Illinois #9 in 3/9 AP Poll
- Status
Battle89
- Cary-Grove, the better Trojan team
Yup, it's all about the timing.
Ayo team: came on strongest at the end of the year, many games of which were without their best player
TSJ team: redemption tour after exoneration, again more towards the end of the season
This year: all-world in January and a .500 team in February
Also of note is that we won the BTT tournament in the first two above. Despite some here being of the "NCAAs or bust" thinking, many others put more relative value on those banners.
Still a great year, enjoy it by all means. Keaton is a generational 'diamond in the rough' find and the Balkan experience has been a blast. We have the #1 offense in the country and at worst a 3 seed in the tournament (probably a 2).
But I do understand what the what-might-have-been folks are feeling.
Battle89
- Cary-Grove, the better Trojan team
Agree with all. We are also debating statistics vs. feelings in our gut, which is not apples-to-apples.
I may get heat for this, but for me personally it was the UCLA game. Something broke inside me when we gave up that huge lead and lost - basically your 'it factor' above.
Still love the team and have had a good time (most of) this year.
Epsilon
M tipping over
- Pdx
Thank you. There’s a giant chasm between “a bit deflated” and omg the sky is falling and this season is an utter failure. I’m just at the former, FWLIW, for exactly the reasons you listed. And I think these things are correctable and within our power to do so.
80'sIllini
- Arizona
For me, there are two parts to enjoying the season:
1. Being good enough during the regular season to be consistently ranked in top 25 and consequently have some exciting TV matchups against other ranked teams. Playing an enjoyable style, especially on offense, to watch the games also helps.
2. Being good enough to be at least a 5 seed in the NCAA and getting at least to the second weekend. Losing before then or losing well below our seed line really hurts in assessing satisfaction with the overall season because of the "finality" of going out in disappointing fashion to end the season and especially because that would be ending participation in my favorite sports event of the year. Add in recency bias to that unfortunate situation, if it were to occur, and it would admittedly exert a disproportionate influence on my take for the whole year. Unfair? For sure. And, I readily acknowledge appreciation for BU at least consistently hitting on point #1.
1. Being good enough during the regular season to be consistently ranked in top 25 and consequently have some exciting TV matchups against other ranked teams. Playing an enjoyable style, especially on offense, to watch the games also helps.
2. Being good enough to be at least a 5 seed in the NCAA and getting at least to the second weekend. Losing before then or losing well below our seed line really hurts in assessing satisfaction with the overall season because of the "finality" of going out in disappointing fashion to end the season and especially because that would be ending participation in my favorite sports event of the year. Add in recency bias to that unfortunate situation, if it were to occur, and it would admittedly exert a disproportionate influence on my take for the whole year. Unfair? For sure. And, I readily acknowledge appreciation for BU at least consistently hitting on point #1.
Homecoming 2019
- Chicago
If it makes you feel better, gut feelings were at an all time high before the loyola 2021 game. So we can pretty much ignore our guts!
Heck, if UCLA had the common decency to forfeit the game once they were down by 23, without more, I'd be a whole lot happier. That is the thing that never should have happened.
Beating UCLA by 23 would have qualified...
NSIDER LATEST!!
IZZO OUT AT MSU AFTER NCAA’S
FORCED RETIREMENT!!!
It’s about time! It’s all about his terrible handling of that little punk Fears.
IZZO OUT AT MSU AFTER NCAA’S
FORCED RETIREMENT!!!
It’s about time! It’s all about his terrible handling of that little punk Fears.
Or beating Michigan, or beating Oregon by more points, or beating Maryland by 35
So basically we haven't played an A+ game in the last 4 (though Torvik disagrees and gave us a 99 game score vs Oregon)
~Trend~
Orange line is moving average for the season. Overall, strong positive trend since we bottomed out vs UConn. Currently pointing down.
Dotted line is 5 game average. Pointing down and lowest it's been since December 22.
Source: Torvik
Orange line is moving average for the season. Overall, strong positive trend since we bottomed out vs UConn. Currently pointing down.
Dotted line is 5 game average. Pointing down and lowest it's been since December 22.
Source: Torvik
I do think Maryland was part recurring issues, but it was also part last game of the year favored team taking a breath and looking ahead to the postseason against a bad team playing loose. That happens every year including just this weekend when potential one seed UConn dropped one to an atrocious Marquette team, and we don’t hang a banner in 2022 without a bad Nebraska team going into the Kohl center and beating the badgers without their best player (Bryce McGowens) and an irrational confidence guy going off (mad props to Alonzo Verge).I get what you are saying, but expectations have to logically ebb and flow based on new circumstances. We were all very ecstatic in February of 2020 where we simply looked like an actual competitive, nationally relevant basketball team again because what we had witnessed for the decade before that was just so bad. However, that was six years ago now ... and we have come a long way. We can't compare every season to the John Groce Era forever, because we are not in the same spot anymore. Nobody circa 2006 was comparing Illini Basketball to what it was in the mid-1990s and for good reason.
