Iowa 81, Illinois 79 Postgame

I guess there are a lot more experts following a loss. Usually twice as many posts in a loss vs a win.

Look, the refs were really irritating as a Illini fan, but not necessarily the reason we lost. I just can’t stand the inconsistency in calls and the ticky tack fouls. But that’s the B!G.

At the end of the day, we just didn’t have it down the stretch, we got too sped up and just couldn’t make the shots when they mattered most. Iowa made everything tonight and that kept them in the game. Along with all the free throws they were given. No way teams can consistently shoot like that.

We had wayyyy too many careless passes, but other than that, we were getting great looks inside and easy points for most of the game. We just couldn’t stay on the gas. The rebounding was good. The defense was good. The effort and hustle was there all game. We have to be proud of the guys tonight even though the result sucks and Iowa in general sucks.

Let’s hope the team feels proud of their effort tonight and uses this loss for fuel in the future.

I'm sorry if I missed it, but would love to hear reactions from any Illini fans there in person today. On TV it was annoying (but not surprising) to see Iowa continue to play the boys and girls club/Krush angle...was really hoping Illinois would get the last laugh by winning the freakin game and thought in a lot of ways we did enough to do just that. Was wondering what it was like there in person, how many Illini in the crowd, etc.

As usual in Iowa City, felt like fans helped get the fouls going against us in the 2nd half that really contributed to eventual outcome. But we made plenty of mistakes that could have overcome the whistles, which you usually have to do to win on the road in the Big Ten.

If anyone could use a pick me up, 30 years ago today this did happen (damn, I'm old).....

Umm.. what is Luke doing here? at the 1:13 mark...

We are a decent team but not a great one. Great effort tonight but still lots of room for improvement.

Epsilon said:

Certainly doesn’t help but we did little to nothing to make them pay for the press. Anytime we got across half court it seemed we waited for their players to get back in position. I wish we had a better strategy to attack the press.

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We don’t have the ball handlers to attack a beaten press. Would have likely resulted in more turnovers. Only Epps was able to break the press with good passing and ball handling.

frozenrope9190 said:

According to Lunardi we're still on the 5 line even after the loss. High 6 at worst.

Other teams lose, too. I don't think some people understand this.

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Kansas lost today!!

OrangeLife said:

Let's start a go fund me for you NOT to watch lol.

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No need. I'll behave. "grumble grumble."

I mean, every.single.time.

skyIdub said:

I haven't seen anything out of line here? He absolutely deserves some criticism for his play today. His head needs to match his effort.

He has all the talent and ability he needs, but his head is keeping him from deploying it properly so far. We've seen flashes of brilliance, followed by the most head scratching pass attempts and offensive sequences you can imagine. Today was an example of the latter.

I'm squarely in his corner, but he needs to shut up, knock of the gesticulating, and just play.

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THIS! You took the words right out of my mouth.

jrichisamazing said:

For anyone that doesn't know, you can filter torvik's rankings by time period (among many other filters).

I filtered it to show the rankings since we turned our season around (Jan 7). Iowa is 17th during this stretch, and 2nd in the B1G. We are 26th, and 4th in the B1G. This was a high level game, against a high level opponent, in a hostile environment. If you aren't taking a bunch of positives from this one, you might need to see a psychiatrist.

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Iowa is really good. They went through a rough stretch much like we did. The good news is that we have a point guard who is really really good. I am still pumped about this team. Still alot of work to be done but we have a lot of potential.

The reality is we lack experience/leadership at the guard position and results in too many bad offensive possessions/decisions. No real cure for that this year. It's the difference between a team that will be fortunate to get to the 2nd weekend of the tournamnet and a team that should have final 4 aspirations.

All that said, thought today was one of our better 40 minutes of basketball.

IrishAlex said:

The reality is we lack experience/leadership at the guard position and results in too many bad offensive possessions/decisions. No real cure for that this year. It's the difference between a team that will be fortunate to get to the 2nd weekend of the tournamnet and a team that should have final 4 aspirations.

All that said, thought today was one of our better 40 minutes of basketball.

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lol. You should listen to the coach postgame presser. In summary he was not concerned about the offense.

