Nebraska 83, Illinois 80 Postgame

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#651      
jamie13197
I am sick and tired of this coaching staff and have been since they let 2 coaches go. For Underwood Jr. and his little tights wearing buddy Hamer. Its horrible and it absolutely effects the way and manner in which American kids want to come suit up for our Illini. We lost last night do to the coaches and their preparations and in game coaching. Then the players were awful and un Interested for huges chunks of game. We do not even have 1 handful of dogs that show up each game. We got a Head coaches kid screaming at players and doing bulk of coaching on court in game. I will not even start on who coaches our defense and how Pathetic it is! 80 to 90 per game is laughable and some folks should not be getting a pay check. These problems and culture issues will not be solved this season nor soon.
 
#653      
Second place is 1st loser
Seppuku said:
Tell you want, let's do this: Underwood is now in his 9th year at Illinois. Please list all the games where we upset, and I mean truly upset, a better team (especially on the road), let alone a much better team. I honestly cannot think of a single one.

In all of his years here, we have basically won most of the games we should win, lost most if not all of the games that we were expected to loss, but had many (too many) upset losses, and got embarrassed few times (too many).

Go ahead and list all of Underwood's "signature" wins (and compare with all of his "signature" losses). The closest thing we have to a signature win is beating Iowa State in the S16, and that was a 2-3 match up.

Again, I'm not saying Underwood is a terrible coach, but that is the problem. he's good enough (especially in recruiting, and winning just enough games) that you may never be able to fire him.
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1)Look at what he inherited. We absolutely sucked as a team, as a program and our reputation was shot.

2)He and Painter are the winningest coaches in the conference since 2020(??). That's a helluva lot more winning than losing.

3) We're a national brand based on national TV invites

4) We're a worldwide brand based on roster.

Have we gotten to the second weekend consistently, no, but you can't get there unless you consistently get yourself into the dance with a preferred seed and keep chopping wood until you break through.

He's got, what amounts to a lifetime deal that Josh W JUST gave him. If you trust our amazing AD...then trust the man heading up the program. Don't fill a narrative by ignoring the great and only drilling down on the issues, which in the grand scheme of things.....there aren't many.
 
#654      
zentrails
blackdog said:
I really don't know why people are complaining about the T. He pretty clearly goes towards the Nebraska player and screams in his face. You cant do that in college ball.
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Like "give me room to land or I might get hurt landing on you?"
or "heck yeah, that was a good dunk"
my lip reading skills are failing me
 
#655      
blife
Second place is 1st loser said:
A players only meeting? We just came off of two quad 1 road/neutral wins and we lost a heartbreaker, on a buzzer beater, by a team that dropped a 46% three point shooting night on our heads. We won pretty much every other statistical category.

I'm not sure what you expect? Do you want to see them flipping chairs over or hear reports of them punching each other and tearing up the locker room? I'm sure it wasn't a fun post game speech and I'm sure plenty of guys were upset.....if that makes you feel better.

It's a loss and breaking news, we're going to lose more games this year, but we're going to win a lot more games than we lose.

Thank God you're not a coach. Part of the job is managing the emotions of 18-22 year old kids/young men so that one loss doesn't turn into two. This would not be a good line of work for you or many on this board.

Just give Nebraska credit for an outrageously good shooting night and focus on the next one. No team only, soul searching speeches required.

