I'm trying to keep this post a nice balance of "raw reaction" and "keeping a level head" ... we'll see how it goes, lol.
On the Bright Side
1. I really do think Wisconsin is good. They'll end up a #5 or #6 seed, but I just
didn't think we played that poorly, and they look every part of a #2 or #3 seed recently. Of course, in such a hypothetical that would have been our Sweet Sixteen loss ... but I think talk of some surefire First Weekend exit is totally premature. Let's give them their due, regardless of how insufferable they might be.
2. I usually hate this line of thinking, but you
at least have to always throw in a token comment about the silver lining of extra rest when you lose in the BTT. It's unclear if this group can have some light bulb moment with some of the issues, but I don't think it can hurt to have some time off and rest and regroup.
3. Great turnout by Illini fans. It should embarrass every single one of us if there is ever a BTT game of ours at the United Center that isn't a 2:1 crowd advantage for us at minimum, regardless of what other teams are in our session. People always talk about Chicago like it's this free-for-all melting pot of college sports allegiances, and that is indeed true to a certain extent. However, Illinois has like 220,000+ alumni in the Chicago Area, and the next closest Big Ten school has like 40,000. There might not be as many non-alum fans in Chicago who just choose Illinois because it's our state school (like me!!) as there are, say, non-alum Michigan fans in Detroit, but that doesn't matter ... we still have infinitely more of such fans in Chicago than any other school. Combine those together, and we are a very clear first among equals here, and the UC should always seem like our backyard ... and it did. So props to Illini Nation!
4. We are still going to be a top 3 seed, and we will avoid a #1 seed until the Elite Eight at the earliest ... there are A LOT of Illini teams this millennium that didn't earn that right and yet are remembered fondly by fans. Sure, we had some unlucky breaks, but we fought our way to something only 8-10 teams in the entire country will have achieved, and that is a clear-cut #3 seed or possibly a #2 seed. We still have a shot to play in St. Louis, and this team absolutely CAN still go on a deep run.
Now the Negatives...
1. There has been such a trend on this site of people who love the more objective measures like analytics subtly insinuating that anyone trusting their gut feeling after our games is like this anti-intellectual, overly emotional fan who "doesn't get it" or "isn't grateful" or "isn't suited for college sports." Bull. $hlt. I digress, but it's an epidemic in our society to just disregard your intuition as some un-trustable, subjective art akin to astrology rather than something you literally KNOW to be true, even without some cold, hard data to back it up. And it's been patently obvious that this team lacks toughness for way too long.
2. On that note, it is so asinine to make excuses for games where you blow huge leads because they were "close OT losses" or something. It is LITERALLY IRRELEVANT that we lost by 3 in OT today or by 1 in OT at UCLA. You know why? Because we had 16- and 20-point leads respectively, and we took our foot off the gas. Make all the excuses you want about the refs being bad or us being unlucky by missing "good shots" or Wisconsin / UCLA being lucky by making "contested shots" ... it doesn't matter, and you know it. When you have a 15-point lead, there aren't enough external factors to cause you to lose that lead to take some of the blame off of YOUR mental focus. People get mocked for throwing around less analytical terms like lacking a "killer instinct," but we just saw it with our own eyes!! No offense, but how deluded do you have to be to perform mental gymnastics in order to explain this stuff away by getting lost in the weeds of stats when all you had to do was have a non-moron IQ and open your eyes to watch that game. We didn't finish them off when we had them beat ... that's a fact.
3. I think a lot of people conflate "playing hard" and "GIVING good effort" with how frustrated fans are using those terms in critiquing this team / staff, and it's causing us to talk past each other. I don't think anyone doubts that we have players willing to run as fast as they can, be physical going for loose balls, try as hard as they can to play good defense, etc. What many of us are critiquing when we complain about our "effort" a given game is the team's ethos ... and it's often infuriatingly casual. I used to think this was good because we never got rattled under pressure; the electric crowds in West Lafayette and Lincoln weren't going to throw us off our game. But it never seems to work the other way. If we're playing at an A- level and the crowd at the UC gets going or a Wisconsin player who's been talking smack gets shut up, I don't see this extra gear that ever kicks in that elevates our chances of winning because we are fired up. It's not ALWAYS good to be stoic.
4. We can critique people we still support, and Brad deserves criticism. Period. Some will probably say this is unfair, but you aren't "winning a close game" when you pull away to win by 8 and it was close with like 4 minutes to go, lmao. The entire point of the criticism is that we become a less effective and worse team in situations where we need a basket or need a stop than the regular flow of the game. And there's just no way around putting that blame on the coach, because that is when the players rely on him, and when our go-to strategy isn't working, he needs to fix it. You don't lose every OT game because your luck is bad, you lose every OT game because your gameplan for those situations is sloppy and casual, and I honestly don't find it hard to believe at all that it's the type of thing Brad just doesn't want to think about or deal with because he'd prefer to win in regulation, and in his mind "if we had just executed better" we WOULD have won without OT therefore the root of the problem isn't anything about his strategy in OT, it's missed shots in the first half.
5. Building on that, we are just not clutch. I'm not saying we never hit any shots in clutch situations or that some apologist for our team couldn't talk you in circles about how it was actually a plethora of OTHER reasons that explain us losing these last minute games. But if your life savings were on the line, who is betting on these guys to do what it takes to scrape out a nailbiter? And that is because we just don't have that vibe about us that we will take over the game and change the narrative and refuse to lose. Laugh at me all you want about how vague or non-analytical that is, but that's kind of the point ... it's an intangible quality that is hard to define, but anyone with his / her eyes wide open can clearly see when a group doesn't have it. We don't really show any more urgency or change anything about our approach depending on the opponent, time left in the game, the location, the stakes, etc. We just go play basketball. Some will say that's good, but ... it's not.
6. Just to bltch a tiny bit more about Underwood getting sassy with that reporter, lol. Imagine if Aaron Judge (who batted .331 last year) were batting like below .100 with runners in scoring position in the ninth inning where he could tie the game or give the Yankees the lead, and the sample size was absolutely large enough that a trend was noticeable. And a reporter asked him about this, and his response was, "I like how you are just ignoring all of the times that I had like 3 RBIs in the seventh inning to put the game out of reach!" Lol, that retort literally doesn't respond to ANY component of the assertion that he is performing worse under pressure!
Underwood's response made literally no sense. It wouldn't be shocking at all if this team finds itself in another nail-biting game this year, with our season on the line. I hope the plan is better than "Let my more talented players do their thing and hope it works out."
On to the Big Dance.