Things also change significantly during the course of a season. The fact is that after we obliterated Northwestern on February 4 to complete an incredible 12-game winning streak, we legitimately did look like a Final Four contender, and a #1 seed was not some crazy goal. However, that goal assumed that we could beat Wisconsin at home and sweep the West Coast trip ... maybe those were overly optimistic even at the time, but that is where our heads reasonably were! I honestly think if we had come out and beat Maryland by 20, fans would be A LOT more optimistic right now. How we bounced back vs. Oregon was legitimately impressive, and it looked like we had regained our groove. The Maryland game seemed to revive a lot of issues we were hoping were dead and gone, such as continuing to jack up ill-advised threes when it was clear we were having a cold shooting night and not being able to get as many defensive stops as we needed and as we were getting a month ago. If this team comes out and beats a streaking Wisconsin team - something we are more than capable of doing - all will be well again, and even our most pessimistic fans will start dreaming of revenge against Michigan.
As far as recurring issues surfacing in the Maryland game, to me the biggest one was the inability to contain dribble penetration. Mills hit some tough shots it’s true, but I felt like he got whatever he wanted the last 10 minutes or so.
As far as jacking up ill advised 3’s, I actually thought we did a pretty good job of pivoting. Only 24 attempts for the game which I think is our lowest since LIU, and I think we only took 8 in the second half. We were 21-31 from 2, got something like 42 points in the paint and got to the free throw line. So I think we pivoted nicely on a night shots weren’t falling.
So to me the biggest issue is and has been all year containing dribble penetration, and, specifically, getting a stop when we need it to close out a game. Our offense has been historically great all year so that it mostly hasn’t mattered. However, 4 of our 5 conference losses and the Bama game were all lost because we couldn’t contain dribble penetration and get a stop in the closing minutes.
Unfortunately our offense has sputtered the last 4-5 games. Specifically Keaton’s efficiency is down and now all of a sudden we can’t consistently make 3s at a 35%+ clip. And so we are looking very vulnerable at the moment because the defensive issues remain. We were able to pivot and be really efficient from 2 and that was good enough to beat a bad Maryland team on the road. Which isn’t nothing, have to be able to find a win when your shots aren’t falling and/or the other team is hitting some tough ones. But if we can’t hit any 3s we probably can’t be efficient enough from 2 to beat a good team, particularly a team with good guards.
So we need to fix one of 2 things: 1. We need to shore up our on ball defense and/or scheme to prevent dribble penetration or 2. We need to get our offense back to the “unstoppable” level which means knocking 3s down at a decent clip on volume and Keaton being a first team all BIG level PG.
I’m much more optimistic we can fix # 2, hopefully with a few more days of rest and healing. They admitted Keaton had back stiffness (you could tell by the way he was running and how his FTs were consistently short), but he hasn’t been the same since hurting his shoulder at UCLA. Hopefully some time off helps. And the poor shooting I think can be chalked up to physical and mental fatigue and probably a bit of an emotional letdown after losing out on the conference title.
I think the Wisconsin game will tell us a lot about where this team is at. If we show defensive improvement or we get our unstoppable offense back (or ideally some combo of the 2), I think we can make a run. But if we come in with the same defensive effort and our offense is just really good, I think Wisconsin will eat our lunch and we will be very vulnerable in the tourney depending on how good the guards in our bracket are. JMHO.
Really hope we find it because this year really has been a blast. Keaton and Mirk have been revelations and raised our ceiling considerably, which is why it would be such a shame if we went out when we weren’t playing our best.
Sorry for the long post. Go Illini!
Fighter of the Nightman
- Chicago, IL
Thanks for posting, and I think this jives with a lot of fans' more subjective takes on the games as they happen. Personally, I felt very down on this team after the UConn loss ... it wasn't the loss itself on paper, but it was more that I was reminded so much of last year's team with the continued clanked threes and questionable effort. However, the Tennessee win in Nashville about a week later REALLY made it look like we had turned a corner, and other than one bad half vs. Nebraska in Champaign, we mostly were a truly transformed team after that, even through injuries.
Enter the second half of the UCLA game, and I think the level of play from a subjective or "eye test" perspective has clearly dropped. I was hoping the Oregon win was a definitive statement that we had ironed out our issues, but I will be honest that the win vs. Maryland was concerning ... I mean, there's really just no way around the fact that we should have beaten them handily, and it would have been nice to feel like we were truly riding high heading into the BTT. With that said, a Big Ten road win is a Big Ten road win. Here's to hoping that a win on Friday is the start of a new trend in a positive direction!
