Alabama 100, Illinois 87 Postgame

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#226      
PepeSilvia
NarrowJ said:
I'm sorry, but what? You don't think he set screens off the ball?

As in doing this?

hoopstudent.com

Off-Ball Screen in Basketball: Information Explained

An off-ball screen consists of action that occurs when at least one offensive player sets a screen for another offensive player who does not have current possession of the basketball, ultimately to create a potential scoring opportunity near the basket or near perimeter areas of the court.
hoopstudent.com

You basically lost me at the first sentence anyhow when you essentially posited that Oakland and Princeton are better on offense than our recent teams (remember the one last year that was 2nd in the nation?)
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I'm not saying Oakland and Princeton are better offensive teams(they obviously aren't nearly as talented). I'm saying that Oakland and Princeton run a lot more offensive concepts and throw a lot of different looks at defenses which puts more pressure on the defense.

Yes I'm talking about off ball screens and movement. Ty was basically just in the dunker spot, setting ball screens, or standing around off ball last year. He wasn't moving around setting off ball screens, flare screens, etc.

If you've watched much Illini basketball it's a lot of on ball action and dribble handoffs with a lot of other guys just standing around ball watching.

Yes it can work when you have an all american talent in Domask and a nPOY caliber player in Shannon surrounded by good roleplayers but I think the team could have been even better tbh.
 
#227      
FloridaMan
Screenshot 2024-11-21 at 8.56.04 AM.png

Lawhorn, apologies
 
#229      
Bigtex
Would love to see the boxscore with the +/- for this game.
 
#230      
Birdus
Boswell had a pretty good game last night. I was waiting for that. We are FUN to watch but make a lot of bone headed mistakes. It's going to be fun watching this team gell. My only question is does the kid from N. Dame get some more minutes at the 4? It would seem like he would be a better defender without sacrificing a ton of shooting. He certainly is athletic.
 
#231      
sacraig
IMPE Legend said:
You can't deny the talent. It's there. But it's there the same way it is on a hastily thrown together AAU team. Flashes of greatness but a lot of mistakes. That's the biproduct of throwing so many people together. The final product isn't as good as the sum of its parts. We have a lot of really good basketball players (and Tre White) out there not playing very well together. That's why our defense is so bad. Because it takes teamwork to defend effectively. We can go on spurts of scoring because individual talent can do just that. Riley especially is a walking bucket and can go off. KJ has shown he has amazing ball skills. But for us to defend it isn't as much about individual talent...we have to play together. Can 9 players develop that continuity over one season? I really doubt enough to be a top team in the country. That's why teams with upperclassmen have typically done well over the years. You have a base to build on and to fit people into a puzzle that you have already started. We are trying to skip several steps in the process and I don't know if you can be successful doing that too often. Luckily, todays college basketball world is such a transfer focused mess that it might give us a shot. But I saw a lot of comments in the game thread about waiting to see and how its too early to judge this team. Maybe that's true, but I can't see a team that looked as bad as we did for long stretches of this game being able to somehow put it all together and be a top team in the country. I will be absolutely thrilled if they do, but I think our season will look a lot like this game. Up and down and a little disappointing. Hope I'm wrong though!
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We haven't seen the final product yet. Brad & Co. are still building, polishing, refining.
 
#234      
BalloonsTheElephant
Both teams had a lot of missed chances, but free throws kept it from being an actual game late in the second. They were obviously a better team, so I don't mind the loss. We have a lot to work on with our defense though. Not many (if any) can replicate what Alabama does at that speed and get up and down the floor and be that physical. We got it on film and it was a good learning experience. Better to see it now and struggle than in March.
 
#237      
doowink
last night this team showed at times just how good they can be….but they also showed at times just how bad they can be…need to be more consistent on both ends of the court and make FT’s…we will be better in March
 
#238      
Scoregasm
The free throw misses are maddening. Such a basic skill not possessed by high major players.
 
#240      
NarrowJ
PepeSilvia said:
I'm not saying Oakland and Princeton are better offensive teams(they obviously aren't nearly as talented). I'm saying that Oakland and Princeton run a lot more offensive concepts and throw a lot of different looks at defenses which puts more pressure on the defense.

