This 100% lol.
Illinois 73, Penn State 65 Postgame
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TheDukeUIUC
- Twin Cities, MN
I think you misunderstand my point. The offense and team runs pretty great with Wagler initiating. Its the fact that a) our offense was flat before being forced to make the big adjustment and 2) nothing has been done to address that things don't work well without Wagler. We just had a 19 day stretch with only four games and didnt seem to addrrss anything on offense while the schedule was light. The fact that we seemingly don't run anything different to maximize Bos or have Tomi/Mirk play point forward with their passing skills. Nothing about the offense feels intentional when Waglers not in the game. That's my concern.
I mean, again. Did you not see us run basically every halfcourt possession through Mirk when Keaton was out?
Also, for the sake of this discussion if we agree that the offense shifted to Wagler being the primary ball handler the Ohio State game - do you know what our offense was rated nationally until that point?
A few things:
1. THIS TEAM IS GOOD. We are having this grand debate because BRAD has raised the bar. That’s a great thing. I don’t think those of us being critical are mad, it’s just healthy debate with fellow Illini fans.
2. Tomi seems to be a player who gets “active” in other areas when his shot is falling, we need him hitting the glass and playing smart on defense even when he isn’t scoring
3. I love this board, my entire adult life has been spent away from the state of Illinois and other Illini fans. I can’t imagine not having you all to debate with, celebrate with, laugh and argue with, and occasionally go looney after dark with. Illini bball is my #1 passion outside of family etc, I hope we get to celebrate winning it all one day….
In the mean time I’m still going to an emotional fan who is critical when I see fit and rational when I see fit
1. THIS TEAM IS GOOD. We are having this grand debate because BRAD has raised the bar. That’s a great thing. I don’t think those of us being critical are mad, it’s just healthy debate with fellow Illini fans.
2. Tomi seems to be a player who gets “active” in other areas when his shot is falling, we need him hitting the glass and playing smart on defense even when he isn’t scoring
3. I love this board, my entire adult life has been spent away from the state of Illinois and other Illini fans. I can’t imagine not having you all to debate with, celebrate with, laugh and argue with, and occasionally go looney after dark with. Illini bball is my #1 passion outside of family etc, I hope we get to celebrate winning it all one day….
In the mean time I’m still going to an emotional fan who is critical when I see fit and rational when I see fit
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For real! Can’t imagine not having this board. Having an awesome site like this for free is amazing for my, and Illini nations fandom. Shoutout to the real goat, Dan.
You may be totally right. But for me Michigan passes the eye test right now. However, with all NCAA basketball teams this could all change due to an injury to a key player or some other unforseen event. That is why in my humble opinion teams need to be operating on all cyliders by the middle of February. I take the view that Illinois is still a work in progress as of January 4, 2026.
I am not talking about a big like Mirk initiating the offense.
TheDukeUIUC
- Twin Cities, MN
I guess you look at the kenpom and think everything is fine if its a high enough ranking, even though our OR went down after the game and it was very clearly clunky without Wagler. We were hovering around .800 points per possession midway through the second half while Wagler was on the bench after picking up his fourth foul (according to Jeremy Werner). With all the weapons on the team, that's simply not good enough. What we were running was not working.
While Mirk did initiate the offense more often while Wagler was out, he ended up with a whopping 3 assists. For every offensive set that Mirk initiated, we also had late shot clock threes from KB because there was absolutely no post touch.
You’re talking about just posting up our bigs, throw an entry pass, and let them cook. But go and rewatch the first 3 minutes of the game. It was clear PSU was going to blitz/dig/double immediately.
You take advantage with quick cuts or skip passes to the weak side for wide open jump shots, or if you have a 4/5 that can handle it (Mirk) then you utilize that rather than trying to back into a defense that is going to instantly blitz/dig/double on every single post catch.
We saw what they were doing, exploited it, and it was 13-3 before you knew it at the 16 min timeout.
This seems like sort of the same thing as when I hear “drive it to the hoop when the 3 isn’t falling”, but the defense is packed in the paint. You can’t just force the one thing the defense is trying to take away.
