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Illinois 83, Duke 68 Postgame
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<blockquote data-quote="dbeverly26" data-source="post: 1561954" data-attributes="member: 515868"><p>Getting a good laugh out of some of the negative posts here. No judgements, you know, you do you -- I'm one of the most negative folks I know and I understand our scars from the last 15 years. But we just beat a team that's lost out of conference at home 11 times in 41 years or something like that, and we throttled them from the opening tip to the final horn. Folks say that Duke isn't as good as they usually are, and we're not as good as we think we are. I'm no mathematician, but I think you cancel those things on either side of the equation and we still won by 15 at Duke, right?</p><p></p><p>For once, I think that I'm gonna be satisfied here and leave it at that.</p><p></p><p>A couple of other notes -- we got 'beat' on the boards but it wasn't a bad performance. Duke rebounded 26% of their misses. League-wide that number averages 28%, and has averaged 28% for a while now. (For further context, Baylor absolutely buggy-whipped us on the glass and they got 40% of their misses.) Given that they started 6-9, 6-9 and 7-0 I'm not going to fault our guys for performing better than average in that category. I'm not thrilled by our performance on the offensive boards, but if Duke wants to make the choice to send five guys to the glass and give up on a transition game I'll take that every day and twice on Sundays. You'd think a coaching mastermind like K would want to find ways to help this particular team score, but whatever.</p><p></p><p>As for Curbelo, I think that if you put a leash on him you're missing the point of having him on your team. He had a couple of howlers last night, but he's playing in his fifth college game, on the road, against top-tier competition, and under really adverse circumstances due to the pandemic. In a normal year we'd have three exhibitions on the schedule, and game 5 would be against Coastal Western Dakota A & Tech or something. In spite of all that, he made what is by most accounts a good and highly physical defensive team look absolutely silly on multiple occasions. I'm positively giddy. And the mistakes he did make were often because he wasn't attacking -- he stood still and allowed the double-team to come. (You could say that about our performance against the press generally.) Let the kid play it his way. He'll eventually figure out what it takes to play against a bunch of guys that are as good as he is night in and night out. If I'm worried about anyone in the turnover department, it's Trent Frazier, who's a four-year starter and should absolutely be stronger with the ball.</p><p></p><p>Finally, I loved the ace of spades from Ayo at the end. That's the Jordan mentality, and a very good sign for the rest of the season.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="dbeverly26, post: 1561954, member: 515868"] Getting a good laugh out of some of the negative posts here. No judgements, you know, you do you -- I'm one of the most negative folks I know and I understand our scars from the last 15 years. But we just beat a team that's lost out of conference at home 11 times in 41 years or something like that, and we throttled them from the opening tip to the final horn. Folks say that Duke isn't as good as they usually are, and we're not as good as we think we are. I'm no mathematician, but I think you cancel those things on either side of the equation and we still won by 15 at Duke, right? For once, I think that I'm gonna be satisfied here and leave it at that. A couple of other notes -- we got 'beat' on the boards but it wasn't a bad performance. Duke rebounded 26% of their misses. League-wide that number averages 28%, and has averaged 28% for a while now. (For further context, Baylor absolutely buggy-whipped us on the glass and they got 40% of their misses.) Given that they started 6-9, 6-9 and 7-0 I'm not going to fault our guys for performing better than average in that category. I'm not thrilled by our performance on the offensive boards, but if Duke wants to make the choice to send five guys to the glass and give up on a transition game I'll take that every day and twice on Sundays. You'd think a coaching mastermind like K would want to find ways to help this particular team score, but whatever. As for Curbelo, I think that if you put a leash on him you're missing the point of having him on your team. He had a couple of howlers last night, but he's playing in his fifth college game, on the road, against top-tier competition, and under really adverse circumstances due to the pandemic. In a normal year we'd have three exhibitions on the schedule, and game 5 would be against Coastal Western Dakota A & Tech or something. In spite of all that, he made what is by most accounts a good and highly physical defensive team look absolutely silly on multiple occasions. I'm positively giddy. And the mistakes he did make were often because he wasn't attacking -- he stood still and allowed the double-team to come. (You could say that about our performance against the press generally.) Let the kid play it his way. He'll eventually figure out what it takes to play against a bunch of guys that are as good as he is night in and night out. If I'm worried about anyone in the turnover department, it's Trent Frazier, who's a four-year starter and should absolutely be stronger with the ball. Finally, I loved the ace of spades from Ayo at the end. That's the Jordan mentality, and a very good sign for the rest of the season. [/QUOTE]
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