Illini Basketball 2026-2027

Joel Goodson said:

who could have seen it?

https://twitter.com/x/status/2111170318379184139

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What I like is that Tomi is not seen on the list of top returnees....but has the skills and size to dominate the B1G in the post. That is no certainty, but there is no more motivated player in any collegiate sport than a talented guy in his last year who has been sick/injured and shunned. I know that for certain and hope Tomi is healthy and determined to help lead this team into history.

HoopsterMan said:

Looking at the F4 box, looks like they gave Tomi his shots, focused on shutting down the rest of the floor.

The early season match, Tomi only had 5 shots. Mirk did very little in either game, so it seemed their focus was on shutting down Mirk and keeping the rest of the floor inefficient.

Brad needs to grab that tape and understand how to hedge.

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Yes- I remember the UConn staff basically said after that game that we weren’t that hard to guard- which is saying something for the most efficient offense in the history of KenPom for most of the season

But what they meant was if you chose to let Tomi get his pick and pop and leave Kylan and Andrew shoot to their hearts content and just shut down Keaton on the PNR and stick to Mirk, then those other guys would have to make their shots to beat you and they clearly didn’t

I’m hoping this year we won’t have anyone you can leave open and Tomi and Andrej have better shooting years, then we will truly be “ hard to guard”

HensonHall71 said:

Yes- I remember the UConn staff basically said after that game that we weren’t that hard to guard- which is saying something for the most efficient offense in the history of KenPom for most of the season

But what they meant was if you chose to let Tomi get his pick and pop and leave Kylan and Andrew shoot to their hearts content and just shut down Keaton on the PNR and stick to Mirk, then those other guys would have to make their shots to beat you and they clearly didn’t

I’m hoping this year we won’t have anyone you can leave open and Tomi and Andrej have better shooting years, then we will truly be “ hard to guard”

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Hurley, UConn full postgame press conf after F4 win vs Illinois

Its only 16 minutes long, you should watch it. He gives Illinois and its staff a lot of love, his comments are inverse of what you remember. Talks at length about how well his team had to defend to slow our offense down. And he's really not a guy who is known for saying nice things about his opponents like that, to say the least.