Duke 110, Illinois 67 Postgame

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#676      
PasadenaIllini
Illini2010-11 said:
Yeah, because a large NIL budget and possibility of being a top 10 coach is not a top tier destination. SMH.

It is fine wanting to keep BU around with appropriate assistant coaching changes. However, the thinking that we will default back to Groce and Weber eras is the thinking that will never get us to national championship contention.

We are currently paying national title contention money, and we have gotten a lot of success in regular season, but have not gotten consistent March success to be in the tier of national championship contention. That is the unfortunate reality, and my fear is that donor money will dry up rather quickly. 2 out of the last 3 seasons have been very disappointing underachievements.

Add in the nepotism, and patience is beginning to wear thin.
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I agree with everything except this word.
 
#681      
rbse
I think since he injured his arm, he's not the same player, Big Ten basketball isn't for whimps
 
#684      
SAELION
STLini25 said:
Will some someone please tell Brad the reason why we shoot a higher percentage from 3 in practice than games is because Illinois is horrible at guarding the three so the practice shots are wide open and then in games they have a defense playing against them.

Every three Duke took was wide open with no defense.
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Well in games the opposition lets Illinois take open threes because they know they can't hit them. So, it's more so that the Illini press during games rather than any tight defense.
 
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#685      
Pikeillinifan
Maybe the silver lining here is that we get some solid changes on the staff with major upgrades in play calling, and BU lets whomever he hires other thing.

The grumbling about his personality rubbing Europeans the wrong way also needs to be addressed, assuming it’s true and we keep recruiting Europeans.
 
#686      
OrangeBlue98
Illini2010-11 said:
Add in the nepotism, and patience is beginning to wear thin.
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I generally don't scan other teams' fan boards, but they have to be giving us the same type of business that Iowa received for Brian and Kirk Ferentz. If I was a fan of another Big Ten team, I'm pretty sure I'd be saying something.
 
#687      
PasadenaIllini
OrangeBlue98 said:
I generally don't scan other teams' fan boards, but they have to be giving us the same type of business that Iowa received for Brian and Kirk Ferentz. If I was a fan of another Big Ten team, I'm pretty sure I'd be saying something.
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I know what I'd be saying. "Please oh please let them keep Tyler exactly where he's at right now."
 
#688      
Big Jack
Indy Illini Fan said:
Ben & Booth must’ve got 100% on this “personality test” … 🙄

This “personality test” clearly doesn’t ask questions related to having that dawg factor or having the fire …
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Well to be fair it was my understanding that Tyler @illini0440 is the one who administers the test.
 
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#689      
OrangeBlue98
Olaf B said:
Do any of you really want to go back to the pre-Brad Underwood days? This is Illinois. Not some top national destination.
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I'm sorry, but this is such a defeatist attitude. The landscape of college basketball is totally different then it was during the Weber/Groce era. We have significant NIL support, and we have a very highly-regarded athletic director. People want to work for Josh Whitman, and not for the reasons that people wanted to work for Ron Guenther (which was basically if you didn't get in trouble with the NCAA and didn't COMPLETELY crap the bed, you'd keep your job).

Illinois may not be Duke, North Carolina, or Kentucky. But it's a highly desirable job in this college basketball environment.
 
#690      
Se Il Illini
Considering, who Illinois had on the schedule last week, I along with many others knew it could be a long week. I totally discountred the chirpings from a few here and there, who said Duke's schedule was soft and "might" make them vulnerable. Having said that I did not envision that this Illinois team for a large portion of Saturday night's game would not look like they even belonged on the same court with Duke.
 
#692      
RockfordIllini
So I confess I didn’t watch the game. Had a sneaking suspicion something like that was coming. But based on Harrington’s tweets it sounds like Duke blitzed our ball screens, which if true I find interesting because they normally switch 5 ways. But Sparty blitzed and Wisconsin blitzed, so presumably Duke did the same because they saw how effective it was. If true I have just a few, mostly rhetorical questions:
1. Why are we so stymied by a pretty basic ball screens coverage. Going off memory here but I seem to remember the Warriors in their heyday just destroying blitzes flipping the ball to Draymond and letting him attack a 3 on 2. I am far from a basketball savant…but Will has excelled scoring in that short roll area and has also shown pretty good playmaking. Why don’t we try him in the Draymond role?

