Illini effectively lost all 4 coinflip games they played (Neb buzzer beater and 3 OT games). Say instead of going 0-4 they went 2-2 (say, beat UCLA and Wisconsin), finished 17-3 in conference and 23-5 overall. They'd effectively still be the 5th best team, but now the polls would likely agree with it. Do you feel significantly better about the season?
I'll bite! My answer is yes, but not just because we would have gotten lucky in some coin flip games whereas in our timeline we got unlucky.
1) I'll grant Nebraska and MSU as "fair losses," in that we dug our own grave in the first Nebraska matchup and it was just flat-out greedy of us to be too mad about not winning in OT at MSU, YET AGAIN without Boswell. So, I don't think we "should have won" either game.
2) The Wisconsin home game is tricky, as they have proven more than capable of beating very good teams on the road, and we were down two starters. With that said, I found that game to be the first truly concerning result of ours since UConn in November because we just REFUSED to pull away. We opened it up to an 11-point lead with 11:21 to go, and we let them hang around. We got it to a 7-point lead with 6:49 to go, and we allowed Wisconsin to just keep on scoring vs. our defense and eventually tie it at 76 with 2:10 left. Wagler hit a huge shot to give us a 3-point lead with 1:53 left, and we couldn't stop the Badgers, who tied it with a three of their own. We then went up 80-78 with 1:12 to go, and we gave up yet another three to Wisconsin to give them the lead for the first time in a long time. Luckily Keaton at least hit one of two FTs to tie it, but then we completely folded in OT to go down 8 with 2:36 before our mini Fake Comeback failed. It's not really about Wisconsin as a team, it's that we already did what we had to do - play well enough to put ourselves in a position to just close out the Badgers. Instead, it showed the first worrying signs of us letting teams hang around, and we let them hang around enough to beat us.
3) Very similar to Wisconsin, the loss vs. UCLA isn't so much that an OT loss on the road to a team who's fantastic at home is a huge deal ... it's that we were up TWENTY and looked fantastic, and then it's like we just forgot how to play basketball. It's one thing if our shots just go cold ... that happens. But I think we were all hopeful that our defense had turned a corner to the extent that we could hunker down and at least hold on to a big lead by virtue of just not allowing the other team to go nuclear on us shooting. Part of another team getting hot shooting is just bad luck/them making tough shots, but part of it is ALWAYS the other team's defense, too.
Needless to say, it also just sucks that in this particular regular season, a single loss does indeed make such a massive difference. We would be in a much rosier position right now (at least IMO) if we were the #3 seed in the BTT and getting that path to Sunday, and hanging on to just one of those two games does the trick. Additionally, with how crowded the #2/3 seed group is for the NCAAs and how many teams would want St. Louis, one game also had massive ramifications there, too.
Add on our surprisingly lackluster effort vs. Michigan (emphasis on effort, which has nothing to do with how good Michigan is...) and a too-close-for-comfort game vs. a VERY bad Maryland team, and I think it's understandable for fans to feel somewhat deflated compared to back in mid-February. With that said? We have everything in front of us. Nothing that has happened up to this point is that big of a deal as far as handicapping a potential run to the Elite Eight or beyond. We definitely have to regain the toughness on defense that we had during the win streak and vs. Indiana/USC (two games where I personally felt we looked AT LEAST as good as during our impressive win streak, both notably post-Wisconsin loss), but we can do it.
