Ohio State 72, Illinois 60 Postgame

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#426      

Emerson Bigguns

Emerson Bigguns
Emerson Bigguns
Rudd21 said:
18 vs Penn State
35 vs Mizzou
13 at Northwestern
21 vs Indiana
17 at Penn State
18 vs Northwestern
15 at Ohio State

None of those teams have as much talent as Illinois. Mizzou was a team put together with mostly transfers with a first year coach. Ohio State is bad. Penn State probably misses the tourney. Northwestern is a solid team but certainly not more talented than Illinois. The only loss in this group that is forgivable loss is Indiana. When you have games you get behind that much, with superior talent, that’s a coaching issue IMO. If it was just 1 game, that happens. This has been going on all season. So 11-9 with a big talent advantage isn’t a good precursor to the future IMO when that talent advantage may not be there.
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All of those teams, other than OSU are absolutely stacked with upper classmen. Mizzou, Penn St, and NW are among the oldest teams in college basketball. We are among the youngest.

In basketball, as in life, experience often trumps talent. We have not played well together. Partly because our guys haven't played much in their respective careers and have played together even less.
 
#427      

dbeverly26

dbeverly26
dbeverly26
Rudd21 said:
We’re 10-8 in the conference. That’s a .555 winning percentage. Most likely finishing 11-9 which makes a 0.550 winning percentage. And that is with playing the easiest possible in conference schedule having played the bottom teams the max number of times.

Underwood should get great credit for recruiting and developing a generational big man like Kofi. But the issue with that is whether it’s replicable in the future. Talented wings and guards are a dime a dozen. Underwood has brought in plenty of those guys. But without the big man, his major conference success has been middling despite having good wing/guard talent.
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Eleven teams are going to finish within three games of each other in the Big Ten this year. Are all of those teams average, or is there some massive chasm between 12-8 and 11-9 that I'm not picking up on?

I'm the dumbest guy on the board right now for even engaging in this conversation, so apologies to anyone still following this thread. Next time I'll just leave the talk radio stuff alone.
 
#428      

Illinifrank67

Illinifrank67
Illinifrank67
LONG time lurker.... All this Anti-BU talk finally baited me into posting.

There are lots of you who have obviously never had to lead an organization. Imagine being in an extremely competitive industry and having to produce the absolute best product (consistently top ten in your industry) to be judged as a successful.... By the way, luck is huge factor in the production of your product, and recently you've only been able to hire temp workers who know they're not going to be around a year from now.... Oh also, they're 18-22 year old kids.

Perspective: The most successful mbb coach in recent history, (gag) Coach K (gag) spent 42 years at Duke and only won 5 nattys.... BU got here 5 years ago and has been tearing up the B10 the last three... Give him some time. The way you reach final fours and win championships is consistently making the tourney. If you do it enough you're eventually going to get a run and have a shot to win it all. Enjoy the BU era Illini fans, we'll miss him when (hopefully a very long time from now) he's gone.

Go Illini!
 
#429      

illinistephen

I
illinistephen
sacraig said:
Also, can we not claim that the needle is pointing downward? If this is a down year for us, I am okay with that because that means a down year is flirting with the top 25 all season, making the tournament, and finishing in the top half of the conference.

This is what a down year for Illinois  should look like.
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Some fan's orange colored glasses were broken by Ron Turner, Ron Zook, and Bruce Weber being one hit wonders followed by a lot of bad teams. Until an Illinois coach can have a great team and then reload with another great team of new talent, fans are going to be waiting for the next gut punch. If Brad puts another great team on the court, it will go a long way to repairing some orange colored glasses.
 
#430      

Tacomallini

T
Washington State
Tacomallini
Emerson Bigguns said:
I reject the premise of grading BU on his non-Kofi performance, as though the Kofi years didn't count. Kofi playing at the U of I wasn't an accident. It wasn't as though Kofi was a can't miss prospect. He was a borderline top 50 prep player. A very good prospect, but a significant project. Most scouts that saw him play were there for Cole Anthony. Kofi was largely an afterthought. BU & Co went to NY to recruit him specifically. They sold him on U of I, how he would be utilized, and he committed very quickly.

