too much, I will get out tomorrow for a few hours and see if I can catch some crappie.

 

[wc_illini]

Surprisingly, our offensive efficiency for this game (105.4) wasn't much worse than Duke's (110) in their win over UM.

Not surprisingly, our defensive efficiency (126.5) was much worse than theirs (101.9).

 

[Kernal12]

Some perspective:

2025: We blew out Michigan on their home floor late in the season. They go on to win the B10 tourney and S16.

1989: We blew out Michigan on their home floor the last game of regular season. They go on to beat us in the Final Four and win the national championship.

More ball to be played.

 

[soxillini74]

We took one on the chin tonight. We knew Morez would show. We knew they would body up Wagler. We didn't hit shots and didn't rebound well. On to the next one.

 

[NorthShoreIllini]

Eff it you're right. We need to go hire a real coach who can instill toughness and get us to a 2nd weekend. We should go out and hire this guy:

View attachment 47902

I’m not advocating we go hire him but Brad wishes he could even sniff Beards overall success in the postseason.

 

[Oracle21]

I knew that, I did not realize his skill level. He's got more sauce to his game than Zach Edey ever did.

No way. Edey is far more skilled offensive player. Mara better protecting the rim but that’s it

 

[Grandpa]

Brad says that a National Championship is the goal. Slow, soft, clumsy Euros are not going to get it done. In the NBA they have one of those guys on a team, they don't fill the roster with them.

Michigan looks like the final four teams last year. Big, fast, physical, athletic guys who are pretty good shooters. Illini only have 2 of those characteristics, big and pretty good shooters.

 

[Class_of_2020]

This team is no better than last year. Wagler is extremely average when he plays against real NBA players

 

[HouTexIllini]

He really didn't. He was 5 of 15 last game and 7 of 17 this game with 4 turnovers. That's inefficient. On top of that, he was their target at who to go at defensively. He got bullied.

I agree with STL, would like to have him back, but you’re right it hasn’t been a great last couple of games.

Wagler’s physical weakness, lack of speed and jumping ability have been exposed. He also need to improve on retaking his defender into the screens.

With that said. The guy looks like he will go first round.

 

[Se Il Illini]

Defense wins championships. You see it across all sports. We're not even a Top 25 defense.

I think that there is a stat that teams have to be top 20 defensively to win the championship.

 

[BBlock24]

I said it before and I’ll say it again - there’s very similar vibes here to the ‘24 season…lost to a stinky Penn State team the same night as our recent UCLA loss and then went on to lose to a better Purdue team at home. People rightfully had the same questions about our defense and toughness going into postseason play. Let’s see what happens

I’ll sign up for this.

 

[IllinitripleJ]

I'll beg to differ on the miss part. I don't think he is missed much. Again, I think you're going off some recency bias here. Anyways, last year's Michigan team and this year's Michigan team are two different teams. Did you forget when Tre was in the doghouse in the latter part of the season? We have good quality players. Tre White is not the difference between a Sweet 16 team and a Final 4 team. He is nowhere near the missing link. He's just another role player IMO who can have good games here and there

I said Tre and Morez. Obviously Tre by himself does not do much. But if you have Tre and Morez as your starting forwards and a young athletic freshman forward like Jordan Scott (top 100 player playing for Sparty) as a back-up that is far better than trotting out Stojakovic, one of the Ivisics and Mirkovic. A three guard rotation of Wagler, Boswell and DGL would also be good. We would still need an upgrade at center.

 

[Noblesville Illini]

Our coaches didn’t make changes. Ridiculous.

Think it odd that Brad morphs his schemes so much each year yet in game changes to X’s and O’s, set plays, etc. just will never be there.