When people say "Loyola," this is what they really mean or are referring to:Yeah I honestly struggle to understand some of the negativity around BU, even as some who believes in and supports the highest of expectations for Illinois Basketball.
Maybe it’s a differential in terms of how much people care about the Big Ten and Big Ten titles?
Like, we gotta break our second weekend drought, for sure, but BU’s got one (and actually two) Big Ten titles in the bag plus a win of the deepest most competitive BTT maybe ever. That bought an ocean of goodwill and confidence in his ability to win big in my book.
If all you can see is Loyola I don’t think you’re viewing the whole picture, jmho.
- an annoying habit of letting teams with inferior talent stay in the game longer than they should. (As an aside, Bielema is the polar opposite here - he has the ability to keep his teams in the game until the end, even if he has inferior talent)
- poor game planning and a seeming inability to adjust in game. It's not like we don't know PSU is going to isolate Pickett or that Loyola is going to run their players through multiple off the ball screens, we just don't seem to have the ability to even begin to counter it
- a lingering suspicion that at the end of close games we will tighten up and blow it somehow - whether it be via missed FT's or an inability to run a simple inbounds play or having the wrong guy handle the ball in a tight situation and make a dumb turnover or Mayer or Epps deciding to play hero ball
I don't want to pull the plug on the BU era; he has shown he can get talent, he has won here and he deserves a chance to show the Kofi era wasn't a fluke. But you can't ignore the other stuff and pretend it doesn't exist.