Not sure why I can't remember this, but has Illinois always practiced in another gym and not the Assembly Hall? I guess I'm just wondering the effects of not having enough practice time in the actual gym you play the games. Depth perception and other things can be a lot different than a small practice facility. Shrugs, just curious. The yearly stories of how "elite" we are as shooters in practice had me wondering.
Illini Basketball 2024-2025
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I’m not certain about this but if I remember correctly the teams in the 1990s only occasionally practiced in Assembly Hall and when they did the DIA had to pay the university to practice there. For instance, the DIA had to pay to rent AH from 2-5 on Wednesday or whenever they used it.
Pretty certain that roster players have access to Ubben whenever they want. However, I am not at all certain if and when they have access to shoot in the SFC...on their own or as a team. They do practice in SFC upon occasion and, as stated above, may have to pay the U of I for the time. Hope someone can give a definitive answer.
That still doesn't explain visiting teams scorching the nets which seems to happen more often than we'd like. They never practice there except for their shootaround.
very true , perhaps we have a professional "coach speech' coach, who every single year has multiple "elite" shooters in practice! Or maybe it's cause we are shooting against our own defense
Maybe we bought the wrong model of shooting machines that track all the data...maybe we need the old school model. The one that doesn't hold back and actually says things like "what the he** was that?" "Seriously, you actually thought you could make two in a row?" "perhaps you should pursue a career in construction sense you are good with bricks" my bet is we have a snowflake model who is convinced everyone should get a ribbon so it's always feeding positive feedback.
Taking a step back - I think the results this year should have been largely expected. We have an entirely new team (x-DGL) and 4 of our key contributors are playing their first year of college basketball. This has been compounded by the fact that they’ve had to play without the starting PG and then without the starting C for several games each meaningful everyone else’s role has shifted 3 times over the last 9 games- while we’ve gotten some good performances not knowing your role going into each game has been a significant identity crisis lately
The team is still searching for its identity and what we can fall back on- if it’s not the KJ/Tomi pick and roll then we’re lost and we haven’t had them on the floor together very much at all- it’s as simple as that. If we get back to that and everyone can settle into their role, we can still be really good, hopefully with Morez and Will stepping up as they have in spurts over this stretch.
Our best lineup is:
KJ
Kylan
Will
Morez
Tomi
Coach will figure that out eventually and that’s the 5 that can go places come tournament time- with experience coming off the bench
The team is still searching for its identity and what we can fall back on- if it’s not the KJ/Tomi pick and roll then we’re lost and we haven’t had them on the floor together very much at all- it’s as simple as that. If we get back to that and everyone can settle into their role, we can still be really good, hopefully with Morez and Will stepping up as they have in spurts over this stretch.
Our best lineup is:
KJ
Kylan
Will
Morez
Tomi
Coach will figure that out eventually and that’s the 5 that can go places come tournament time- with experience coming off the bench
Germanboxers
- Fort Wayne, IN
Interesting analysis. If I understand correctly, you applied a minimum 30% 3pt shooting to any game we shot under 30%? Did you recalculate what the overall 3pt % would be if we never shot under 30%? Also, would we have lost any games (or significantly reduced the margin of win) in games we exceeded that rate? Shooting 30% for the year would put us at 331/364. We are currently 312/364.I posted this in the Bracketology thread, but I wanted to see what even an OKAY 3-point shooting outing every game could do for this team. I get that this is a rather simple exercise and way more factors go into a win/loss, but just consider these three results as a decent measuring stick for our 3-point shooting since January 1st.
1. 55.2% at Oregon ... obviously abnormally high.
2. 34.4% at Indiana ... you'd THINK replicable with our full team.
3. 32.3% vs. Penn State ... not awful considering KJ was out and is our best shooter.
4. 30.3% vs. Wisconsin
5. 28.1% vs. Northwestern
6. 21.4% at Rutgers ... just really, really bad.
So looking at all of our games, that 30% against Wisconsin seems like a good barometer for a "decent performance" for what we could reasonably expect from this group. So if you just had us making 30% minimum of our threes in every game ... we'd have these results vs. power conference teams ... flipped results in green.
L 87-100 vs. Alabama (Birmingham, AL)
W 90-77 vs. Arkansas (Kansas City, MO)
W 59-56 at Northwestern
W 86-80 vs. Wisconsin
W 73-66 vs. Tennessee
W 80-77 vs. Missouri (St. Louis, MO)
W 109-77 at Oregon
W 90-77 at Washington ... WAY more comfortable!