BU has been tremendous at identifying talent. We missed on quite few big men early in his tenure, but he was always chasing the right guys. Think about some of the misses...

Flo Thamba
Oscar T.
Timme
Kalkbrenner
Castleton

We are consistently barking up the right trees. Occasionally, it pays off.

If you are going to count his first two seasons against him, seasons where he had maybe 3-5 B1G caliber players on the roster and was desperate to find anyone taller than him to play for us, you need to count the seasons where his plan came together too.

Anyone pretending Freshman Ayo was an NBA guy has a warped sense of history. There were MANY people on this board, even halfway through his Soph year that were saying "This guy was supposed to be an NBA prospect? I'm not seeing it..." The backcourt of Frazier and Dosunmu didn't have anyone shaking in their boots. (Sophomore Dos was a All-B1G honorable mention, so considered maybe the 4th best SG in the league) We all see him through the lens of the 2020-21 season, when he grew into one of the best players in the country.

Did Kofi change the fortunes of Illini basketball? Of Course! He was fabulous. He's my avatar! It took some dang good coaching to turn him into an All-American.

No one is going to argue that this season was his best job at constructing a roster or coaching up a group of guys, but it's a pretty good team considering what was left in the cupboard after last March. It's still a team with enough talent to make some great memories this month.

I know it's not the season anyone was hoping for, but if we can remain competitive in an obvious re-build year, imagine what can be done with a little continuity.
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I have nothing to add to this discussion, but just grabbed the mail, only to find that I have just 31 days to get my Timme window discount.
 

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#431      

bluemountain

B
bluemountain
Emerson Bigguns said:
I reject the premise of grading BU on his non-Kofi performance, as though the Kofi years didn't count. Kofi playing at the U of I wasn't an accident. It wasn't as though Kofi was a can't miss prospect. He was a borderline top 50 prep player. A very good prospect, but a significant project. Most scouts that saw him play were there for Cole Anthony. Kofi was largely an afterthought. BU & Co went to NY to recruit him specifically. They sold him on U of I, how he would be utilized, and he committed very quickly.

BU has been tremendous at identifying talent. We missed on quite few big men early in his tenure, but he was always chasing the right guys. Think about some of the misses...

Flo Thamba
Oscar T.
Timme
Kalkbrenner
Castleton

We are consistently barking up the right trees. Occasionally, it pays off.

If you are going to count his first two seasons against him, seasons where he had maybe 3-5 B1G caliber players on the roster and was desperate to find anyone taller than him to play for us, you need to count the seasons where his plan came together too.

Anyone pretending Freshman Ayo was an NBA guy has a warped sense of history. There were MANY people on this board, even halfway through his Soph year that were saying "This guy was supposed to be an NBA prospect? I'm not seeing it..." The backcourt of Frazier and Dosunmu didn't have anyone shaking in their boots. (Sophomore Dos was a All-B1G honorable mention, so considered maybe the 4th best SG in the league) We all see him through the lens of the 2020-21 season, when he grew into one of the best players in the country.

Did Kofi change the fortunes of Illini basketball? Of Course! He was fabulous. He's my avatar! It took some dang good coaching to turn him into an All-American.

No one is going to argue that this season was his best job at constructing a roster or coaching up a group of guys, but it's a pretty good team considering what was left in the cupboard after last March. It's still a team with enough talent to make some great memories this month.

I know it's not the season anyone was hoping for, but if we can remain competitive in an obvious re-build year, imagine what can be done with a little continuity.
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As I said, BU's strengths lie with his talent acquisition and how he builds his staff. Kofi was a borderline 5* and was heavily recruited. Given the UI's previous decade of futility, there was little reason for Kofi to even entertain coming here. I have no doubt we played in the gray area with his recruitment, which is something previous staffs would not have done. His coming here completely changed the trajectory of our program; without him we are probably a .500 team in conference play the last 3 seasons. And for that, I give BU all the credit in the world.

