Illinois 45, Duke 19 Postgame

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#301      
RabidDawgClassic
JKR said:
Is that an Illicop with Bret?
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#303      
LJ22
RML said:
I think the point is that playing poorly (or being outplayed) at the outset if a game isn't a basis for concluding that that team is trash and never gonna play better.
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It's just extremely hard to get over this mentality when you've had a lifetime of Illini football. You definitely aren't wrong, but most of us have 30+ years of the other shoe actually dropping, so we brace ourselves to expect it. Maybe Bret will change all that.
 
#307      
Brosky
From the cheap seats said:
The Illini were on their heels for much of the first half, but some of the takes on how poorly they played and how "lucky" they were to eke out a 45-19 win remind me of some former Illini coaches who got beat that badly and then concluded "if you take away those 7 big plays (or turnovers), we'd have been right there."
There are turnovers, like the muffed punt, and then there are takeaways, like the two forced fumbles and the Heckel interception. Even the jersey snafu can be traced back to the staff's preparation and awareness. What definitely is not luck is the fact that after two games the Illini have not turned the ball over.
I'm just happy to be on the other side of the excuse-making. It's kind of fun to pick nits after a 26-point road win over a team that won 9 games last year and was picked by a lot of experts to beat the Illini.
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I think you bring up an important point--no turnovers in two complete games. It seems significant that we didn't have any in the first half, when we were getting bullied at the line of scrimmage, and Duke forced some qb sacks and several other tackles for loss.
 
#308      
Brosky
RabidDawgClassic said:
This is the first time since 1942 that Illinois has opened the season scoring 45 points or more in its first two games.

1942
South Dakota 46-0
Butler 67-0

2025
Western Illinois 52-3
Duke 45-19

Bret keeps doing things we haven’t done in a long time.
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Yeah, but no shutouts like we had in '42:). FWIW, I was born that year, but cannot take any credit.
 
#309      
TheChief4Life
Either way. Anyone claiming we played better than Duke in the first half, regardless of reasoning, is being blatantly oblivious. I don't understand why anyone, insider or not, is arguing this. All these other things regarding "the second half" or "coaching adjustments" can also be true as they are mutually exclusive scenarios to what the original post was saying. The original comment was purely about the the first half: https://www.illinoisloyalty.com/post/illinois-45-duke-19-postgame.39476/post-2291240

Then that guy had to be dumb and post "DL", when it was clearly obvious Duke's Dline was VASTLY outplaying ours in the first half. You could probably make an argument that a couple other position groups he mentioned didn't outplay Duke, either, but the DL comment was just a stupid take.

I don't know, but sometimes the pompous attitude just gets to me, and I was calling it out.
 
#314      
bluemountain
So glad I made the trip up from Charleston...my takeaways:

- Duke is a good team. Their front 7 is very good and they have a good QB
- Duke went away from the run game too early. I know we made some adjustments on defense to counter their early success, but they got pretty one dimensional
- on the flip side, after negative yardage in 1H we had 120+ rushing yards in 2H. That's why you don't stop running, even if you don't have much early success
- Depth made a huge difference in this game - Duke was gassed in Q4, we weren't
- Speaking of which, this is an underrated aspect of BB's recruiting in the portal - he may not bring in a lot of highly rated xfers, but does bring in a lot of depth pieces
- Our tackling in the secondary needs to get a whole lot better
- I don't know a whole lot about Tanner Heckel, but Tanner Heckel is going to be one heck of a player
- Probably never a better example of Bielema ball. TO's and mistakes made all the difference yesterday. A Lovie Smith coached team probably loses this one
- Our WR's are solid; Beatty is better than solid
- Luke f'ing Altmeyer - he may never play a down in the NFL, but my man just makes plays.
- Great crowd today - at the end all there was left in the stands was a sea of orange
- UI has the opportunity to be a "national" program if we continue our current trajectory, a la UM and OSU. We have a large alumni base throughout the country and being close to Chicago gives us big city media coverage. It would help if we could get an Ellison or Andreessen or Siebel to throw a couple hundred million $ our way, LOL
 
#315      
WWWWRocU
I agree with everyone over these last 12 pages and in the game thread that Duke's defensive front seven was just destroying us. It was very impressive showing. But, but, but, 2 things. 1) They did not cause any turnovers. Every time Luke went down I was expecting the ball to pop out. It never did. 2) I kept one eye on the scoreboard and miraculously we had the lead and kept it. I still don't know how we did that. I believe that is the result of the BB Effect. Holding that lead to the end of the half gave me a great sense of comfort that the team just kept on Fighting. It's in the name.
 
#317      
aaeismacgychel
Joel Goodson said:
https://twitter.com/x/status/1964666832113295802

he's earned it
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Absolutely. I know this is a hot take, but I think he might be the best pure running RB we've had in quite some time. Quick twitch and acceleration, extremely good vision, ankle breaking moves and high end speed. He's something really special. I legitimately think he could be 1st team All B10 next season. The only things really keeping him back right now is his blocking.

I would love to see us try a a couple 2 RB sets just to get him a few more snaps and get him in space while giving Luke a few more options from the backfield while also giving us better opportunities for misdirection and screens
 
#319      
Bbuck21
aaeismacgychel said:
Yep, and to add to this, while the ball/turnover luck we had in this game was extremely high (you can't expect to be +5 on turnovers, recover all 4 forced fumbles including a muffed punt), from a stats perspective it still only contributed to a +14.7 valuation.

Meaning that Duke, the football gods, etc gifted us 15pts. We still won by 26. On the road (-3 valuation). So if we add that all up +26margin-15luck+3road = 14pts better luck and venue adjusted.

So even though we didn't play well that 1st half, even though we can say we got gifted a bunch of points, the reality is that despite that, the analytics suggest we were still 2 touchdowns better than Duke today without any of that. Why? Because we basically took every mistake Duke made and every turnover we forced and put it in the endzone. That is the sign of a very very good team.

This does feel a lot like the other side of the Timmy the Clown era where he'd go up to the podium saying that boy, we were right in this game if not for the 5 turnovers and 3 personal fouls on 3rd down, and had we just scored a few more times in yet another 40pt loss. This game wasn't pretty in the 1st half but people are going wayyyyyy overboard in the other direction
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There's only a couple of them.
 
#323      
Chuck Nuggets
BWBW said:
IMHO, Duke did to us what I expected Indiana would do to us. I would like to thank them for that. The Indiana game may just be more "winnable" for us as a result.
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We can win at Indiana. I didn't think it was too likely before the season, but now I'm pretty confident it's possible. I'd say something like 40/60 in favor of IU at this point, whatever the heck that means.
 
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