2. Why are we so vanilla on defense and never game plan for our opponent? As I said above, teams have figured out we can’t handle a blitz. And even Duke with their top rated defense was willing to adjust out of their normal switch everything defense to make us uncomfortable. Why do we play our same soft vanilla coverage against everyone and when we run up against a team like Sparty who excels in those shots and proceeds to make a bunch of them, essentially shrug and say “math.” And this has been going on for years. We have a defensive principle of not doubling/trapping the post, and we kept this same principle against TJD, who proceeded to score 40 on Dain and Coleman because they couldn’t guard him straight up but we refused to move away from our principles?

I realize teams can’t be chameleons. I.e we can’t all of a sudden play a zone against Sparty just because Indiana had some success with it. But I do think we could make some adjustments based on specific opponents.

Just frustrating looking at matchups before the game and seeing, oh they are really good at floaters, they will probably score on us all night, knowing that we will play right into their hands.
 
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#693      
OrangeBlue98
RockfordIllini said:
So I confess I didn’t watch the game. Had a sneaking suspicion something like that was coming. But based on Harrington’s tweets it sounds like Duke blitzed our ball screens, which if true I find interesting because they normally switch 5 ways. But Sparty blitzed and Wisconsin blitzed, so presumably Duke did the same because they saw how effective it was. If true I have just a few, mostly rhetorical questions:
1. Why are we so stymied by a pretty basic ball screens coverage. Going off memory here but I seem to remember the Warriors in their heyday just destroying blitzes flipping the ball to Draymond and letting him attack a 3 on 2. I am far from a basketball savant…but Will has excelled scoring in that short roll area and has also shown pretty good playmaking. Why don’t we try him in the Draymond role?

2. Why are we so vanilla on defense and never game plan for our opponent? As I said above, teams have figured out we can’t handle a blitz. And even Duke with their top rated defense was willing to adjust out of their normal switch everything defense to make us uncomfortable. Why do we play our same soft vanilla coverage against everyone and when we run up against a team like Sparty who excels in those shots and proceeds to make a bunch of them, essentially shrug and say “math.” And this has been going on for years. We have a defensive principle of not doubling/trapping the post, and we kept this same principle against TJD, who proceeded to score 40 on Dain and Coleman because they couldn’t guard him straight up but we refused to move away from our principles?

I realize teams can’t be chameleons. I.e we can’t all of a sudden play a zone against Sparty just because Indiana had some success with it. But I do think we could make some adjustments based on specific opponents.

Just frustrating looking at matchups before the game and seeing, oh they are really good at floaters, they will probably score on us all night, knowing that we will play right into their hands.
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I follow a lot of soccer, and the general debate about soccer coaches at the elite level is whether they are "dogmatic" or "pragmatic". Coaches like Pep Guardiola are "dogmatic". They have a very clear style of play and principles that they want to follow no matter what. Coaches like Jose Mourinho or Carlo Ancelotti (if you aren't a big soccer fan, both have won multiple major championships) fit their playing to the talent they have and how they can best exploit the opponent's weaknesses.

What I don't really get is whether Brad is "dogmatic" or "pragmatic". It seems like he's more dogmatic, but then you see things like what happened last year where we went to a lot of booty ball with Domask. But defensively, it really seems like we are stubbornly dogmatic. Drop coverage with the defender going over the screen and contesting from behind. We rarely see any sort of wrinkle like hedging or doubling on ball screens. To me, it seems like Illinois would be very easy to scout while we are on defense.

I think you need to have a healthy amount of "dogma" to your approach. You need to be able to recruit and spend your practice time on a reasonably defined style. But I do think you also need a reasonable amount of pragmatism to adapt when teams figure out your Plan A. Duke was a great example of that defensively on Saturday.
 
#694      
RockfordIllini
OrangeBlue98 said:
I follow a lot of soccer, and the general debate about soccer coaches at the elite level is whether they are "dogmatic" or "pragmatic". Coaches like Pep Guardiola are "dogmatic". They have a very clear style of play and principles that they want to follow no matter what. Coaches like Jose Mourinho or Carlo Ancelotti (if you aren't a big soccer fan, both have won multiple major championships) fit their playing to the talent they have and how they can best exploit the opponent's weaknesses.

What I don't really get is whether Brad is "dogmatic" or "pragmatic". It seems like he's more dogmatic, but then you see things like what happened last year where we went to a lot of booty ball with Domask. But defensively, it really seems like we are stubbornly dogmatic. Drop coverage with the defender going over the screen and contesting from behind. We rarely see any sort of wrinkle like hedging or doubling on ball screens. To me, it seems like Illinois would be very easy to scout while we are on defense.