To be fair, it was good enough. We won - and quite comfortably IMO. I’ll grant I didn’t think it was our most impressive performance to date though.
Saying the offense wasn’t efficient running through Mirk is very different than the original post saying we didn’t give the ball to Mirk to take advantage of his passing skills.
As for the Kenpom ratings, idk what to say besides yes? I think it’s a pretty good indicator of the health of the offense. Against PSU, I think we had a poor shooting night, had our lotto pick get in foul trouble, but were physical enough to get to the line, make our free throws, played good defense and got outta there with a comfy Q2 road win.
Edit here … that stretch in the first half when we were up 15 and Z missed the front end of a 1 and 1 on back to back possessions, and then he, Boswell, and Keaton all split a pair drove me insane. That could have been a 20+ point lead.
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Nobody is denying the offense went stagnant when Keaton went out of the game, but I think lot of people just saying it isn’t the death knell for our season it’s being made out to be.
Someone else posted in another thread that our most effective 2 man combo from an offensive and defensive efficiency is actually Boswell and Tomi. And that is a sample size of the whole season, not just one game.
Maybe it’s some people talking past one another but it’s like yeah we struggled in this game, but (1) Keaton won’t be limited to 20 mins every night and (2) we are probably better with him off the floor overall than we were yesterday as it just looked like a bunch of open shots didn’t fall (wasn’t even as if we were sloppy or turned it over a ton)
From the look of it, these guys obviously didn't feel like they played their best game. It was just one game. You can't draw any major conclusions from just this game. Let's see how we show for the next two - especially Iowa (maybe we should import DMFW to give the pre-game at Iowa).
Ehh. Not very efficient.
I’m not sure he has much help in getting open looks though. Him creating his own shot all the time isn’t really his deal.
Given McCollum’s style, I’m not sure he’s shedding tears losing dix and freeman
How is Stojakovic “not a great athlete?” What’s your definition of “athlete?” TSJ? Okay, that’s a one of one situation.
Stoj is likely next in line for best athlete we’ve had in years.
This complaint of lacking “athleticism” and “athletes” that’s taken shape ever since TSJ left is a bit confusing to me. Who are we referring to in terms of examples? Morez? Ayo? DGL? …. If we go way back Tevian Jones?
Stoj likely fits the mold of all those guys (other than DGL who’s 6”2).
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Ha ha my wife is a Duke fan and she hates it when I remind her that we were in Sarr first before they came in and swooped him up. Sarr has been absolutely underwhelming to the Duke fan base.
Nobody is setting the world on fire as far as assists go for us. I thought Petro might be the guy to go out and get 7+ assists per game but that sure went off the rails.
This seemingly ridiculous discourse about out offense boils down to the fact that most posters here don't watch a ton of college basketball (or basketball period) outside of the Illini.
Those Kenpom final four banner raising ceremonies are so exciting. Will it be televised?
Why not? Its a big part of his game no pun intended
Probably not televised, but the spreadsheet reveal party is going to be legendary. I heard they're streaming it on a TI-84.
Anyway, you are correct that there is no banner... just a much higher probability of seeing my team play in April.
Fighter of the Nightman
- Chicago, IL
I want to preface this by saying I had not considered issues with Tomi ... other than being super impressed by Z and noticing Tomi was a bit off so far this year, I had no idea his stats were that bad and I have just not been paying that close of attention to it. So, if folks' issues are with that and how it might affect our ceiling, fair enough ... but I am not touching on that here.
So, to my point ... after some days to reflect on it, I remain shocked that people are this negative about picking up this road win, lol. I was incredibly frustrated and openly critical of this team potentially being a repeat of last year after the UConn game. I saw the same "sleepiness" to start the game, a Fake Comeback or three to give us hope and eventually a barrage of bricked 3-pointers en route to a frustrating loss. My main complaint after that game is that we simply CANNOT be the type of team that is just flat-out screwed if we aren't shooting well; we HAVE to be able to win games when shots aren't falling by being tough on D and finding our way to the hoop. It's easy to look good in games like this year's Braggin' Rights where are shooting 52% from the field and 46% from three ... but we all know that isn't going to happen every night, and the problem with last year's team was it simply lacked the ability to consistently grind out a win when it was an off shooting night. After UConn, I was incredibly worried that we had made very little progress in this regard.