He did an excellent job of re-tooling our roster this year, to the point we have probably the 3rd most talented team in the big 10 behind IU and UM. I give him all the credit in the world for that as well.

If I give him credit for these things, then logically I should also hold him accountable for our poor performance in the NCAA tourney the past two seasons as well as the team underachieving this year vs its talent level. In my opinion, he is not a great X's and O's coach; I'm not sure how else you explain getting repeatedly b**** slapped this year by teams with considerably less talent than us.
 
#433      

NarrowJ

NarrowJ
NarrowJ
bluemountain said:
I'm not sure how else you explain getting repeatedly b**** slapped this year by teams with considerably less talent than us.
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Talent isn't the only thing that matters. Far from it. Those teams are full of veteran players who've played together for years. We, on the other hand, are comprised of basically all first year players and guys who've never played with one another.

We knew there would be pain points and struggles this season with an entirely new roster. Everyone's only surprised because we started the season well with wins against top 10 teams.
 
#434      

grue2

G
grue2
I think the identification of talent has been great. The talent arriving is good. The mix of talent arriving may be a bit off. The strong 3 pt shooters are missing. The offense dies when the opponents pack the lane. This leads to at least three other compounding issues: frustration, looking lost, and standing around. These are all symptoms of "Stuff isn't working. We don't know what to do." This is on BU. There need to be some very different offensive looks to try. Their purpose is to keep the team moving and trying. Once the offense starts standing around, it is over. I'll admit, it is hard to run an offense without at least two serious 3 pt threats to space the floor.

For this year, the quickest basic improvement I see is working on crisper cuts and pass. When they do cut/pass crisply (rare), they get wonderful looks. Another option is to take the mid-range jumpers. While "statistically poor", when that is what the opponents are giving, it may be the highest average return. It may be too late in the season to spend a lot of the practice time on 3pt shooting. If we could shoot the 3, the lanes would open up, and then it is feasting time.

If we lose an assistant coach other than Frazier, I'd want the replacement to be a strong offense x/o coach. BU can guide the ship. Get the offensive equivalent of Frazier to run the offense.
 
#437      

Rudd21

R
Rudd21
Emerson Bigguns said:
All of those teams, other than OSU are absolutely stacked with upper classmen. Mizzou, Penn St, and NW are among the oldest teams in college basketball. We are among the youngest.

In basketball, as in life, experience often trumps talent. We have not played well together. Partly because our guys haven't played much in their respective careers and have played together even less.
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Our 3 main guys all have a ton of experience. Mayer, Shannon, Hawkins have all been starters on good teams in the past. There’s no excuse to get down by 35 to a Mizzou team thrown together in one offseason.

You have a point about not playing together a long time, but that’s how Underwood chose to construct the roster and the issues with having guys transfer out early like Curbelo, Miller, Podz, Clark, Perrin. It’s hard to build any continuity when you don’t keep groups together.

In the end, it all falls on Underwood. Underwood is the GM of the team. He’s the coach of the team. It was his decision to run an ineffective ball pressure defense that resulted in tons of fouling in 2018-19 that resulted in 20+ losses. It’s been his decision to continue to fire 3s on offense this year despite low makes.
 
#438      

phats22

P
phats22
nichi said:
I am not even going to address with and without Kofi.

Nothing built for the future? How about Epps, Dainja, Melendez, Harris, Rodgers, and Goode?
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Agreed, too lazy to do the research but this years team has the most amount of meaningful minutes being played by freshmen BY FAR,

they've all contributed (and I'd throw Dain in there too experience wise). And this despite the fact BU doesn't play freshmen (...😋)
 
#439      

Vinegarben

V
Vinegarben
Emerson Bigguns said:
All of those teams, other than OSU are absolutely stacked with upper classmen. Mizzou, Penn St, and NW are among the oldest teams in college basketball. We are among the youngest.