I think you need to have a healthy amount of "dogma" to your approach. You need to be able to recruit and spend your practice time on a reasonably defined style. But I do think you also need a reasonable amount of pragmatism to adapt when teams figure out your Plan A. Duke was a great example of that defensively on Saturday.
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Well and when you think about what we ran when Brad got here, ie spread offense and up the line on defense, we are night and day different from a scheme perspective suggesting Brad is very pragmatic at least season to season.

I’m making an educated guess here and likely piling on our young assistants. But what I suspect has been going on the last couple of years is the young men, being very analytics driven, have come up with an analytics friendly approach of a 3 pt based offense and a defense that is designed to give up contested 2s.

All looks great on paper. But what happens if your center is immobilized by illnesses and a bad ankle and can’t contest shots and deflect balls like he did earlier in the year? What happens if your team of shooters collectively gets the yips? I don’t think our young assistants have shown the capability to adjust when the defense isn’t working or the analytics (0-16 from 3, 13-15 or whatever it was from 2 in the first half) invert and smack you in the face.

But it all does come back to Brad who delegated important roles to guys who may be talented but were probably under qualified for the role of P5 offensive/defensive coordinator.

We will see how pragmatic Brad is when it’s his son and buddy who are likely on the chopping block. TBD.
 
#695      
RML
RockfordIllini said:
So I confess I didn’t watch the game. Had a sneaking suspicion something like that was coming. But based on Harrington’s tweets it sounds like Duke blitzed our ball screens, which if true I find interesting because they normally switch 5 ways. But Sparty blitzed and Wisconsin blitzed, so presumably Duke did the same because they saw how effective it was. If true I have just a few, mostly rhetorical questions:
1. Why are we so stymied by a pretty basic ball screens coverage. Going off memory here but I seem to remember the Warriors in their heyday just destroying blitzes flipping the ball to Draymond and letting him attack a 3 on 2. I am far from a basketball savant…but Will has excelled scoring in that short roll area and has also shown pretty good playmaking. Why don’t we try him in the Draymond role?

2. Why are we so vanilla on defense and never game plan for our opponent? As I said above, teams have figured out we can’t handle a blitz. And even Duke with their top rated defense was willing to adjust out of their normal switch everything defense to make us uncomfortable. Why do we play our same soft vanilla coverage against everyone and when we run up against a team like Sparty who excels in those shots and proceeds to make a bunch of them, essentially shrug and say “math.” And this has been going on for years. We have a defensive principle of not doubling/trapping the post, and we kept this same principle against TJD, who proceeded to score 40 on Dain and Coleman because they couldn’t guard him straight up but we refused to move away from our principles?

I realize teams can’t be chameleons. I.e we can’t all of a sudden play a zone against Sparty just because Indiana had some success with it. But I do think we could make some adjustments based on specific opponents.

Just frustrating looking at matchups before the game and seeing, oh they are really good at floaters, they will probably score on us all night, knowing that we will play right into their hands.
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I would like to like this multiple times. You have explained my frustration perfectly.
 
#696      
CoalCity
RockfordIllini said:
So I confess I didn’t watch the game. Had a sneaking suspicion something like that was coming. But based on Harrington’s tweets it sounds like Duke blitzed our ball screens, which if true I find interesting because they normally switch 5 ways. But Sparty blitzed and Wisconsin blitzed, so presumably Duke did the same because they saw how effective it was. If true I have just a few, mostly rhetorical questions:
1. Why are we so stymied by a pretty basic ball screens coverage. Going off memory here but I seem to remember the Warriors in their heyday just destroying blitzes flipping the ball to Draymond and letting him attack a 3 on 2. I am far from a basketball savant…but Will has excelled scoring in that short roll area and has also shown pretty good playmaking. Why don’t we try him in the Draymond role?

2. Why are we so vanilla on defense and never game plan for our opponent? As I said above, teams have figured out we can’t handle a blitz. And even Duke with their top rated defense was willing to adjust out of their normal switch everything defense to make us uncomfortable. Why do we play our same soft vanilla coverage against everyone and when we run up against a team like Sparty who excels in those shots and proceeds to make a bunch of them, essentially shrug and say “math.” And this has been going on for years. We have a defensive principle of not doubling/trapping the post, and we kept this same principle against TJD, who proceeded to score 40 on Dain and Coleman because they couldn’t guard him straight up but we refused to move away from our principles?

I realize teams can’t be chameleons. I.e we can’t all of a sudden play a zone against Sparty just because Indiana had some success with it. But I do think we could make some adjustments based on specific opponents.

