Ayo and Trent will carry us to the promise land
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Illini Basketball 2018-2019
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I dont see why its surprising that a guy penetrates and dishes very well is not raining 3s all of the time. He will need to be a 3p threat in our offense though.
On plus assist guys who were not a 3p threat much.. Tate and TJL come to mind.
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Joel Goodson
- ties will be resolved
Cunningham has to graduate. He's taking classes over the summer to do just that. Whether he gets it done and decides to transfer to the beloved is unknown.
Had a chance to talk to Coach Underwood and watch the Illini work out at Illinois team camp this past weekend. He talked about how much longer and more athletic the team is than it was a year ago. Watching them workout it is obvious there are some long athletic players now on campus but the lack of size was very obvious and a lot of that athleticism is young, raw and has a ways to go to develop. Another positive looks like there are some shooters so the team should shoot the ball better from deep but I think they will have a tough time competing against the top of the Big Ten
Last year's defensive strategy was to just foul and hope our opponent missed the FT's. It was called Hack A Wood!!
Underwood's general strategy of early ball pressure around the half court line to cause turnovers generally does that. Of course, this will also lead to the other team getting a decent amount of easy layups when they break the pressure, which led to the amount of fouling we had last year and the high opponents FG%.
A matchup zone can also utilize the guards and length of the wings. Basically the same idea as above, but closer to the 3 point line. Still will give up some easy layups, but not as many. Also makes it harder to get out and run though.
Potentially, we could switch to a pack line. This would limit the easier buckets given up. Everyone is in help, and we use the speed/length of the team to close out hard while the other team swings the ball around the perimeter. We could use wings to choke the post and avoid having to guard bigs one on one. However, this is pretty much kills the offensive hope of a 7 second possession for us - no fastbreaks, no uptempo. I really doubt we go that route.
Peoria Illini
- Peoria, IL
I'm pretty sure that's the Underwood way, which is why he's recruiting long and quick players. Pressure up top on defense to create havoc and turnovers. The length of the perimeter defenders close down passing lanes to the post. The best way to defend post scoring is to not let the ball get into the paint.
We didn't have the length or the quickness and tenacity/smarts to play that aggressive of a defense.
The problem with a pressure defense like that is that if just one of the five players doesn't do their job, then easy buckets could be had. That was our main problem last year. One breakdown and the other team took advantage.
We didn't have the length or the quickness and tenacity/smarts to play that aggressive of a defense.
The problem with a pressure defense like that is that if just one of the five players doesn't do their job, then easy buckets could be had. That was our main problem last year. One breakdown and the other team took advantage.
I think the "40 minutes of hell or Pack Line" is a false dichotomy. When Underwood changed things up at OSU they didn't suddenly start playing like Virginia or Wisconsin. They just picked up their opponent a bit further down the court and dialed back the ball denial and overplaying on the wings. It was still an assertive, ball-hawking defense, just in a bit tighter of a shell. Trading some turnovers forced for shots contested.
And the numbers disagree with your framing of the choice between aggressiveness on defense and tempo at the other end. One misconception about Underwood is that his SFA teams weren't as run-and-gun as people think. His last year there they were #1 in the nation in forcing turnovers, but only 217th in pace. At Oklahoma State, they dialed it back to 51st in the country in forced turnovers (like I said, still a ballhawking D) but were 66th in pace, the fastest pace of any team Underwood has had.
Underwood has gone fast and slow, he's played extreme high pressure defense and a somewhat more conservative style. The one thing all four of his teams before Illinois had in common was that they consistently generated easy buckets through running offense in half-court situations, even in the two seasons where he was inheriting entirely new teams who had to learn the offense from scratch.
That completely disappeared last year at Illinois. A night and day 180. It's not about talent, we just weren't able to meaningfully run the offense, even against cupcakes. IMO the assistant staff's shaky coaching chops and total lack of previous Underwood experience is the most likely explanation for that, but whatever the explanation, it has to change and fast.
For me, going to a more OSU-style defense, especially with our lack of interior presence, would help that along. We can't just give up nine trillion dunks every game. It's demoralizing to a young team beyond just the easiness of the points being scored. When we have the right roster, that's when you go full Press Virginia Huggins-style.
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ILL in IA
- Iowa City
I'm not as quick to toss this issue at the staff....yet. If we struggle to run the BU offense again this year, I think a change to the staff will need to happen.