In basketball, as in life, experience often trumps talent. We have not played well together. Partly because our guys haven't played much in their respective careers and have played together even less.
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Does that thought apply to all teams or just Illinois? It seems like Duke, Kentucky and the real bluebloods generally make it work over the years. I am not making any excuses for the Jekyll/Hyde play!
 
#440      

bluemountain

B
bluemountain
Emerson Bigguns said:
All of those teams, other than OSU are absolutely stacked with upper classmen. Mizzou, Penn St, and NW are among the oldest teams in college basketball. We are among the youngest.

In basketball, as in life, experience often trumps talent. We have not played well together. Partly because our guys haven't played much in their respective careers and have played together even less.
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You can always find a rationale for sub-par performance....we have now played 30 games and this excuse doesn't hold water any more. Our 3 best players are all experienced and are NBA prospects. Given the circumstances, you'd think we would be playing our best ball right now and we aren't; we have regressed to how we were playing early in the season.
 
#441      

New Creation

N
New Creation
Rudd21 said:
I agree with 2018. But 2019 he had Ayo, Frazier, Feliz, Griffin. That’s plenty of wing talent. Still only went 7-13. He had NBA PG at OSU and went 9-9. This year 11-9 with 3 NBA hopefuls. Underwood inherited a great program at SFA. Kudos to him for keeping it going but it’s like Self taking over at Kansas.

Underwood’s huge major D1 success is due to one player. Without Kofi, he’s proven to be just a guy. And this year has really proven it when some consider Illinois to have the most talent in the Big 10 and yet finish probably 11-9 with quite a few inexplicable blowouts
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Come On Please GIF by NBA
 
#443      

Ransom Stoddard

Ransom Stoddard
Ordained Dudeist Priest
Bloomington, IL
Ransom Stoddard
bluemountain said:
You can always find a rationale for sub-par performance....we have now played 30 games and this excuse doesn't hold water any more. Our 3 best players are all experienced and are NBA prospects. Given the circumstances, you'd think we would be playing our best ball right now and we aren't; we have regressed to how we were playing early in the season.
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I honestly think that this is one of the negative, not positives of this team. That sounds counterintuitive, so hear me out.

They're "prospects", not locks. Prospects look for ways to improve their stock, get more pub, etc., which is generally via increasing their numbers. Unfortunately, Brad's offense isn't built to accommodate 3 different players on the floor at the same time, all looking to get theirs.

When you look at tape of our bad games (and there are more than a few, so block out a few hours), the thing that jumps out is that those are the games where we weren't playing team ball. Those 3 guys were, more likely than not, looking for their own shot, looking for a highlight reel play, etc., and not working within the flow of the offense. Not every prospect is like that (Ayo wasn't, but Ayo was so good he could get his while still playing within the offense a good chunk of the time), but these guys, unfortunately, are.

My only major knock on Brad is that he hasn't been able to curtail this type of play consistently, but as someone said in another post, the bench isn't deep enough to hold all the guys who would be in Coach's doghouse if he sat guys for selfish play.
 
#444      

Ransom Stoddard

Ransom Stoddard
Ordained Dudeist Priest
Bloomington, IL
Ransom Stoddard
Rudd21 said:
I agree with 2018. But 2019 he had Ayo, Frazier, Feliz, Griffin. That’s plenty of wing talent. Still only went 7-13. He had NBA PG at OSU and went 9-9. This year 11-9 with 3 NBA hopefuls. Underwood inherited a great program at SFA. Kudos to him for keeping it going but it’s like Self taking over at Kansas.

Underwood’s huge major D1 success is due to one player. Without Kofi, he’s proven to be just a guy. And this year has really proven it when some consider Illinois to have the most talent in the Big 10 and yet finish probably 11-9 with quite a few inexplicable blowouts
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Conversely, without 3rd, 4th and 5th year DMFW and TF, he's proven to be just a guy. Or maybe without BBV he's just a guy, or without Jermaine Hamlin on the bench he's just a guy. You can't put all the success of the prior 3 years on Kofi, as Kofi isn't the only thing different between last year and this year.
 