W 91-52 vs. Penn State
W 84-82 vs. USC ... technically it would go to OT, so I assume we pull it out!
W 94-69 at Indiana
W 84-80 at Michigan State
L 77-90 vs. Maryland ... only closes the gap a bit.
W 86-74 vs. Northwestern
W 83-80 at Nebraska
W 93-79 vs. Ohio State
L 79-82 at Rutgers ... but who knows, as we are maybe not playing from behind late.
So yeah ... we'd be 20-3 overall, 11-2 in the Big Ten and 10-3 in Quad 1 games. DAMN, man ... by just shooting 30% or above every game. Obviously, you are going to have off days, but 30% is like not good at all, haha. That's honestly the only thing allowing me to cling on to some hope that we can go on ANY sort of run is that I just keep waiting for our shooting to at least SOMEWHAT normalize.
Illini in Italy
- Illini HQ, Florida Panhandle
Well put. Now what in the he77 are you doing interjecting something logical and intelligent into a Loyalty post?
GrayGhost77
- Centennial, CO
Oh man. Those are gonna sell within minutes.
Fighter of the Nightman
- Chicago, IL
I can recalculate it at a later time, but yeah I left games above 30% as they were but applied a minimum of 30% for all games.
Put in the Excel terms I used, the formula pulled what we actually shot each game and only changed the percentage to 30% if it was below 30%. Then it recalculated our made threes and added the incremental points to our score.
Realistically, we’re bound to have games below 30%, but the point was we need way more consistency. If we’re capable of 55% vs. Oregon ever, we shouldn’t be shooting 20% or below multiple times.
I, myself, think Ben has talent. He just needs to play with some of the “nasty” that Goode has, he’s too timid. He showed several games back with a put back jam off the rim that he has some athleticism. I think sometimes coaches pigeon hole guys into their role, i.e shoot, slasher, rebounder instead of just allowing them to be a player. In one less game from last year, Ben has shot 4 more 3’s with the Illini and 50 less free throws.
Sorry wrong board
Sorry wrong board
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I, myself, think Ben has talent. He just needs to play with some of the “nasty” that Goode has, he’s too timid. He showed several games back with a put back jam off the rim that he has some athleticism. I think sometimes coaches pigeon hole guys into their role, i.e shoot, slasher, rebounder instead of just allowing them to be a player. In one less game from last year, Ben has shot 4 more 3’s with the Illini and 50 less free throws.
band camp
- STL City
First off, it's 'since', not "sense", your handle paints that picture of homonyms and homophones.
Second, you shouldn't bet on assumptions. Your whole post was written with them, assumptions, no facts.
How can you feel like Brad and co are snowflakes? Dude would smash you, mentally and physically.
Gtfoh.
I like Ben if he'd go in booty ball mode 80% more. He doesn't get that every time he does that. The man guarding him is 6.3ft.. gives me angina.. for you youngsters, thats heart
pain!Of course. It's not like this wasn't screamed from the rooftops for weeks ahead of the first exhibition game. But those expectations rose as we racked up wins.
Fighter of the Nightman
- Chicago, IL
Eh, this is oversimplifying it. I expected learning experiences, a bumpy road and silly freshman mistakes. I never expected the type of seemingly disinterested, inept and embarrassing EFFORTS that we saw vs. Maryland, Nebraska and Rutgers.
I’m glad that last night was such a great move back in the right direction.
Even with veterans last year, we had two or three of those. Last year's home Neb game - we were lucky we didn't lose; the PSU game where we crapped the bed that last minute; Maryland at home (a never-ending story); and there may have been another one or two. With a young team with who knows what going on between their ears, illness, and injury, it is not all that surprising. I think the key term in your post was "seemingly" as I seriously doubt this was the team not caring. They are coached to stay level and not worry about their last foul, last TO or last missed shot.
Yeah this kind of thing happens to every team. And it should be especially expected from a young collection of guys who don't know one another all that well.
Not to mention, arguably our two best players have been injured and/or sick the the last three weeks.
Sleeper's called this out and I think it's valid... A month ago, the formula was, "KJ/Tomi + steady Tre White + Humrichous hitting shots = crushing victories". The problem is we've been searching for consistency from Humrichous, White & Boswell and we ain't gonna find it. The new formula goes back to our stars: ride KJ, Tomi & Will, quit chucking up 3's and let the chips fall.
What's intriguing is even just a "B-" performance from those 3 guys in the same game is probably good enough to get us into the 2nd weekend.
What's intriguing is even just a "B-" performance from those 3 guys in the same game is probably good enough to get us into the 2nd weekend.
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