Champaignheat said:

I am probably going to get trashed for this post by 50% of this board but I am doing this anyway. I understand that this is an opinion forum however I wish that all of you “fans” that hide behind your username and avatar would lose your anonymity when you trash our players. I know everyone didn’t play their best today, but I certainly feel that the effort was there from all of our players. It was a great game. We just came up short (covering the spread, mind you). They had a player have a career game. All of you experts that were second string point guards on your high school team that know what our players should be doing should unmask yourself and not talk about how so and so stinks and cost the game. This happens every time we lose a game.

If I was a parent of some of these players I would think twice about our fandom. Anyway, it was a great game to watch, I wish we would have won, and I hope we make one or two more shots the next time.

Go Illini!

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You are welcome to your opinion, but if I were a parent to these players, I'd tell him: "Son, you will face adversity throughout life; you need to develop a thick skin, so you must deal with all types of criticisms and getting "trashed." Or I would quote verbatim what Rocky said to his son in Rocky Balboa. I am not going to raise a victim.

It's called human nature when fans type about how "so and so stinks."

I do agree they played hard and in the end, I think this loss will benefit the team.

Manual3for4peat said:

Stop. Who is gonna take those minutes?

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MC Hammer!

PasadenaIllini said:

If you want to post your name, address, social security number, and other personal information first, I'm sure others with follow your lead.

Seriously, come off the high horse. It's an anonymous message board by definition. If you're unhappy with the format of the board, why frequent it?

Our players aren't little kids. They are playing bigtime college athletics, and they understand that public criticism is part and parcel of the gig.

Furthermore, if our players are actually perusing this board and spending their time worrying about what anonymous posters are saying about their games, our team has more problems than we actually know about.

From what I understand, we're all here to discuss Illini basketball. An honest discussion includes both a discussion of the positives and the negatives.

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Amen. I would only add that if this poster think the fan bases aren't equally passionate at other schools, he is very, very mistaken.

Champaignheat said:

I am probably going to get trashed for this post by 50% of this board but I am doing this anyway. I understand that this is an opinion forum however I wish that all of you “fans” that hide behind your username and avatar would lose your anonymity when you trash our players. I know everyone didn’t play their best today, but I certainly feel that the effort was there from all of our players. It was a great game. We just came up short (covering the spread, mind you). Tihey had a player have a career game. All of you experts that were second string point guards on your high school team that know what our players should be doing should unmask yourself and not talk about how so and so stinks and cost the game. This happens every time we lose a game.

If I was a parent of some of these players I would think twice about our fandom. Anyway, it was a great game to watch, I wish we would have won, and I hope we make one or two more shots the next time.

Go Illini!

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You shouldn't get trashed, but this is an awfully naive post. Weber was a baseball player, not a basketball player. Does that mean he wasn't able to say anything to the team? People act like sports is astrophysics which only a select few can understand. Well it's not. It's quite simple. You don't need years of experience at the highest level to be able to see, hey that guy just throws the ball away a lot.

People don't go up and tell players they suck (often) because it is rude, a jerk move. Though I did see one of my friends tell Ty Meyers he lost us the Ohio State game to his face, which was equally brave, stupid, and rude. Ty was not pleased but went on with his day without thrashing my friend. Fact is, when you're in the limelight people will talk about you. When people are paying $50 or more a seat to see you play they will talk about you. When you're getting paid to play, people will talk about you. This is anyone, athlete, actor, singer, ballerina, etc. Sometimes it will be glowing praise, telling you you're the greatest. That is often to your face. The bad stuff is usually on message boards, around the water cooler, in living rooms, or in a bar (ie nowhere near you). You can't accept the good if you can't take the bad.

So yes, if I was in a position where a player was interested in my opinion, I would tell them exactly where they suck and excel to their face. But I am not going to walk up to someone who has never met me and tell them they suck. Neither would 99% of people, even if they talk bad about them in other places. And If you think Illinois fans are the only fans that would ever speak poorly about a player or get frustrated with a player, then you are even more naive than I first thought. It comes with the territory when you are center stage.

No one is forcing these kids to do it. They could be a business major and play intramurals. No one will say mean things about them. But there won't be thousands of people wanting their name on a piece of paper, or a picture with them, or to buy them a drink, tell them how great they are, give them money for their merchandise, etc, etc, etc either. In fact if there weren't people with the passion enough to sling that praise or that insult, they wouldn't be able to do what they do.

