Houston 68, Illinois 53 Postgame

grantlab said:

Don’t think enough people realize how big of a loss Grandison was the last 4 games. Love Coleman Hawkins, but no defense is going to respect him as a shooter like they do Jake, and you wonder why our spacing had been so tough / it was so hard getting open looks for Kofi or anyone else. Would love to see him run it back. IMO, few players at the college level have his level of maturity, and he’d be quite the senior leader on what’s going to be a young 2022-23 team. Anyway, my point is not to make excuses for this team, but I don’t think anyone on the broadcast / national analysts really brought up that he was maybe 50% for the tourney and essentially a non-factor due to injury.

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Such a good point and yeah while I know injuries are part of the game not having a healthy Grandison was a killer for us. Grandison is such a baller/ key player for us thru out this season.

Rap47 said:

I believe Curbelo's main problem is he thinks he is the best option on about every play. If and when he realizes he isn't, his enormous potential could be realized.

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Probably a double edged sword here. Most great players believe they are the best option, whether that is shooting or getting someone else a shot, and Curbelo definitely seems to feel like he is going to either get to the rim OR drive there and dish to someone for a easy shot or layup.

Ultimately, he is pretty awesome at making this happen, but it can stall our offense because he is dribbling and dribbling until he gets what he wants. I don't want him to lose the edge of his confidence, but I would love to see more ball movement in our offense to get easy shots, rather than just him always orchestrating.

sully said:

Such a good point and yeah while I know injuries are part of the game not having a healthy Grandison was a killer for us. Grandison is such a baller/ key player for us thru out this season.

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I don't want to downplay him missing, but the reality is that this team was sputtering since the first week of February. The Indiana game @Bloomington was the last game where I felt like....whoa, what an amazing kick at the end. Every game was a roller coaster and it shouldn't have been, with all due respect to the Northwester and Penn State's of the world. As this tournament goes on, it's becoming obvious that the conference was "ok". Getting a lot of heat for the second year in a row. I think we were getting by with some more play because the competition (less Purdue) wasn't outstanding. We got away with some stuff that we just couldn't get away with vs a really, really good(probably elite) team. The team became one dimensional (reliant on the three) and when you face great guards ... it's difficult to survive. Ultimately, it all caught up with us.

The Trent bashing is a little harsh. I think the kid was playing hurt and with the addition of pink eye that for sure screwed up his vision and shooting. Curbelo just unfortunately had too many turnovers and that why he sat. Plus we were scoring ok until the technical. Then our defense went to ….! This team is missing a player that can create and hit mid range jumpers and finish at the rim. Curbelo did that a lot last year not so much this year. Hopefully one of the new Freshman can or Rj can develop that in his game. Hopefully Curbelo will get healthy over the summer and can have a great 22-23.

Closing this thread now, please continue the discussion elsewhere such as the Illini Basketball Thread or Hoops Recruiting Thread. Go Illini