Your logic on shooting "bad/contested" threes is solid. But there are people on this board posting "STOP SHOOTING 3's!!!!!" in all caps so I mean you get why he has to say that...
Illinois 72, Nebraska 56 Postgame
If they don’t guard us at the 3 we will smoke them. It’s not the amount of 3’s we are taking it’s the quality! If we get open or in rhythm 3’s then yes! The in the face, step back or desperation 3’s because we had no movement or paint touches is what drives me nuts.
This is the correct take. I'd be curious to know what our 3p% is in the first 5 seconds of the shot clock, the last 5 seconds of the shot clock, and the middle 20 seconds. And what percentage of our attempts come in each of those intervals.
My guess is the shots taken in the middle 20 seconds go in at a higher clip. But we shoot a disproportionately high number of threes early and late.
I still think we have several plus 3p shooters. It's just how they go about getting and taking their shots.
blackdog
- Champaign
The problem isn't with shooting open 3s its contested 3s not in the flow of offense sometimes. Or running a completely disorganized set with no flow and then having to shoot a contested 3 with the shot clock running down. Those are the ones I would like to see less of and some games they seem to be a frequent occurrence.
.. six feet behind the line...
Come on man. We're 21st in the country in 2 point FG% and 288th in 3 point FG% yet 43% of our shots are from 3 (50th in the country in 3PA/FGA). We don't ONLY take open 3s. There's quite a bit of room to improve the team's shot selection given their skill sets.
Illinois has played 22 games this season The shot selection is what it is. Coach Underwood has reiterated on more than one occasion that they do not work on step back threes and side step threes ( his term) in practice. So there is no reason for me to get bent out of shape at this point. If things improve in that area, I believe Illinois will be more efficient on offense.
I recall Ant Wright did a scouting video on the incoming recruits, and was saying Epps didn't have flash, but was one of those guys who just knew how to get buckets.
Spot on! Kind of surprised how well his game has translated to college. Most defenders aren't able to stop his wide variety of attacks. He's got some great floaters, and high arcing shots off the glass to go with the usual moves.
Were you watching the first 10 minutes of the second half? Nebraska was shooting themselves in the foot over and over and if you watch closely it wasn’t because of anything we did. Yea sure, we clamped them the last 10 minutes but I think we all expected that. Im not arguing that this defense isn’t good, just that holding Nebraska to under 60 really isn’t much to hang your hat on.
At the end of the day a win is a win. They will need to hold Iowa to under 75 to have a chance IMO. Let’s see if they can.
The passing and movement has improved significantly over the course of the season, but there are still times when guys are tired, shooting or flow is off, or they're backing off a bit to conserve energy. When the guys are moving and passing well, we get much better inside looks. So the point I'm making here is subtle, but essentially the 2 point success is not because we're looking to go inside like we did with Kofi, but because the flow of the offense is improving, and excellent when the guys are sharp.
I think the counter-argument is two-fold: you need the 3 point shooting to get the spacing and looks that get that high % of 2 point shooting, and that Underwood believes in the guys enough that they need to keep taking those 3 pointers and better averages will follow. "Build it and they will come."
FWIW, I tend to agree that we're more dangerous when we're getting good movement and attacking, but I don't fault the coaching staff for believing in our shooters.
Iowa hasn't technically scored under 75 points at home all season (they scored 75 against Wisconsin but that took OT to get there). They dropped 92 on Rutgers who has one of the best defenses in the nation (#2 on KenPom).
They're pretty similar to Missouri. I'm not sure that kind of team is a great matchup for us this year. I'm nervous for Saturday but would love to be surprised.
There you go again, injecting logic into a Loyalty discussion . . ,
Defensively I think we are a lot better now than when we played Mizzou. Mizzou we were still in switch everything mode and we had a lot of busted switches which led to a lot of open looks. We were also turning the ball over like crazy which led to a crazy number (think it was over 30?) of transition points.
We’ve cleaned all that up and have done a pretty good job of contesting 3’s and limiting attempts overall. Even last night, a lot of the 3’s Nebraska hit in the first half were contested. And beyond 3’s, Hawkins gave the other Murray problems last year, and Dain should give Rebraca problems.
We will get Iowa’s best shot and it is a tough place to win and I think we will probably need to play our best, most complete game so far this year in order to do so. But I actually think we match up with Iowa okay and if we can keep them off the 3 pt line and force Murray and Rebraca to try and beat us with tough 2’s, we’ve got a shot.
We'll just have to agree to disagree. There is more than enough data to show that we're a below average 3 point shooting team and to keep believing we will improve is a fool's errand. We're shooting under 30% from 3 in conference play. We didn't shoot well from 3 against our sub-300 KP opponents either. What evidence is there to suggest they can turn it around? Practice? I've heard that one before.
There may not be other, good options for the staff at this point in the season but I certainly hope they don't think we're going to suddenly start making 35% of our 3s.
