Enlighten me then.Tell me his weakness.
I didn't watch yesterday's game, but his general IQ needs work. From the highlights it looks like he was handling ball screens a lot better vs. Michigan. He got burned a few times helping off shooters vs IU.
Enlighten me then.Tell me his weakness.
Enlighten me then.
I'm not going to go re-watch the tape, but it's not hard to imagine that he missed off-ball rotations/help, switches, etc. I've advocated for TJL to get minutes as long as anyone, but it's entirely common for true frosh to struggle defensively.
But, just to answer your question with a specific point, he will always be limited as a defender by his size. He doesn't have great or elite quickness to make up for it (which will also limit his ceiling a little bit offensively), but he does have great feel for the game that helps him overcome the size/athleticism deficiencies, which is entirely welcome as quite a few guys on our roster do not have similar feel.
His quickness seemed pretty damn great to me yesterday.
Watch Anthony Cowan on Saturday, or any day
His quickness seemed pretty damn great to me yesterday.
It'll be interesting to see how he does against Maryland's guards.I may change my mind.
I'm curious why so many believe that by starting TJL earlier in the season he would have put up the same numbers as he did last night. Maybe he needed the time to get himself acclimated to the speed of the game? That if he played 20+ minutes on day 1 he would maybe have played a lot worse, lost confidence, and then NOT put up the numbers he put up last night. I don't dissect individual performance enough to have firm conclusions on this stuff. But maybe, despite the fact that Groce sucks and he doesn't know X's and O's and can't develop and should be fired, etc, etc, that just maybe Groce did a good thing in unleashing him at this point in the season?
I'm probably wrong.
His quickness seemed pretty damn great to me yesterday.
The progression of TJL is going to decide how far this team goes. Obviously, every Illini fan could tell that this kid has the IQ to be a high level player and needed more mins. The difference between him and TA/JT is the first pass to me. His first pass moves the defense where as before we were passing without a purpose. No one was off balance or being worked. TJL set up shooters tonight, but his play also led to better passes from his recipients. I like combo guards but trying to make them the pg is getting old and is proven time and time again to be unsuccessful.
This was awesome to watch. Abrams-Jalen-Kipper-Hill-Black is the lineup I'd like to see. If Kipper is that scrappy all the time, I'd love to see he and Leron down low taking offensive boards from bigs.
That's not a very fair comparison. It's tough to find players that quick.
"They are more of a white-collar team traditionally and at Illinois we're about toughness and together," Morgan said. "Not that they're not but we kind of pride ourselves on defense and that's something we've been working to get better at."
Sure, but TJL is average B10 guard quick, which was my point. He's not a + athlete, just average amongst B10 athletes. We are comparing him with the subpar athletes at point we've been running, so he looks excellent, and he is better than those guards, but he's not even close to the most athletic guy around, his quickness is just good enough to be competitive at the position.
Ha, WHY are doing this
Kinda weird to be taking shots at Michigan's style of play when they've been feeding us our lunch for years now. And man, do I hope we are not priding ourselves on our defense, because, uh, there are going to be a lot of ashamed people walking around Ubben.
Watch Anthony Cowan on Saturday, or any day
Ugh. Welp, the return game in Ann Arbor is off the potential wins list.
Agree - sometimes I feel like we're watching a different player.
TJL is doing just fine on D, he's rotating over, working to get over the top of screens and anticipating (the tips). We, as a team, do not get many steals. We're decent at digging for the ball and being the first on the ground for lose balls, but straight out anticipation steals - few. TA has some, TJL is improving.
He's not completely there yet on D, but hey, I'll that the minor difference now for the experience to get there and the massive improvement in running the O when he's in there.
I'm sure they're going to be super endured up because Mav called them white collar.
Saw an article (don't have the link handy) that said Michigan players are using Mav's comment as motivation not just for the return match but for the rest of the season. Way to go Mav.
Saw an article (don't have the link handy) that said Michigan players are using Mav's comment as motivation not just for the return match but for the rest of the season. Way to go Mav.
The defensive spacing was much different when you play 5 on 5 vs. 4 on 5. 64% FG% was the best since 1/6/2011 when we hit 70.5% (school record) against NW in C/U.