Kinda hoping he sticks around and replaces Brad someday.
Illinois 120, Fairleigh Dickinson 45 Postgame
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Most disappointing player so far. Lots of physical talents, doesn't seem to put it all together.
off topic - but reminds me of Jordon & Knight on Olympic team when knight thought he needed to criticize something on Jordon at half & he said Michael didn't set one screen. We just set then so quick you couldn't see them.
Yes, 17th in the country:
….
One thing about FT shooting, is that it’s most significant during clutch time.
This was our FT percentage, game by game, in clutch time:
1) Overall, we finished at 77.4% on clutch time free throws — slightly below our season average, but still pretty good (I think).
2) The two Wisconsin games were pretty brutal though, especially that 37.5% on February 10th.
you did. he was there.
This shot by Vaaks was 29.6 ft.
Legit 30 footer.
It was deliberate last year. But to say it was a snails pace is certainly an exaggeration.Yes…. guys that play well fastWagler did great with keeping a snails pace. Coleman looks like he plays better up tempo …. the game was fast last night and the passing was quick with very little dribbling… interesting change! Fun stuff…. run run run
Obviously, nothing like the balls to the wall approach we’re seeing now, however.
We were between 320-365 in basically every statistic regarding pace.
I don’t think it’s an exaggeration. I don’t think it’s a bad thing either.
I don't think it being partially nepotism and partially he.had the potential to become who he is now are mutually exclusive here. Tyler filled the brand new 4th/5th coaching slots which were just allowed. There was plenty of eyebrows raised at the time and questions why we didn't go get some bigger names.
Obviously the TJ/Domask Elite 8 year was special, mixing up styles of play. Two years ago with Morez was a mess with our high volume, low make rate on threes. Maybe it worked in practice, but just didn't make them in games (consistently enough). The Duke game was pretty much it for me with that experiment where we went 2/26 from three and generally looked completely overmatched in skill and tactics.
Last year was what it was supposed to look like. Obviously Keaton was amazing, but the whole team played smarter and more selfless.
Tyler was probably out of his depth when he started but he has grown into the role and honestly may have outgrown it this past year. He has shown his ability to find strategies that work for the team he has and play a fun brand of basketball that attracts the type of talent we want to bring in.
I think the criticism at the time was warranted, but he's obviously put in the work to improve his abilities. This constraint led approach is really cool and heady stuff that they are implementing this year.
Legit heat check. (Heat: Not found)
Believe he was pulled on the next dead ball as well.
lstewart53x3
- Scottsdale, Arizona
No, it wasn’t warranted then. It was just as dumb then as it is now.
You think someone who’s one of the greatest offensive minds of his generation (crafted the #3, #14, and #2 offenses in the country by age 29 (the first 3 offenses of his career) and is on pace for the #1 offense at 30) was a hire worth criticizing as our 5th and lowest paid assistant at 24?
Did you know that Tyler’s first role in 2021 was to build our recruiting evaluation team and analytics framework?
People used to ding Tyler in ‘23 because “anyone could have a top 5 offense with TJ”. Well, it was Tyler’s team who evaluated and chose to recruit TJ (and Domask).
Then it was Tyler Underwood who brought the S2 cognition testing to Illinois and made processing one of key aspects of recruiting, which lead to us recruiting Keaton Wagler and Ethan Brown.
Much of what Tyler innovated at Illinois the entire country will be doing in a decade.
There have been some posts about Z's performance, etc. And some statistics point out that his stats are not bad at all. My concern, though, is the number of minutes he did play, which was 10, one fewer than Fagbemi. It seems as though he should have played more, but maybe the staff is still concerned about the injuries he sustained in the UIC (I think it was in that one) game.
Look, I agree that the whole has been less than the sum of its parts with Z. I’m really hoping to see him put it all together this year, but given that he’s coming off an injury, a 4/5/1/1 stat line in just 10 minutes in Game 1 is absolutely nothing to complain about
One thing that has stood out to me this year, is that whoever is bringing the ball up, to a man, has their head up and looking to pass up court immediately. Not something that you consistently saw in years past. Has really improved our ability to beat the defense down the court.
Nice. And I just wanted to point out that: 1. It's only the fourth game they have played, and 2. The Illini shot just under 80% in the Baylor and Cincinnati games and just under 64% in the UIC game. I got these statistics from the Fighting Illini website, and in both the Baylor and Cincinnati games the Illini shot 79.17 %, which seems kind of odd, so whoever put those stats together for the site may have made a mistake. Also, I think the fact that this game was so lopsided that perhaps the players were a little lax at the FT line. Anyway, I think we should wait until the Illini have played a few more games before drawing any conclusions from this one about FT shooting, although I agree, it was bad.
Back iron too...He is a sniper.
It was probably just a bad game and ramping up to real moments that matter, but it seemed like they're working on something with him that's giving him some hesitancy on the defensive end. Not sure if it's getting burned on pump fakes or something, but he seemed like he was second-guessing himself on the defense, or just didn't really have the dog in him that I remembered last year. Honestly, I was thinking that he looked more like Carey Booth on defense than the Z we know and love. I'm sure it's just ramp-up stuff that he'll get past.
Fascinating. Coleman is definitely twitchier, but that's a fairly significant shift for one player.Yes…. guys that play well fast
He’s dinged up. It’s the first game of the season and we won by 75pts.
Last year in first game:
4pts, 9R, 2A, 2Blk in 18min
This year:
4pts, 5R, 1blk, 1stl in 10min.
In his second game of the season last year he has 16pts, 9rbs, and 7blks
He’ll be more than fine.
To put this further into perspective:
Illinois scored 1.591 points per possession.
FDU scored 0.597 points per possession.
That mathematically means that if the two teams played 100 possessions, Illinois would win by:
159.1 - 59.7 = 99.4 points (!)
.....
The actual game was 75 possessions and Illinois won by.... 75 points.
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