P.s....they shot 54% in their 30 point win over Wisconsin last week. I wonder if their staff is being run out of Madison?
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Well I am glad to hear you think you know what my profession should be. How about the players not making the same scouting report mistakes every game, being mentally focused, understanding that every possession counts, playing with some nastiness and toughness, taking it personally when you get lit up by your guy, making every board or 50/50 ball is mine mentality. The season is a 3rd of the way over, now we get the BIG meat grinder. Not sure when you think would be an appropriate time. Yesterday was a bad loss. Period
 
#656      
OB positive
HailtotheChief said:
Plus, when Thortom or Sandfort are going off your head coach shouldn't wait til half to adjust. Should've put length on Thorton sooner told someone to.not leave Sandfort to help. Why wait 20 minutes to do it. Thats on BU
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Good point but should we really just put it on the coach to clamp down on a specific player who is on a heater. When I played ball one of my goals was to help my team more than the guy I was gaurding was doing for his. If he hit his first 2 or 3 shots I figured he was going to kill us if I allowed him to keep shooting so I made it my mission to not even let him touch the ball. That makes a bigger difference than a lot of people think. Didn't have to have anyone tell me that. I'm surprised our players over the last couple of years have had a hard time recognizing that on their own. If there is a guy on a heater on another team he as to be prioritized. Even if he's not your man if he's in your area with the ball you have to be ready to help. We are really bad at help defense most of the time. I know it's hard to draw a charge anymore but you still have to step over and stop the ball or at least make them change direction.
 
#658      
HailtotheChief
OB positive said:
Good point but should we really just put it on the coach to clamp down on a specific player who is on a heater. When I played ball one of my goals was to help my team more than the guy I was gaurding was doing for his. If he hit his first 2 or 3 shots I figured he was going to kill us if I allowed him to keep shooting so I made it my mission to not even let him touch the ball. That makes a bigger difference than a lot of people think. Didn't have to have anyone tell me that. I'm surprised our players over the last couple of years have had a hard time recognizing that on their own. If there is a guy on a heater on another team he as to be prioritized. Even if he's not your man if he's in your area with the ball you have to be ready to help. We are really bad at help defense most of the time. I know it's hard to draw a charge anymore but you still have to step over and stop the ball or at least make them change direction.
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We need to realize what our opponents prefer to do and who they want to get the ball and try to take that away. If Sam Hoiberg takes a shot and beats our 7 fter in the paint so be it. They wanted 1 of 2 guys to get the shot and they were successful on the last play and others because we left their scorers
 
#659      
GoodePodzMelendez
Second place is 1st loser said:
1)Look at what he inherited. We absolutely sucked as a team, as a program and our reputation was shot.

2)He and Painter are the winningest coaches in the conference since 2020(??). That's a helluva lot more winning than losing.

3) We're a national brand based on national TV invites

4) We're a worldwide brand based on roster.

Have we gotten to the second weekend consistently, no, but you can't get there unless you consistently get yourself into the dance with a preferred seed and keep chopping wood until you break through.

He's got, what amounts to a lifetime deal that Josh W JUST gave him. If you trust our amazing AD...then trust the man heading up the program. Don't fill a narrative by ignoring the great and only drilling down on the issues, which in the grand scheme of things.....there aren't many.
Click to expand...
I am so tired of hearing we are better now than we were when Groce was here. We have gone from mediocre to having a change to get to the round of 32 on average. We are 6-5 in NCAA Tourney games and 1-9 years on getting to the second weekend. That is not what we are paying a top 10 paid coach to do. We are a 5-9 seeded B1G team. That is not what we want. It’s time to really look into the program and Josh is the man to do it.
 
#660      
eas23
Seppuku said:
Tell you want, let's do this: Underwood is now in his 9th year at Illinois. Please list all the games where we upset, and I mean truly upset, a better team (especially on the road), let alone a much better team. I honestly cannot think of a single one.

In all of his years here, we have basically won most of the games we should win, lost most if not all of the games that we were expected to loss, but had many (too many) upset losses, and got embarrassed few times (too many).

Go ahead and list all of Underwood's "signature" wins (and compare with all of his "signature" losses). The closest thing we have to a signature win is beating Iowa State in the S16, and that was a 2-3 match up.

Again, I'm not saying Underwood is a terrible coach, but that is the problem. he's good enough (especially in recruiting, and winning just enough games) that you may never be able to fire him.
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We beat 4 teams that had a higher tournament seed than us last year, 2 of them on the road.
 