#445      

fuggles

F
fuggles
dbeverly26 said:
Eleven teams are going to finish within three games of each other in the Big Ten this year. Are all of those teams average, or is there some massive chasm between 12-8 and 11-9 that I'm not picking up on?

I'm the dumbest guy on the board right now for even engaging in this conversation, so apologies to anyone still following this thread. Next time I'll just leave the talk radio stuff alone.
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I feel for you man. Its really hard not to argue with that guy. He is way out there and will not stop. I have to bite my keyboard every time I read one of his posts. lol
 
#446      

Emerson Bigguns

Emerson Bigguns
Emerson Bigguns
Rudd21 said:
Our 3 main guys all have a ton of experience. Mayer, Shannon, Hawkins have all been starters on good teams in the past. There’s no excuse to get down by 35 to a Mizzou team thrown together in one offseason.

You have a point about not playing together a long time, but that’s how Underwood chose to construct the roster and the issues with having guys transfer out early like Curbelo, Miller, Podz, Clark, Perrin. It’s hard to build any continuity when you don’t keep groups together.

In the end, it all falls on Underwood. Underwood is the GM of the team. He’s the coach of the team. It was his decision to run an ineffective ball pressure defense that resulted in tons of fouling in 2018-19 that resulted in 20+ losses. It’s been his decision to continue to fire 3s on offense this year despite low makes.
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Shannon is the only guy on the team that had more than 35 starts in his career coming into the season. Hawkins averaged 19 minutes a game last year. Only 14 starts. Meyer never started a game prior to last season, even then he only averaged 23 mpg.
 
#447      

New Creation

N
New Creation
Emerson Bigguns said:
All of those teams, other than OSU are absolutely stacked with upper classmen. Mizzou, Penn St, and NW are among the oldest teams in college basketball. We are among the youngest.

In basketball, as in life, experience often trumps talent. We have not played well together. Partly because our guys haven't played much in their respective careers and have played together even less.
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I think we are the 2nd youngest team in the country
 
#448      

WyattEarp

WyattEarp
WyattEarp
Rudd21 said:
We’re 10-8 in the conference. That’s a .555 winning percentage. Most likely finishing 11-9 which makes a 0.550 winning percentage. And that is with playing the easiest possible in conference schedule having played the bottom teams the max number of times.

Underwood should get great credit for recruiting and developing a generational big man like Kofi. But the issue with that is whether it’s replicable in the future. Talented wings and guards are a dime a dozen. Underwood has brought in plenty of those guys. But without the big man, his major conference success has been middling despite having good wing/guard talent.
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No they’re not…
and it’s not anywhere close to that simple.

Many of the guards and wings we’ve had…have been good players; but they have had obvious limitations in one area of their game or another. They’ve mostly been role players to be perfectly honest.

Jacob Grandison, for ex…a guard/forward type who was a good passer and a steady, calming presence. He was not a pure shooter but he had good enough command of it to make it work. He had nice court sense and a high BBIQ…

But could Jacob Grandison create his own shot? No not really? Could he go to the rack and get ya one whenever u needed it? Not so much. Was he strong with the ball? Not always. Did he have a quick, silky smooth release? Nope…more of a set shot.
You get the idea….

DaMonte was tough as nails…amazing defensive specialist…he did the little things….heart, hustle, grit…made himself a decent spot up shooter.

On the other side of things…for a guard…Would you say he was a good passer? Nope. Was he playmaker? Nope. Could he create his own shot? No. Did he have amazing handles? Nope

Should I go on?…guards and forwards are hardly a dime a dozen…especially the well-rounded ones. They’re like unicorns.
 
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#450      

bluemountain

B
bluemountain
NarrowJ said:
All of the "without Kofi" stuff is absolute lunacy. Kofi was a 4 star recruit with zero blue blood offers.

A large reason Kofi became what he was, was Brad Underwood. Not the other way around.
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Kansas and UCLA would probably beg to differ with this assessment and he was a 5* on Rivals. You are acting like he was Luka Garza entering college. Brad did nothing to develop Kofi - he left campus with the same skill set he had when he got there.
 
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