Impossible, I just read above that games against teams with equal talent never end well for us
Illini Basketball 2025-2026
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Impossible, I just read above that games against teams with equal talent never end well for us
Lou has absolutely nothing to do with any Underwood discussion. Lou could not bid on players. Lou could not get players from other teams and have them be eligible to play that year. Lou had to recruit freshmen and hope that they would become good players. Brad just pays for already good players. Apples and oranges. If the same rules had been in effect when Lou was coaching, he would have won much more than Brad because he was a better coach.
Fighter of the Nightman
- Chicago, IL
I read that as in the NCAA Tournament.
You could read it that way, sounded like two separate statements to me
Anyway yeah I’m sure Illinois has never beaten a relatively equal or higher seed before
Fighter of the Nightman
- Chicago, IL
Lol come on we don’t have to have these conversations in such an extreme way as opposing factions!
Message boards are just not a great medium for sports smack talk… people get upset… I enjoy all of you, I truly do
My father in law is pretty brutal with things he says about my Bears, all in good fun… he’s a Cowboys fan so I have to remind him his team has never won a Super Bowl on a flat screen tv either… this stuff hits different in person over a couple beers lol
There was a reason why we were injured and or ill. Brad completely mismanaged that team. He played only 7 guys double digit minutes. That team was drained. They lose in the QF’s of the B1G to IU. We barely beat Chattanooga, He barely played the freshmen that year. He decided when Trent was out to put DMW as the starting PG while leaving Podzimskli riding pine. Williams playing 27 minutes was a joke as well. Hawk should have played more than 18 minutes a game while Trent should have not played almost 35 minutes a game. Just ignorant coaching the entire year.
Perhaps the strategy is to never create another #1 seed. After all, as a #1 seed the expectation is Final Four. #2 seeds should make the Elite Eight. #3 and #4 seeds should make the Sweet 16. So if you're incapable of getting past the Round of 32 but still wanna win your first game, your target seed should be in the 5-8 range. Then when you fail to advance to the second weekend, the defense is you performed to your seed and we can all perpetually be "happy to be here" as we keep getting our "bites of the apple".
Not sure where to put this, but Illini women are 11-1, best atart since 1981. There was an interesting twist beck then. Grentz wanted to play her games in Huff, where smaller crowds could create a charged atmosphere. Those small crowds in the Hall just created a deflating echo chamber. The University turned her down for fear of "equal treatment violation" that woulldn't make the NCAA happy. IMO, Grentz was right; I remember thinking at the time the Bernard Shaw quote, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions." I still feel that way.
blackdog
- Champaign
I feel like this is becoming a bit to get someone to post a link to the women's thread because surely you know where that is by now.
Anyway everyone go read more about our exciting women's team!
Illini Women's Basketball 2025-2026
Though we currently stand at 10-1, we aren't finishing games particularly well. Some of our fourth quarter results: SEMO beat us 24-19 Ill State tied us 20-20 Oregon St. beat us 21-18 Murry St. beat us 18-17 Indiana waxed us 25-10 N. Texas beat us 25-18 Not sure why but I wonder if it isn't a...
www.illinoisloyalty.com
I feel like this is becoming a bit to get someone to post a link to the women's thread because surely you know where that is by now.
Anyway everyone go read more about our exciting women's team!
Illini Women's Basketball 2025-2026
Though we currently stand at 10-1, we aren't finishing games particularly well. Some of our fourth quarter results: SEMO beat us 24-19 Ill State tied us 20-20 Oregon St. beat us 21-18 Murry St. beat us 18-17 Indiana waxed us 25-10 N. Texas beat us 25-18 Not sure why but I wonder if it isn't a...