#662      
Kernal12
RockfordIllini said:
I get the frustration with the loss and don’t want to make excuses but I do feel like we’ve gotten a little unlucky. College basketball teams usually play 4-5 games a year out of their minds/exceed their potential (our game at Oregon last year for example) and 4-5 stinkers. You can imagine before each game each team spins a wheel to see what kind of game they will play. And sometimes good teams get unlucky and land on a stinker when a bad team lands on an out of their minds and the good team loses.

Did we give Thornton an Sandfort some clean looks? Sure. But how many contested/step back/off movement 3s did they hit? When guys are hitting those kinds of shots there’s only so much you can do. And for Nebraska it was more than just Sandfort. They hit a bunch of contested, rainbow arc 3s including the game winner. I think most teams would have lost to both OSU and Nebraska based on the spin of the wheel on those particular nights. To me it’s a testament to how good we are/can be that we went 1-1, and lost on a 25 footer at the buzzer at that.

On the flip side of luck, when Purdue beat Bama, Philon had a one and one to tie the game in the last minute and he missed the front end (lucky), which also meant we were likely going to get Bama and Philon’s best game as their next opponent (unlucky). And same thing yesterday. Penn State had a 91% free throw shooter on the line to tie the game against Sparty in the last minute and missed the front end. Can’t call that anything other than luck.

We’ve got plenty to clean up defensively, sure. But sometimes you just have an unlucky spin of the wheel, and we got Nebraska’s A+ spin while we probably got a B. And they still needed a borderline miracle shot to beat us (I think the momentum had shifted to where if it had gone to OT I think we would have won). Still optimistic about this year.
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This is a smart take and I mostly agree. The sky is not falling. My question is whether the style of defense we are playing — passive, try not to foul, let stars “get theirs” — allows teams to get in a comfort zone and greatly increases the chances of one of those 4-5 A+ performances. We seem to get more than our share of heroic performances from our opponents.
 
#664      
BashCtIllini
GoodePodzMelendez said:
I am so tired of hearing we are better now than we were when Groce was here. We have gone from mediocre to having a change to get to the round of 32 on average. We are 6-5 in NCAA Tourney games and 1-9 years on getting to the second weekend. That is not what we are paying a top 10 paid coach to do. We are a 5-9 seeded B1G team. That is not what we want. It’s time to really look into the program and Josh is the man to do it.
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The game has changed A LOT since Groce was coach.

It's as simple as this, we are told we are spending money on the program like a top 10 team. I have no idea if that is accurate or not. But I do know we are not seeing results of a top 10 team.

What has bothered me about Underwood is, unless we have an All American on the team, we've been pretty mediocre. Now I love the fact that we've had 3 All Americans on Underwood's rosters, but we don't have a lot of hardware for that. It's not just 1 second weekend, it's also 1 conference title. Even when we had 2 All Americans on the roster, we had our best season record-wise but ended up 2nd in conference and got bounced in the 2nd round as a 1 seed. Tying on to a post made earlier, we also lost 2 conference home games when we had Jr Ayo and Soph Kofi, how?

The people that are saying relax the season is young have a point. But those that are saying I'm not seeing a great team on the court also have a point. This is where good coaching needs to take the team from good to great. I suppose we shall see. Underwood is currently 4-4 against Missouri. He needs to get that to a winning record or there is really going to be discontent around here.
 
#665      
EmeraldCityIllini
GoodePodzMelendez said:
I am so tired of hearing we are better now than we were when Groce was here. We have gone from mediocre to having a change to get to the round of 32 on average. We are 6-5 in NCAA Tourney games and 1-9 years on getting to the second weekend. That is not what we are paying a top 10 paid coach to do. We are a 5-9 seeded B1G team. That is not what we want. It’s time to really look into the program and Josh is the man to do it.
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Who do you think Josh should go get?
 