I think Brad should institute a rule where if you miss 3 3's in a row, you don't get to shoot them the rest of the game - and if you do, you get yanked out. You can play later, but just a reminder to stop shooting 3's.
Withheld comment until today to get some perspective. Have to say that this is the least satisfying 16 point win I have ever experienced. Guys seemed somewhat disinterested in the first half. Came out better in the second half but seemed disjointed. There is still a reluctancy to share the ball or sometimes they just pass around without purpose. It looks almost as if they are just killing time sometimes. This results in too much one on one basketball at the end of a shot clock.. This often resulted in a jacked up three, as Nebraska's interior defense was pretty good. They finally clamped down on defense and the freshmen got going to win the game. I think that if they had relied on the upper-classmen in this one, it would have been a loss.
The fact that they can do this to pull one out shows the upside of this team. I don't know why they can't give 40 minutes of this kind of effort. The team is deep enough that we should be able to keep throwing guys out there and keep them fresh. I get the feeling that they just don't trust each other completely. I like the fact that Brad stepped away to let them figure this out. His anger and admonishments earlier in the season were not getting it done. Amazing that he can see this and change his ways. It is almost like he is a completely different coach out there.
The fact that they can do this to pull one out shows the upside of this team. I don't know why they can't give 40 minutes of this kind of effort. The team is deep enough that we should be able to keep throwing guys out there and keep them fresh. I get the feeling that they just don't trust each other completely. I like the fact that Brad stepped away to let them figure this out. His anger and admonishments earlier in the season were not getting it done. Amazing that he can see this and change his ways. It is almost like he is a completely different coach out there.
pruman91
- Paducah, Ky
This may have been talked about already, but I haven't been on since the game last night. Who runs the clock for NCAA games? It may not be an easy job with the 20 second reset and the 30 second reset, but there are always several reviews for this purpose alone. Did anyone else notice the shot clock violation on the Illini early in the 2nd half? They reset the shot clock to 20 after a Nebraska turnover, seemed like the clock ran out really quick, because it did.
I swore that wasn't the full 30! I didn't bother to go back and check, but thanks for confirming my suspicions.
It was easy to see that TSJ was surprised. Not in this game, but in others, they've also had several times they had it wrong, then stopped play, ran the clock from about 22 down to around 12, then had to rush an offense in a very short clock.
We took almost 50% of our shots from 3 and made 17.2% of them. There isn't a single coach or fan in the country that would be happy with that or think that's the recipe for success.
Again, we are the 288th best 3 point shooting team in the country and we are 50th in 3PA/FGA. Our overall offensive efficiency has been falling as fast as our defensive efficiency has been rising. Our offense is the 8th most efficient in conference play. Calls to improve shot selection are not unreasonable.
Again, we are the 288th best 3 point shooting team in the country and we are 50th in 3PA/FGA. Our overall offensive efficiency has been falling as fast as our defensive efficiency has been rising. Our offense is the 8th most efficient in conference play. Calls to improve shot selection are not unreasonable.
I'd like this ten times if I could. If our guys took the ball to the hoop instead of shooting threes on those possessions where we run no offense at all, you'd see the 2FG% and 3FG% numbers converge quite a bit. (In fact, we did just that on two of the first possessions of the game -- Mayer dribbled straight into a triple-team and travelled, and then Shannon put his head down and threw up a prayer that got snuffed by three defenders a couple of plays later.)
People are wondering about why Underwood chose to sit on the bench during halftime, but there are only so many words you can use to say 'run the ******* system, guys.' Stay on your assignments on D and reverse the ball from time to time on O. If you can't do that, you're not exactly going to be making small tweaks at the break.
Sidebar, thanks @Illini in Italy for the new avatar. Much more appetizing than the old!There you go again, injecting logic into a Loyalty discussion . . ,
The problem is that they're taking bad threes. There are a good number of folks on here who have assumed we'd get the same result regardless of the quality of threes we're taking, and that we'd get the same result on our twos even if we forced the issue and took more bad shots from inside the arc. You can't ignore that Shannon hit 38% of his threes last year and just say he's a bad shooter, because he isn't. The difference is that he's taking a ton of threes off the dribble and under duress, and he needs to cut that out. But he's not a bad shooter, and this team is not a bad shooting team. They're just not great at creating good shots a lot of the time because they're freelancing way too much.
Run the offense and it will get you better threes, and open up driving lanes as well. Until they do that, they're going to keep looking bad on half of their possessions.
Joel Goodson
- respect my decision™
bold foray into a postgame thread, lol...
5-29!!! Hopefully, Underwood drills it into their heads that making it to the S16 is a pipedream if they don't have much better balance. Take it to the rack!!!
5-29!!! Hopefully, Underwood drills it into their heads that making it to the S16 is a pipedream if they don't have much better balance. Take it to the rack!!!