Penn State 74, Illinois 59 Postgame

#351      

jumpingjack

J
jumpingjack
Got home at 945 last night so not much point recapping well traveled territory.
We didn't defend the 3 well, and didn't shoot it well enough either to make up the difference.
Defensive energy was horrible. That being said, our fans clearly love and feed off Harris' effort. When the rest of this team plays to his level on defense, we're unbeatable. I truly believe that.
When we don't, and we happen to have a crappy lackadaisical night on offense, it's trouble. No surprise.
However, that being said, my stepson had an amazing experience for his birthday and fell asleep in his Illini hat, thanks to the guys on the team who took the time to say hi and give out high fives (thank you, Luke, Brandon, Sencire!!!).
These kids had an off night. But it's December, we're young AF, and if someone said, you can either beat #2 TEXAS at MSG in a national event, or beat PSU yesterday, I would take the Texas win every day of the year.
I believe.
 
#352      

1970 John

1970 John
1970 John
I—we—drove 800 miles to be at that game. We left home Thursday morning, arrived CU on Friday. We won’t get home until tomorrow. We ate out for how many meals. We paid—whatever—for the tickets. We yelled, cheered and sang.

And for that?

Now to add insult to injury, I’m going to have to postmortem all this with Penn Stater friends.

We have tickets for Illinois at Penn State on February 14. We have seats one row off the floor. It’s only an overnight trip for us. Penn State fans will be coming in looking for a repeat plus a home court advantage.

Dammit, Illini. We wear Orange. Our vehicle is clearly marked as Illinois with a Pennsylvania plate. Let us drive out of State College with a W.

(Rant over. You may naw return to your regularly scheduled forum).
 
#353      

illiniguy

illiniguy
illiniguy
jumpingjack said:
if someone said, you can either beat #2 TEXAS at MSG in a national event, or beat PSU yesterday, I would take the Texas win every day of the year.
I believe.
Click to expand...
Compromise Shrug GIF
 
#358      

BretMyBeachHouse

B
BretMyBeachHouse
Okay, I'll throw in a few pennies worth of wisdom.

BU says they had a bad couple days of practice. A few people have asked why he didn't bench guys who weren't practicing well. That's certainly one approach. The other approach is what he did which is basically a FAFO. They FA'd. We all found out. They've learned an important lesson about how practice becomes performance. Might cost us a league title. Might gain us one though. Might help us in March. Who knows. But I trust Underwood's judgement on it.

Comparing the Weber under the bus stuff with Weber I see more than a few differences that had me pi$$ed at Weber and not Underwood.

First, Weber would criticize players for not executing his plan well. That to me is on coaching. The coach's job is not to read out of the book and hope it takes. It's to develop a strategy and get the execution. I remember when Weber talked about how McCamey took advice from a family member that led to a great game and Weber said he had been telling him that for weeks or months. Well, that means Weber couldn't take good advice and make it real for a player. That's on the high priced coach.

Second, effort is on the players. If it really sucked this bad then I'm fine with Underwood calling it out. If he doesn't do anything about it even if it continues, then I'll have a problem. But hopefully it will improve and if it doesn't I hope we won't get the woe is me call out like Weber handed us after the Purdue game.

As to Shannon showing some sort of leadership by saying something different on Twitter. Let's be clear. There is no amount of leadership ever evidenced on social media. Talk is cheap. I don't give a damn what he says. I care what he does.
 
#359      

alaskaillini

A
alaskaillini
Hate to say it but that game kinda reminded me of the Loyola game. The other team had a great game plan and came to play. We walked in thinking all we had to do is show up and go through the motions to win. Then only a freshman or two actually plays well. The saving grace is that this isn't the tourney and these guys get to play another day and can learn from this.

We have dug ourselves a hole in conference play. It is going to take some fantastic play to finish better than 13-7. BU has his work cut out for himself fixing the leaks in the defense.
 
#360      

illinibb76

I
illinibb76
It's difficult to believe that with the caliber of this coaching staff that they would tolerate back-to-back poor practices. If they did and this effort was the result, then everyone one should be thrown under the bus, including all of the coaches! I don't like our offensive scheme one bit. We are supposed to have better athletes on this team but we're still dribbling back and forth at the top of the key without creating an advantage and then hoping we get bailed out with a desperation 3. It often appears like we have set the turntable to 78 when it should be set at 33!!! Everyone is to blame but the ceiling is really high for this team. I hope they slow down a bit and execute, set better screens, and we should be just fine.
 
#363      

john1952

john1952
john1952
Players were coming off a long road trip. The semester is ending (about 60% of a semester's work get done betweeen Thanksgiving and the end of thee semester. It's final weeek. Freshman doing this for first time. Situational factors could have played a role in poor practicee and game pefromance.
 
#364      

theNewGuy

theNewGuy
Dallas, TX
theNewGuy
Embarrassing, but necessary loss.
This team has a lot to figure out, coaches and players.

Jeremy Werner mentioned this on his podcast:
UCLA, Virginia, Maryland, Texas, and Penn St. all had double digit leads on us.
That is every power 5 conference opponent we've faced with the exception of Syracuse.

This team isn't just inconsistent from game to game. It's been inconsistent within each game.
This team can win some games in March with comebacks but it could just as easily not make the second weekend again.
They will become a national championship contender when, and only when, they can consistently not get behind, create turnovers, and make shots. Simple as that.
 
#366      

STATS GUY

S
STATS GUY
hoopsfan47 said:
This is a really, really good start that addresses two of the seven principles that need to be adhered to in developing good technique.
Click to expand...
Thanks We should put all 7 out there Please add a part about staying on your toes as the 8th.
 