#666      
Chase321
Not responding to anyone specific here. Just want to say that I am truly grateful we have a basketball program that is ranked each year. One that is almost always in the discussion as a top tier team in the conference. One that has reestablished enough of a national reputation that it sometimes gets the benefit of the doubt in rankings. One that top programs like UConn and Alabama and Tennessee want to schedule. One that is regularly found playing on national TV because networks know they are good and draw ratings.

Like others, I really want to see my school win a natty in basketball. But I also know that that usually takes some good fortune and good timing. If they don’t win a title, I won’t label a coach or players as failures and it won’t stop me from being grateful. There A LOT of programs that would love to be in our position. This is just a game and each season is a lot of fun…if you allow it to be.

I’m sure that’s too much sunshine for many of you. But the doom and gloom around here is sad and exhausting.
 
#667      
IlliniFan42
BashCtIllini said:
The game has changed A LOT since Groce was coach.

It's as simple as this, we are told we are spending money on the program like a top 10 team. I have no idea if that is accurate or not. But I do know we are not seeing results of a top 10 team.
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I can guarantee we are not top 10 spenders this year. I'm not even sure we're top 20. I think we got in on NIL early, but other teams have adapted that had earlier refused and we lost our advantage. We don't go to Europe as hard as we do if we're spending top 10 money.
 
#671      
BatteredWifeSchwartz
Seppuku said:
Tell you want, let's do this: Underwood is now in his 9th year at Illinois. Please list all the games where we upset, and I mean truly upset, a better team (especially on the road), let alone a much better team. I honestly cannot think of a single one.

In all of his years here, we have basically won most of the games we should win, lost most if not all of the games that we were expected to loss, but had many (too many) upset losses, and got embarrassed few times (too many).

Go ahead and list all of Underwood's "signature" wins (and compare with all of his "signature" losses). The closest thing we have to a signature win is beating Iowa State in the S16, and that was a 2-3 match up.

Again, I'm not saying Underwood is a terrible coach, but that is the problem. he's good enough (especially in recruiting, and winning just enough games) that you may never be able to fire him.
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This was a hilarious comment to read and I have time so I actually looked at times we have “upset” a team. This is not including signature wins this is a true upset (we were ranked lower or unranked at the time of the game)

- 18/19 Maryland home
- 18/19 Sparty home
- 19/20 Michigan home
- 19/20 Penn State away
- 20/21 Iowa home
- 20/21 Michigan away
- 21/22 Sparty home
- 21/22 Wiscy home
- 22/23 UCLA neutral
- 22/23 Texas neutral
- 22/23 Wiscy home
- 22/23 Rutgers home
- 22/23 NW home
- 23/24 FAU neutral
- 23/24 Iowa State tournament
- 24/25 Arkansas neutral
- 24/25 Wiscy home
- 24/25 Oregon away
- 24/25 Michigan away
- 24/25 Purdue home
 
#672      
Second place is 1st loser
GoodePodzMelendez said:
I am so tired of hearing we are better now than we were when Groce was here. We have gone from mediocre to having a change to get to the round of 32 on average. We are 6-5 in NCAA Tourney games and 1-9 years on getting to the second weekend. That is not what we are paying a top 10 paid coach to do. We are a 5-9 seeded B1G team. That is not what we want. It’s time to really look into the program and Josh is the man to do it.
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And what type of a contract did Josh just give Brad? If you trust the AD, then you should trust the coach, right? Unless you're insinuating that he made a mistake?
 
#673      
NarrowJ
EmeraldCityIllini said:
when I start seeing the “imagine what Fred Hoiberg could do with the resources here!” It astounds me. If this program lost to that Georgia state team like Fred did, I can’t even imagine.
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I think Fred is a very good coach and I can’t disparage him in any way, honestly. But, you’re spot on… people act like we spent Duke/Kentucky money on this roster and we didn’t come anywhere close to that. The “Fred owns Brad” stuff is comical unless you’re opposed to factual analysis.
 
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