Fast forward to January, and we just won a Big Ten road game where we shot 39% from the field and 22% from three. And I would argue we did it by being smarter and tougher than we were last year. The three following things are what stuck out to me:
1. We clamped down on defense when it was clear we were having a bit of an off game offensively. We are averaging over 87 PPG this year, and we scored only 73 at Penn State. Did that doom us to a loss because we simply need to outscore everyone to beat them? Nope. We held PSU to just 65 points, not to mention PSU had only 58 points before some garbage buckets when the game was already over. You can point out that PSU is terrible and missed some open looks, but the fact is they were averaging over 79 PPG before they played us. Also, PSU isn't a good 3-point shooting team anyway, with a season average below ours ... let 'em chuck up threes if they want! Our defense has improved significantly in the last month, and that will be absolutely essential for a deep run in March.
2. While we might have taken a few more threes than we should have (the getting in the bonus and then N-E-V-E-R getting to the free throw line from that point on continues to baffle me, and Brad should frankly have to address that in the media ... happens WAY too often!!), but we are getting better at not relying on threes when they aren't falling. In games like Braggin' Rights where we are hot from deep, why not keep shooting? There is no issue with shooting more threes than twos (33 vs. 25, respectively, against Mizzou) in those instances. However, in a game like PSU where they weren't falling, we did tone it down a bit. We shot 29 twos and 27 threes the other night, our fewest attempted threes vs. a Power Conference team since the Texas Tech game. I get individual attempts might have brought back traumatic memories from last year, but we didn't just keep jacking them up and hoping they went in.
3. The energy was SO much better than what we saw last year in these types of games. I wanted to vomit last year when I would see a cold offensive start leading to guys like KJ running around with this clueless look on their faces and lethargic body language; it was as if we were surprised there was more to basketball than just letting the shots fly and watching them hit nothing but net. We came out right from the get-go and punched PSU in the mouth, going up 7-0 and then 13-3 before the first TV timeout. We led 27-13 with 8:51 left in the first half, 40-26 at halftime, 53-39 with 12:06 left in the game, 64-49 with 5:24 left in the game and we were up 71-59 with 1:30 to go. PSU never got closer than 8 in the entire second half and trailed by double digits for the vast majority of the game. The game was literally never in doubt, and the reason for that wasn't because we were lighting it up offensively but rather the opposite ... when PSU would make a run and get the crowd engaged or when Wagler was taken out of the game and threw our game plan off, we REFUSED to break even when we would bend a little ... we literally grinded out a win when the shots weren't falling in the E-X-A-C-T way many of us have been asking for since last year, and nobody is happy?!
We've now won 3 straight Big Ten road games dating back to last year and 5 of our last 6 Big Ten games dating back to last season. And we finally did it when our offensive execution looked like crap, simply because we were determined to win and had the toughness and composure necessary to do it. We should feel a lot better about that reality, haha...
So, to my point ... after some days to reflect on it, I remain shocked that people are this negative about picking up this road win, lol. I was incredibly frustrated and openly critical of this team potentially being a repeat of last year after the UConn game. I saw the same "sleepiness" to start the game, a Fake Comeback or three to give us hope and eventually a barrage of bricked 3-pointers en route to a frustrating loss. My main complaint after that game is that we simply CANNOT be the type of team that is just flat-out screwed if we aren't shooting well; we HAVE to be able to win games when shots aren't falling by being tough on D and finding our way to the hoop. It's easy to look good in games like this year's Braggin' Rights where are shooting 52% from the field and 46% from three ... but we all know that isn't going to happen every night, and the problem with last year's team was it simply lacked the ability to consistently grind out a win when it was an off shooting night. After UConn, I was incredibly worried that we had made very little progress in this regard.