#368      

JFGsCoffeeMug

JFGsCoffeeMug
BU:1 Trash cans:0
Chicago
JFGsCoffeeMug
bavanga3 said:
Underwood said that. He specifically said, if he has to start leading this team instead of the players, things aren't gonna be very fun.
Click to expand...
I haven't heard the quote, but what you just posted doesn't communicate to me that BU isn't leading the team. It communicates that, up to this point, he has treated leadership as a joint responsibility (which is really optimal from a culture standpoint). But if the players don't want to do their part wrt leadership, he is more than willing to get more heavy-handed in his approach. And that won't be "very fun" for them.
 
#370      

ChiefIllinois

C
ChiefIllinois
illini0440 said:
Lack of effort. Lack of attention to detail. Lack of knowing the scouting report. Lack of intensity because we were playing lowly Penn st
Click to expand...
Everyone harping a lot on the intensity of BUs presser, thing that stood out to me is him mentioning a player saying “wow we just lost to Penn st.” You can complain about how he handled the presser, but that tidbit speaks volumes.

I know bias is impossible to shake to the extent that you probably are going to overlook certain teams a little, but it’s clear that at least one member of the squad had this game chalked up as a win on Friday night. That cannot happen with any team on any schedule if you have any desire to hoist trophies.
 
#372      

bavanga3

B
bavanga3
JFGsCoffeeMug said:
I haven't heard the quote, but what you just posted doesn't communicate to me that BU isn't leading the team. It communicates that, up to this point, he has treated leadership as a joint responsibility (which is really optimal from a culture standpoint). But if the players don't want to do their part wrt leadership, he is more than willing to get more heavy-handed in his approach. And that won't be "very fun" for them.
Click to expand...
Well thats the way a lot of people saw it. If you want more context, watch the postgame presser. Its only 8 minutes. You'll understand the other poster's CEO comment, albeit a bit exaggerated but it got his point across. When they finally asked Underwood what he could've done different schematically, he said "nothing". I love his passion, but he needs to hold himself accountable as a leader as well. Terrence Shannon didn't get outcoached against Houston in the tourney last year and Matthew Mayer didn't get knocked out by Loyola Chicago the year before. At some point, he needs to be a little more critical of his schemes and adjustments because offensively he has no structure and it shows far too often. We have to work waaay to hard at times just to get easy points. Those droughts will kill us in the end. That's a real problem, and if he needs to go get a great offensive assistant to solve it, then so be it. But don't completely throw your players under the bus because they were sluggish on an 11am Saturday start after such a huge win. Thats not just on the players. That's on the experienced people in the locker room to keep level heads, our seniors AND our coaches. I actually liked his rant, but at some point he needs to realize its not all about who wants it more. You gotta put your players in better positions offensively.
 
Last edited:
#373      

KOTC2

K
KOTC2
Ugly loss and it's not a good thing to start 0-2 in conference play. Three winnable games ahead, so there's time to get some things fixed before conference play resumes.
 
#374      

bluemountain

B
bluemountain
bavanga3 said:
Well thats the way a lot of people saw it. If you want more context, watch the postgame presser. Its only 8 minutes. You'll understand the other poster's CEO comment, albeit a bit exaggerated but it got his point across. When they finally asked Underwood what he could've done different schematically, he said "nothing". I love his passion, but he needs to hold himself accountable as a leader as well. Terrence Shannon didn't get outcoached against Houston in the tourney last year and Matthew Mayer didn't get knocked out by Loyola Chicago the year before. At some point, he needs to be a little more critical of his schemes and adjustments because offensively he has no structure and it shows far too often. We have to work waaay to hard at times just to get easy points. Those droughts will kill us in the end. That's a real problem, and if he needs to go get a great offensive assistant to solve it, then so be it. But don't completely throw your players under the bus because they were sluggish on an 11am Saturday start after such a huge win. Thats not just on the players. That's on the experienced people in the locker room to keep level heads, our seniors AND our coaches. I actually liked his rant, but at some point he needs to realize its not all about who wants it more. You gotta put your players in better positions offensively.
Click to expand...
Yep. BU is not a great in game coach - we don't make adjustments like the Purdue's of the world do. And our offensive schemes are pretty simplistic. BU is a good defensive coach, he is a good recruiter and he is generally able to get his players to play with more intensity than do other teams. But that isn't always enough and until he addresses these shortcomings we have probably hit our ceiling in terms of performance
 
#375      

jumpingjack

J
jumpingjack
bavanga3 said:
Well thats the way a lot of people saw it. If you want more context, watch the postgame presser. Its only 8 minutes. You'll understand the other poster's CEO comment, albeit a bit exaggerated but it got his point across. When they finally asked Underwood what he could've done different schematically, he said "nothing". I love his passion, but he needs to hold himself accountable as a leader as well. Terrence Shannon didn't get outcoached against Houston in the tourney last year and Matthew Mayer didn't get knocked out by Loyola Chicago the year before. At some point, he needs to be a little more critical of his schemes and adjustments because offensively he has no structure and it shows far too often. We have to work waaay to hard at times just to get easy points. Those droughts will kill us in the end. That's a real problem, and if he needs to go get a great offensive assistant to solve it, then so be it. But don't completely throw your players under the bus because they were sluggish on an 11am Saturday start after such a huge win. Thats not just on the players. That's on the experienced people in the locker room to keep level heads, our seniors AND our coaches. I actually liked his rant, but at some point he needs to realize its not all about who wants it more. You gotta put your players in better positions offensively.
Click to expand...
Defense, especially man to man, is a matter of will. We, with one consistent exception, didn't demonstrate it.