Was at the game today and some of these @$&+$ comments are just asinine.
Perkins had the game of his life.
Great game and we had a shot to tie or win with a second left. I'll come back to this tomorrow after getting some rest.
But this team played their asses off.
We will be fine.

After reading this thread I have come to the conclusion that the idiots are not all out walking around in Iowa.

alaskaillini said:

After reading this thread I have come to the conclusion that the idiots are not all out walking around in Iowa.

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Based on the traffic around Carver, some of them were also driving

jumpingjack said:

Was at the game today and some of these @$&+$ comments are just asinine.
Perkins had the game of his life.
Great game and we had a shot to tie or win with a second left. I'll come back to this tomorrow after getting some rest.
But this team played their asses off.
We will be fine.

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Agreed! I thought we played very well. Tough place to play and they played well and beat us at the stripe handily. Mayer is a stud. Dainja is so much better than expected. Epps is a stud freshman. Shannon is a such a good player for us. Rodgers is getting better and better. Harris really brings a spark. How deep we run hinges on which Hawkins shows up, can Melendez figure out that he's a role player, and will Goode get his feet under him to be able to contribute solid minutes (his leadership is key). We keep gelling more and more. I think we'll be dangerous as a 6 seed in the tournament. I think Hawkins is the key. He needs to be more aggressive looking to score. If he plays with confidence we can be an Elite Eight/Final Four squad, but that's a big "if" right now b/c Hawkins is inconsistent. Either way, I like the trend of this team.

IMPE Legend said:

This post was (wisely) deleted in the post game thread, but this is a great example of a lot of the people attacking Hawkins.

"What contributions outside of a block. His defense assignment was Perkins."

Not calling anyone out by name, but this poster made multiple posts attacking or criticizing Hawkins in the game thread but apparently didn't watch the game well enough to know this is a ridiculous statement. Perhaps some should spend more time watching and less time typing. It's like some are just poised by their keys waiting to complain about something. I guess that's just called the internet now?

Sorry. Sick of the negativity.

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In the beginning and for most of the game, CoHawk's defensive responsibility was Murray, NOT Perkins. Are you confused or have poor eyesight? CoHawk is #33. He may have ended up on Perkins in a few switches, but he was not his main responsibility. Jeesh.

doltmanns said:

In the beginning and for most of the game, CoHawk's defensive responsibility was Murray, NOT Perkins. Are you confused or have poor eyesight? CoHawk is #33. He may have ended up on Perkins in a few switches, but he was not his main responsibility. Jeesh.

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@IMPE Legend was clearly stating that he saw a deleted post say that Coleman essentially did nothing outside of a block and have his assignment be Perkins, which meant he played terrible. Not sure who the initial poster was, but the overly aggressive hate on Coleman from some on this board is rather annoying, and quite frankly, full of lazy takes.

Coleman does have some deficiencies in his game (and makes a few head scratching in-game decisions), as does every player, but the over the top hate on him is puzzling to me.

doltmanns said:

In the beginning and for most of the game, CoHawk's defensive responsibility was Murray, NOT Perkins. Are you confused or have poor eyesight? CoHawk is #33. He may have ended up on Perkins in a few switches, but he was not his main responsibility. Jeesh.

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The irony of asking if the guy you quoted is confused lol

LvilleILL said:

Look for Goode to start taking some of RJ's minutes on Tuesday. Love the kid, but he's in his head right now. Goode can at least knock down open shots

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Goode god I hope so!

mikeyo said:

Coleman needs less tick. 0 IQ.

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Coleman Hawkins is so important to the team but those DEEEEEEP threes killed us. Bad shot selection has murdered us this season (not just Coleman). That said our lazy passing lead to the turnovers that cost us the game. We all learned to break that press in junior high for gawdsakes and today we forgot how to break it? The only saving grace is that is all fixable (hypothetically). At least we didn't come out sleep walking for a nice change and the kids played hard. Stupid mistakes... we really shouldn't be surprised given our back court and the youth we have at point. Passing, turnovers, and poor shots taken. We missed a big opportunity to win on the roat at Iowa today. I'm glad they played hard.