Just frustrating looking at matchups before the game and seeing, oh they are really good at floaters, they will probably score on us all night, knowing that we will play right into their hands.
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This is like somebody giving a book review that didnt read the book. Lots of words and no substance
 
#697      
RAM 77
RockfordIllini said:
Well and when you think about what we ran when Brad got here, ie spread offense and up the line on defense, we are night and day different from a scheme perspective suggesting Brad is very pragmatic at least season to season.

I’m making an educated guess here and likely piling on our young assistants. But what I suspect has been going on the last couple of years is the young men, being very analytics driven, have come up with an analytics friendly approach of a 3 pt based offense and a defense that is designed to give up contested 2s.

All looks great on paper. But what happens if your center is immobilized by illnesses and a bad ankle and can’t contest shots and deflect balls like he did earlier in the year? What happens if your team of shooters collectively gets the yips? I don’t think our young assistants have shown the capability to adjust when the defense isn’t working or the analytics (0-16 from 3, 13-15 or whatever it was from 2 in the first half) invert and smack you in the face.

But it all does come back to Brad who delegated important roles to guys who may be talented but were probably under qualified for the role of P5 offensive/defensive coordinator.

We will see how pragmatic Brad is when it’s his son and buddy who are likely on the chopping block. TBD.
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Exactly! You'd think that a coach that lost as a #1 seed in the NCAA tournament with virtually the same offense would have an answer in his back pocket when faced with that defensive scheme. But not BU! I'd be totally embarrassed!
 
#698      
jjv0004
pruman91 said:
I have not read any of the previous pages in this thread , so pleasure excuse any redundant issues I am going to make...........

Tonight was another trending performance of embarrassingly undisciplined play headlined by an immature approach on both offense and defense led by 2 inept , unqualified AC's who are clearly out of their league and paygrade level with no idea how to coach at this level..........

What was the game plan on offense ???..........continue to chuck up off balance 3 pter's to the tune of 2 for 50 ???..........dribble east to west for 75 % of the game instead of north to south......????...........offer up a bushel basket of unforced turnovers ????...........what was the plan ??.......I , for the life of me never had a clue what it was all night long...........

What was the game plan on defense ?????.........play matador defense and wear puke down with them getting 50 points on uncontested layups ???..........letting the puke reserves come in and dominate our starters so they would get the big head and lose their concentration ??.......................

Josh should buyout both TU and Hamer's contracts tonight and tell them to stay away from all team functions for the rest of the season and all future seasons........................

Random thoughts concerning the rest of the season...........

1...we could lose all remaining games on our schedule....I have zero confidence that we are tough enough or have the ability to match or exceed any team we have left to play's aggressiveness or effort on the court....something is seriously wrong with this group of underachieving athletes that needs to be brought out publicly NOW to start whatever healing process is needed.......

2....KJ's recent play has taken him out of lottery pick level and maybe also 1st round worthiness......his absurd amount of unenforced errors would be very concerning to me if I was an NBA GM making decisions on who to draft and in what round......

3...Will Riley is not ready for the NBA and might need 2 mores year in college before being ready for an 82 game grind and daunting travel days.....his thin frame will take a beating and lead to many injuries.......

4...it could be time for ole pru to put my dancing shoes away for the rest of this disappointing season..........17-15 season record is lurking in the weeds along with all the excuses and excuses and excuses.........has the injury and flu bug bites taken it's toll....probably , but our roster construction should have covered for that.......unfortunately it hasn't.........but look over at the WBB Illini with major losses of Cook , Dolan , Bollin and the 6'3" transfer out before the season even started.....the WBB are a wonderful example of how to take misfortune and turning it into a strength of cohesiveness and connection.........

5...Maybe BU has lost his aggressiveness and directional bearing as the Illini HC..........8 year itch ???....who knows but the alarming non competitive amount of double digit losses could be an albatross on his shoulder to big for him to overcome , even with the success of last years Elite 8........

this is not a good stretch of basketball being played now by the Illini..........doubtful we would beat misery now , probably another double digit loss.....

I'm old and tired most of the time.....I looked forward to every MBB game with hope and joy for a victory for me to revel in.....NOW , not so much.........Can we reverse this skid ???.......maybe.........Will we reverse this skid ??........only time will tell us that......But whatever confidence I had in this years is on life support right now.....It really really is................

JMHO............................
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I have been saying 2 and 3 on your list for about the last 2 months. I don't see it for either of them. Will is not athletic. What is his role in the NBA? NBA guys would eat him up on defense. KJ can be on a roster but will get scattered minutes. The talent level on this roster is very overrated. And Brad is not a good x's and o's coach. Two bad combos.
 
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