IMO the style of play didn't match up with guys the ball had to go through on offense (blame the staff for that on some levels). Black, and Smith were slow to make a decision and killed the flow and ability to make the correct reads. While Black may have been our biggest threat on O, every time he touched the ball came with a 2-3 second pause of what to do next. Same with Smith, be it lack of understanding, basketball I.Q. whatever it was, decisions did not come quick.
I still have tons of concern for the holes in this roster, and what that means on defense. But I am optimistic about the improvement of our offense and the ability to run the plays and get easier baskets based on the reads we should be making.
Peoria Illini
- Peoria, IL
The lack of experience by the staff definitely didn't help. We also had players that struggled with making the correct pass, and/or the timely pass. We missed so many cutters after the ball reversal that by the end of the season, the cutters were basically going through the motions because they knew the pass wasn't coming. That's got to change as well.
Underwood has said this class are good passers. We'll see if that's true or not. Ayo looks to be, that's for sure.
2 issues with personel I noticed with the offense- TJL, AJ, Mark Smith and Alstork just weren’t good fits for taking handoffs out of the high post and making plays, whether it be attacking the basket or facilitating. Ayo & Tevian seem to be much better fits. The other issue was Ebo lacking any kind of offense to be a threat out of the high post. If the handoff isn’t done we really need the pinch post to be skilled enough to put it on the floor and attack. Those are high percentage shots that also happen to get the Jeremiah Tilmons of the world in foul trouble. Bez is an Underwood pinch post player.
Listen, I genuinely hope and pray the "we're gonna be better next year" people are right, but I am going to have a whole lot less patience for the "well actually"'s when we're 7-25.
Yes, you can run a slower offense out of any type of defense. But you cannot run an aggressive "7 seconds" offense out of pack line.
The question was what type of defenses could we use with the personal we have. You can run a pack line with an undersized but lengthy (wingspan) team. I never said we would, or should.
I agree the half court offense was lacking last year and that is largely independent of the exact defense we ran. However, that makes it irrelevant to the question asked - what defenses can we game plan to highlight the roster strengths.
I get the hope for guard play, we are bringing in new people and players and what we lost didn't look all that good last year, with a little luck maybe Ayo/Feliz fit with sophomore Trent/Damonte. Maybe AJ/Tevian actually get to play some 3, but looking more likely they have to play at the 4. Our ceiling at big, just doesn't look as high as last year (which was low) and the floor is so far down I'm scared to look. We are 1 injury or a failed transcript from making Kipper a full time 5. Thinking Giorgi as a freshman is the answer to our problems at the 5 is a stretch.
If all that isn't bad enough, we still won't return an upperclassman big that might give us a bit more stability down low for 2019/20.
Govoner Vaugn Fan
- New Orleans
I think we have solid B10 talent, and reasonable experience at the 1-3, and Kipper is solid, though undersized at the 4, but when we run into typical P5 frontcourts... with two or three experienced bigs in the game, it could get ugly. I think Giorgi has skills. But that freshman year for all but the elite players at center is usually pretty challenging.
Sure you can. You can get out in transition off of rebounds, made baskets, whatever.
Having said that, what Underwood switched to at OSU wasn't a pack line philosophy at all. It was just a more compact, more conservative version of the hands-y, swipe-y defense he's run everywhere, with the idea of letting traffic and congestion in the lane do some of the work that the length and anticipation of his interior guys (or lack thereof) couldn't. The intent wasn't to take the air out of the ball and slow the game down, that OSU team was his fastest pace team as a head coach.
[YOUTUBE]HcqOd95c4_M[/YOUTUBE]
Some good examples of transition points off of non-turnovers there, as well as a look at the where OSU was picking up its defense. Also a little zone mixed in.
Govoner Vaugn Fan
- New Orleans
MSU always seems to have about eight guys who 6'8" or better, 250lb and NBA ready. They just keep coming off the bench in waves
Yeah, I meant to include that Giorgi will be that player a couple years down the line. Expecting him to be a contributor year 1 is indeed a stretch
Black and Ebo honestly might have been worth 15 wins to next year's team. I would look at the situation night and day differently if we had those two guys.
We set the bar so low last year with one of our worst performances in modern history that just doing better next year will not be enough. We need to do significantly better next year, possibly compete for NCAA (even if we fall short and make the NIT), and more importantly, have a great 2019 Fall recruiting class that fills significant gaps in the frontcourt.
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