Fast forward to January, and we just won a Big Ten road game where we shot 39% from the field and 22% from three. And I would argue we did it by being smarter and tougher than we were last year. The three following things are what stuck out to me:
1. We clamped down on defense when it was clear we were having a bit of an off game offensively. We are averaging over 87 PPG this year, and we scored only 73 at Penn State. Did that doom us to a loss because we simply need to outscore everyone to beat them? Nope. We held PSU to just 65 points, not to mention PSU had only 58 points before some garbage buckets when the game was already over. You can point out that PSU is terrible and missed some open looks, but the fact is they were averaging over 79 PPG before they played us. Also, PSU isn't a good 3-point shooting team anyway, with a season average below ours ... let 'em chuck up threes if they want! Our defense has improved significantly in the last month, and that will be absolutely essential for a deep run in March.
2. While we might have taken a few more threes than we should have (the getting in the bonus and then N-E-V-E-R getting to the free throw line from that point on continues to baffle me, and Brad should frankly have to address that in the media ... happens WAY too often!!), but we are getting better at not relying on threes when they aren't falling. In games like Braggin' Rights where we are hot from deep, why not keep shooting? There is no issue with shooting more threes than twos (33 vs. 25, respectively, against Mizzou) in those instances. However, in a game like PSU where they weren't falling, we did tone it down a bit. We shot 29 twos and 27 threes the other night, our fewest attempted threes vs. a Power Conference team since the Texas Tech game. I get individual attempts might have brought back traumatic memories from last year, but we didn't just keep jacking them up and hoping they went in.
3. The energy was SO much better than what we saw last year in these types of games. I wanted to vomit last year when I would see a cold offensive start leading to guys like KJ running around with this clueless look on their faces and lethargic body language; it was as if we were surprised there was more to basketball than just letting the shots fly and watching them hit nothing but net. We came out right from the get-go and punched PSU in the mouth, going up 7-0 and then 13-3 before the first TV timeout. We led 27-13 with 8:51 left in the first half, 40-26 at halftime, 53-39 with 12:06 left in the game, 64-49 with 5:24 left in the game and we were up 71-59 with 1:30 to go. PSU never got closer than 8 in the entire second half and trailed by double digits for the vast majority of the game. The game was literally never in doubt, and the reason for that wasn't because we were lighting it up offensively but rather the opposite ... when PSU would make a run and get the crowd engaged or when Wagler was taken out of the game and threw our game plan off, we REFUSED to break even when we would bend a little ... we literally grinded out a win when the shots weren't falling in the E-X-A-C-T way many of us have been asking for since last year, and nobody is happy?!
We've now won 3 straight Big Ten road games dating back to last year and 5 of our last 6 Big Ten games dating back to last season. And we finally did it when our offensive execution looked like crap, simply because we were determined to win and had the toughness and composure necessary to do it. We should feel a lot better about that reality, haha...
We outscored them 14 in the first half. They outscored us 6 in the second. His adjustments were not so good.
I watched the game and my conclusion was more so that our best player was on the bench for 15 minutes of the 2H
The adjustments this time had more to do with Keaton being out than what PSU was doing (though we punished them early 1H for doubling the post every trip)
All of this. I will admit I don’t understand the vitriol at all after this one. Shots weren’t falling and we were battling foul trouble yet still comfortably won a road conference game.
Led by 10-12 basically the entire game. Frustrating that we didn’t stretch out the lead to 30 and blow out an inferior opponent? Sure, but these sorts of nights happen on the road in the BIG, particularly when your best player battles serious foul trouble all game. Good teams battle through adversity and find a way to win.
Just a couple more points to add:
1. I do think Penn State has some talented pieces. I bet they win 4-5 conference games this year, with most of those probably coming at home. And they are very young. My guess is they will continue to improve and in that sense we are probably lucky we got them now vs late Feb.
2. Sparty barely beat this same team on a night where they did hit shots. They went 10-18 from 3 where 8-18 gets them beat.
3. If the garbage time had gone the other way and we’d pushed the final margin out to say, 16-18, would there still be such hand wringing? I doubt it. Regardless of what the final score says this was a comfortable road win in conference when we played our C minus game. Will take that every time.
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