Yes I'm talking about off ball screens and movement. Ty was basically just in the dunker spot, setting ball screens, or standing around off ball last year. He wasn't moving around setting off ball screens, flare screens, etc.

If you've watched much Illini basketball it's a lot of on ball action and dribble handoffs with a lot of other guys just standing around ball watching.

Yes it can work when you have an all american talent in Domask and a nPOY caliber player in Shannon surrounded by good roleplayers but I think the team could have been even better tbh.
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We aren't even talking about talent level, though. Your reference to Oakland and Princeton was with regard to offensive principles, specifically that they generate more/better looks by using off ball movement and off ball screens.

You want our offense to be more like theirs. Oakland is the 233rd ranked Kenpom team in ORtg. Princeton is 61 but I'd hardly want to look there with the roster/personnel we have.

I was mostly surprised you stated it as an absolute, i.e. "never"

The fact they never used Ty as an off ball screener
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Go pull up some videos of our games on YouTube from last year, there's a few still out there. A couple of them that I clicked on, he's setting an off ball screen on literally the very first offensive possession.

In general, yes, there wasn't a lot of off ball stuff happening last year because we had 2 guys averaging 22ppg and 19ppg that scored in ways that leant us to more of the NBA-style offense where they just hunt mismatches, and then everyone else get the hell out of the way and let the stars cook. It worked, so I don't know? It's hard for me to sit here as a fan on my recliner and say, well we shoulda/coulda/woulda did this when we had the #2 rated offense in the country.
 
#242      
OB positive
Ga65 said:
Problem isn’t with offense! My only issue is KJ pounding the ball out front for seeming long periods of time. Leads to TO’s and standing around by rest of team. Defense is a different story but should be expected from a young new team. They are getting better but they just played a great offense team. They outrebounded them and shot better from three. Alabama has three better rim protectors than we have. Going to take team defense and that requires experience and time together.
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Alabama showed us what an offense with constant movement and screens looks like. They were getting multiple good looks and to the rim as a result of it. Even though we scored 87 against them our offense looked stagnet against them. Still too much dribbling and not enough ball movement.
 
#243      
I-L-L 1318
Honestly think Kylan will be the glue guy/DAWG on this team as we go. Really good offensive flashes in the 2nd half...at his best when he's going downhill and rebounded well from a guard spot. Brings the intensity defensively every night.
 
#244      
Poe's Law
PasadenaIllini said:
Ben Humrichous is a huge problem. When one of your starters has the deficiencies that he showed tonight both athletically and awareness-wise on defense, that isn't a good sign moving forward. I'm not sure that we can afford to carry that much defensive liability around in our lineup unless he demonstrates a 180 degree turnaround...and I'm not confident of this at all since the same deficiencies were evident in his play for Evansville last season. Hoping for either a Brad coaching miracle or for other guys to step up. Not sure who we could put in there at the power forward position outside of Ben...that's a big deficiency of our current roster.
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Ben’s offense plays. Underwood will figure out which line ups he works best in, but by end of season he might be a reverse Ty, where he has to sit to keep him from getting abused.

His best lineup might be paired with Morez-Hum-Riley/White-DGL-Bam. But would be dependent on what the other team is doing. I think he’ll shine against MSU and IU.
 
#245      
NASchamp
illini510 said:
Remember, they played Alabama, who was the #2 team prior to their loss at Purdue. We all know how hard it is to win at Purdue. This is a top 5 team we just played in what was a semi road game(I say semi b/c the crowd was not that great from the TV screen). The expectation was they would lose. I expected them to lose by minimum 10-15 points. They covered in my eyes. This could've easily been a 20-30 pt blowout but they fought in that second half. It shows that many of these players have some heart and grit to them that we may not be aware of right now. I take some positives from this game despite the horrendous defense that was played
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Crowd wasn’t huge but the arena was small. Was louder in person than it may have seemed on TV. Alabama drove down a student section which were loud for most of the game. You could feel the crowd add to Alabama’s momentum at times.
 