Illini in Italy
- Illini HQ, Florida Panhandle
My friend, no one ever accused you of that.
Maybe selectively read this board. I think there's enough level heads here to offset the totally disconnected posts.
But yeah, some days.....
Edit: I am not insinuating that I am, in fact, one of the level heads.
Unsure if he's on a narrow viewport (smartphone), but this is what it looks like when I view it:
That visual isn't quite so pronounced. What we're talking about is going from 95.8 to 92.0 which is a 4.05% drop
It's built for teams that excel under pressure. That deliver when it matters most which is why it matters.
Robert at times is excellent and others he's the biggest nitwit you'll find.
The NCAA tournament champion is always the best team.
lstewart53x3
- Scottsdale, Arizona
2 things:
1. Looking at the trend chart, our @Nebraska game, one of our best wins of the season, had a game score of 98.00.
Here's are our game scores over the past 6 games:
99.00 vs Indiana
100.00 @ USC
94.00 @ UCLA
87.00 vs Michigan
99.00 vs Oregon
80.00 vs Maryland
3 of our last 6 games, we played better than we played against Nebraska.
In games where Torvik has us 92.00 or better, we are 20-2 on the season (with the losses being 96.00 @MSU and 94.00 @ UCLA). So we played well enough to beat UCLA, just couldn't quite pull it out.
Our average Torvik game score before those 6 games on the season was 93.94. Our average game score on the season after those 6 games is... 93.52.
2. Yes, we should have beaten Maryland by more.
And #8 Purdue should have beat Ohio State. But they lost.
And #9 Nebraska should have beat UCLA. But they lost. By 20.
And #10 Texas Tech should have beat TCU. But they lost. At home.
And #14 Kansas should have beat Arizona St. But they lost.
And #16 Alabama should have beat Georgia. But they lost.
And #4 UConn should have beat Marquette. But they lost.
On top of that:
#13 Virginia beat (15-15) Wake Forest by 5.
#24 Vanderbilt beat (12-18) Ole Miss by 3 in OT.
#15 Purdue beat (13-17) Northwestern by 4.
#3 Michigan beat Iowa by 3.
^^^ All of this happened just this past week.
College basketball is a volatile game. What should happen doesn't always happen.
lstewart53x3
- Scottsdale, Arizona
For sure for sure. There are rarely upsets in the NCAAT.
Goillinikobd
- Southeastern US
Wisconsin finally getting some love, not from me, I don’t want to see them again this year.
All I want to see is
- players play hard, smart and to their abilities
- coaches adjust things to in-game situations (match-ups, off nights, refs, etc)
If they do that and still lose a game, I am ok with that.
- players play hard, smart and to their abilities
- coaches adjust things to in-game situations (match-ups, off nights, refs, etc)
If they do that and still lose a game, I am ok with that.
Some teams are build for pressure. Some aren't and that gets figured out fairly quickly.
Exactly. That dotted line might as well be called the "Fan Vibes Meter" because as fans, we react to the most recent game as well as the recent trend - even if we don't realize it.
Look at this year's game score trends vs the others from the 2020's. You can pretty clearly see the difference between our good teams and our not as good teams. Obviously, this year's team is in that former group. But after the stretch which included the UConn loss, the Tennessee win, and the Nebraska loss, it was understandable that we would be concerned by the roller-coaster shape that is a hallmark of seasons like 2025 and 2023.
2026
2025
2024
2023
2022
2021
2020
High Expectations can result in high disappointment.
I can agree that certain teams are legitimately better suited for the tournament than others (compared to their regular season performance). Whether it's consistency, depth, number of options (both O and D), ability to excel under pressure, but there's still way too much variance to say that's always why team X won or lost in a given game.
So the Laettner shot was destined to go in because Duke was the "best" team?
Sure, you could retroactively say you think the team that won was the "best" team simply because they won, but that's essentially arguing that all buzzer beaters (and last second bounces and officiating calls, etc, etc, etc) are divinely orchestrated to ensure the "best" team always wins. Maybe that's true, but it isn't something anyone could ever know.
I get that metrics and betting lines, while very predictive, are still based on a relatively small sample size with limited cross-conference results (especially late-season) and are slow to respond to true improvement or regression throughout the year. So the tournament can significantly change our opinions of some teams (more for those that excel than the other way around since they get more chances to do so), but that's about it IMO.
Last edited:
By fuddrules logic Illinois should be a 2 time national Champion!
- Status