Top notch sarcasm here, Brad would say 'ELITE'
I wholeheartedly agree though, and we should celebrate this season's "coach we'd rather have who has had longer 2nd weekend drought", Will Wade, by erecting a statue in his honor. It can be erected in between last year's erection for Chris Beard and the prior year's erection for Sean Miller. Once you guys, er the statues, are fully erect, we can start planning for next year's erection... how about Pat Kelsey? He's never even made it out of the 1st round in his entire career. With these coaches, we can then change the motto from 'bites of the apple' to 'sniffs of the apple' since they've had less success with it over the last 5 years.
#snifftheapple2025
#itdontmatterjustdontbiteit
PS, if an Underwood apologist falls down in his mom's basement and she's not home, does it make a fart noise?
I’m actually quite stunned we can’t agree on the value of making the tournament as a high seed consistently.
We still haven't decided what athletic means...come on, but we're consistent...
OrangeBlue98
Iowa is not in a great spot right now (LvilleILL1)
- Des Moines, IA
Zero excuses not to win both games.
Iowa is less athletic than we are. NW is NW. If you want to make a jump from good team to very good team, you win those games.
I don’t think Northwestern is that good, but Iowa is probably at least as good as the Ohio St team that beat the 04-05 team imo. If we consider a top 5 teams “great” then they’ve nearly already accomplished beating a great team at a neutral site about a week ago. Our game will be at Carver.
(cue the “ZOMG comparing this awful team to the 04-05 Illini team” responses… I didn’t do that, I compared Iowa to the 04-05 Ohio St team)
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skyIdub
"I can't tell you. Secret."
You understand an “Underwood apologist” would be someone defending him, right?
MDchicago
- Lake Norman NC
Fwiw, Bart torvik puts Brad's cumulative % of reaching at least one Final 4 in seasons completed between 2000-2025 (so includes his SFA and OSU teams) at 44.3%. In the same neighborhood as Todd Golden, Buzz Williams, Lon Kruger and Skip Prosser. He had the 2021 Illini as a 27.0% chance of reaching the Final 4, low for a one seed because we had to face a top metrics (KP top 9 pre-T) team (as a 8 seed) the first weekend and also had a strong 2 seed (Houston, KP top 6 pre-T) in our path.
As a program over the same 2000-25 period, Bart Torvik puts Illinois' cumulative chance of reaching a Final 4 at 91.6% (which we did) and a just under 50-50 (48.6%) chance of a title (which we did not).
Per Torvik, Gonzaga and Houston had cumulative chances of a title over this period of 70.9% and 59.8% without success, so depending on your perspective either have had a negative statistical variance and need more bites at the apple or should look into firing their coaches (both Naismith HofF nominees this year) and find someone who knows how to more reliably win single elimination 68 team tournaments.
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That's a neat little tool that I did not know existed on his site... anyway, couldn't help but notice this name
MDchicago
- Lake Norman NC
Me either, I stumbled across that corner of his site when looking for PAKE and PASE and similar rankings (first two columns).
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This is a cool feature. Thanks for sharing!
If the purpose of the last paragraph is to draw a comparison to Illinois, I think there are probably better examples. I doubt Houston or Gonzaga are the types of programs to be upset with "only" making Final Fours. Both of those coaches have likely far exceeded program expectations.
Houston didn't make the second weekend from 1984 to 2019, so unlikely they're going to go straight from that to wanting to fire their coach for failing to win a title in his 12 years on the job.
And Gonzaga only even made the tournament twice in human history prior to 2000. I'm sure it's disappointing for them to have been so close so many times (six 1 or 2 seeds with two title appearances), but I feel like they must have enough self awareness to understand Mark Few has them in a really good place. (Almost unfathomably good considering where they started 25 years ago).
I wish you could filter the data better to break it down by year and expected vs actual for all rounds of the tournament. How much have we underperformed (if at all) in terms of making it to the second weekend? How does that compare with similar programs this decade?
It is depressing to see that we are 258th out of 274 teams since 2000 in terms of performance against computer expectations and 249th against seed expectations. The worst team on that list though is Virginia who has a title to show for it. So it's not completely rotten company to keep.
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