#246      
Yes33
NarrowJ said:
I'm sorry, but what? You don't think he set screens off the ball?

As in doing this?

hoopstudent.com

Off-Ball Screen in Basketball: Information Explained

An off-ball screen consists of action that occurs when at least one offensive player sets a screen for another offensive player who does not have current possession of the basketball, ultimately to create a potential scoring opportunity near the basket or near perimeter areas of the court.
hoopstudent.com

You basically lost me at the first sentence anyhow when you essentially posited that Oakland and Princeton are better on offense than our recent teams (remember the one last year that was 2nd in the nation?)
Click to expand...
First off, define a screen. There are Bobby Knight screens where the two offensive players rubs shoulders so the defender can’t get thru and there are the “ole” AAU screens that we see today that you could drive a truck thru the two offensive players.
 
#247      
sdiver68
Obviously they got any look they wanted. Mostly because we couldn't stop screen dribble penetration.

Other than being young, on D I'm most concerned about the lack of lateral quickness on the perimeter against elite competition. We saw the exact same issue against Ole Miss. Maybe Oakland can teach us more about the Amoeba zone.

Offense kept us in the game, except FT's of course. Nothing we saw yesterday goes against consensus that we are very talented on offense with a high ceiling.
 
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#248      
CoachHooleyHoo
PasadenaIllini said:
Ben Humrichous is a huge problem. When one of your starters has the deficiencies that he showed tonight both athletically and awareness-wise on defense, that isn't a good sign moving forward. I'm not sure that we can afford to carry that much defensive liability around in our lineup unless he demonstrates a 180 degree turnaround...and I'm not confident of this at all since the same deficiencies were evident in his play for Evansville last season. Hoping for either a Brad coaching miracle or for other guys to step up. Not sure who we could put in there at the power forward position outside of Ben...that's a big deficiency of our current roster.
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IMHO, I thought Ivisic looked way worse on D. He was getting abused.
 
#249      
From the cheap seats
Was really impressed with Alabama's depth and the variety of ways they can score. With many teams, even good teams, if you take away a top option or two, you can really slow them down. The Illini at this point are kind of Alabama-light on offense as they also can score in a variety of ways and from a variety of players. The Illini will outscore a lot of teams this season the way Alabama outscored them.
The defense is what it is at this point. The drives didn't bother me as much as the wide-open 3's...though the "tickle" fouls (tickling a player instead of actually trying to deny a layup) that led to two "and-one's" did drive me crazy. I seriously doubt many B1G teams can expose the Illini defense the way a super athletic Alabama team did. If I'm wrong, then this is a middle-of-the-pack team. I'm probably too easily entertained, but this is a fun team to watch even with the obvious vulnerabilities.
 
#250      
NarrowJ
From the cheap seats said:
Was really impressed with Alabama's depth and the variety of ways they can score. With many teams, even good teams, if you take away a top option or two, you can really slow them down. The Illini at this point are kind of Alabama-light on offense as they also can score in a variety of ways and from a variety of players. The Illini will outscore a lot of teams this season the way Alabama outscored them.
The defense is what it is at this point. The drives didn't bother me as much as the wide-open 3's...though the "tickle" fouls (tickling a player instead of actually trying to deny a layup) that led to two "and-one's" did drive me crazy. I seriously doubt many B1G teams can expose the Illini defense the way a super athletic Alabama team did. If I'm wrong, then this is a middle-of-the-pack team. I'm probably too easily entertained, but this is a fun team to watch even with the obvious vulnerabilities.
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Is there a concept of marginal contact in college basketball like we hear about in the NBA all of the time? That play near the end of the game where Ben basically lightly touched the side of a player during what was basically an entirely 100 percent uncontested slam dunk should not be a foul in my opinion as just lightly placing your hand on a players side as they throw down a dunk does not seem more than 'marginal' enough to me that we have to stop the game and give free throw(s) to the player who was lightly touched.

I'm not saying this as a fan who thinks his home team shouldn't have had fouls called on them, but I just don't like it for the game. Why are we penalizing teams for doing things that don't affect the game/current play in any way, whatsoever?
 
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