Pregame: Illinois vs Iowa, Saturday, February 24th, 1:15pm CT, BTN

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#126      

NarrowJ

NarrowJ
NarrowJ
sacraig said:
That shouldn't really matter. The advanced metrics adjust for the quality of the opponent. That's what the "Adj" part of AdjD means.
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This, and also most P5 teams non-conf schedules are going to have a lot of those types of teams. I can just watch the games and tell you that our defense has absolutely tanked from where it was prior to Jan 1 (or thereabouts).

Quincy looks a lot less aggressive. Coleman brings it on D one game and then is okay-to-terrible the next. Harmon looks serviceable one game and then the next looks completely helpless and clueless. Luke is being hunted by opponents. Domask had to take on a much bigger role on offense - first with TJ being out, second with taking on more ballhandling responsibility - which I think has hurt his defensive play. TSJ doesn't look as aggressive defensively as he did.

We are 3rd to last in the country in forcing turnovers. How the hell do we have the best collection of length & athleticism in the conference and be this bad at forcing turnovers? If not for Coleman's 5 steal games, we'd assuredly be dead last in that statistic.

The defense is something that should've been figured out a month ago.

Anyway, to get back to the point-- yeah, I think our defense actually was extremely good earlier in the season. If you want to throw out all of the cupcake games, that's fine. Marquette beat us, but scored only 71 points and there wasn't a parade of layups and dunks. FAU scored 89 but are an elite offense (we shut them down at the end of the game when it mattered). Tennessee scored 86 but only shot 44% and I don't recall a layup line in that game either and they're ranked #5 in the nation. Even looking at Oakland who we held to 53 points, they're 112 in AdjO so higher than Maryland (160) who just put up 80 against us and not much worse than Penn St (91) who dropped 90 on us. Colgate's offense is also comparable to Maryland and we held them to 57.

I think its pretty clear that there was some big regression at some point. I am starting to side with those who want us to scrap all of the switching. We have the personnel to pull it off, but its not working. So let's stop doing it, please.
 
#127      

InDaAZ

InDaAZ
Eugene, Oregon
InDaAZ
altgeld88 said:
Weren't we Top 20 in D early in the season (until January)? If so, what happened? All of our peers play a similar profile of non-con opponents.
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altgeld88 said:
You beat me to it, Professor. :) My question still stands: what happened that our D fell off the table in January? Did TSJ's absence and reinstatement mess up the mojo?
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MLT has thoughts…
 
#130      

Illini_1105

I
Illini_1105
InDaAZ said:
MLT has thoughts…
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I can't watch this because I have been avoiding all media related to wednesday's terrible loss (and believe it or not, I am doing a great job with it). But, if I were interested in figuring out wtf is happening, MLT's film room break down would 100000% the place I'd start. These have become must watches for me. I think LaTulip does a tremendous job breaking down basketball for the layman like myself. They need to get him some software to overwrite the screen with a pen and stuff, he's tremendous
 
#132      

IlliniFanTX

I
IlliniFanTX
ChiefGritty said:
It's like some people know no other way than Fire The Coach Mode.

In fairness, modern era Illinois fans who jump there early have never been wrong. But still.

I've said this on both sides of the divide: firing the coach is not a punishment, retaining the coach is not a reward. If the chances of long term success are stronger by taking your chances on the open marketplace than they are by staying the course, you make the move. If not, you don't.

We're so, SO far away from that being the case.
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I remember reading a piece from a NFL columnist talking about how the people who get immediately into "fire the coach mode" do so because they don't want to believe that their favorite players, their heroes, could possibly at any sort of fault as it taints their image of them in their minds.

I know there are plenty of "player-haters" on here, but I think the crowd that immediately goes to that mode just seems to fit that mold perfectly.
 
#133      

WeWillWhen

WeWillWhen
WeWillWhen
LaTulip’s breakdown is excellent.

One very perceptive observation is how TSJ gets tired and sloughs off in the minute before media timeouts.

I would expand on that though… I think the breakdowns at game ends are happening because our key guys all are tired. Underwood is piling too many minutes on TSJ, Domask, and Coleman. He’s got to a find a way to get all of them a couple more minutes’ rest. IMO.
 
#134      

altgeld88

altgeld88
Arlington, Virginia
altgeld88
IlliniFanTX said:
I remember reading a piece from a NFL columnist talking about how the people who get immediately into "fire the coach mode" do so because they don't want to believe that their favorite players, their heroes, could possibly at any sort of fault as it taints their image of them in their minds.

I know there are plenty of "player-haters" on here, but I think the crowd that immediately goes to that mode just seems to fit that mold perfectly.
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This ^^^^

Thank goodness I behaved and performed with rock-solid consistency at elite levels day-in and day-out when I was 18-22.
 
#137      

NarrowJ

NarrowJ
NarrowJ
gary? said:
Looks like we're firmly in the acceptance stage.
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What brings you to that conclusion? The last couple of pages of posts have been folks discussing the issues with the team and why they aren't being fixed, what to do to fix them, etcetera.
 
#138      

Emerson Bigguns

Emerson Bigguns
Emerson Bigguns
USAFILLINI said:
Defensive woes seem to be a common theme with BU led teams.

in the last five years, all of Bill Self's teams have been at least top 20 in ADJD, BU has had one his entire career (Historically you have to be top 20 to be a national title contender)

Taking this in mind, its really mind blowing that he would allow Hamer to run his defensive schemes.

We need a drastic change on defense, or we need to start becoming comfortable with the fact we are going to win a bunch of regular season games, and lose the second round in the tourney. I'm not saying fire BU, but there needs to be some serious pressure on him to bring on a Defensive minded assistant coach with actual experience.
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You can scheme whatever you want... If your players don't execute it won't change much. The scheme was fine earlier in the season... We have just been making too many mistakes.
The guys seem content to try to outscore the other team rather than take pride in the little things on defense.
 
#141      

Birdus

B
Birdus
This team will get through this. Lookin for a bounce back this Saturday! Hopefully a lot more D
 
#144      

walzon

W
walzon
the last game turns the season around, either for better or for worse. we'll see what this team is made of, I will be willing to accept a terrible loss to have us realise our issues and adjust to them in time by March than to keep squeaking by with the same old bs
 
#145      

jrichisamazing

J
jrichisamazing
altgeld88 said:
Weren't we Top 20 in D early in the season (until January)? If so, what happened? All of our peers play a similar profile of non-con opponents.
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I think the "we were good defensively early in the year" is way overblown. Our good defensive numbers came against Marquette, Rutgers, and 7 cupcake games. The FAU game is when our defense started slipping. IMO, that isn't enough of a sample size to stay we had a good defense.
 
#146      

ILL-Intentions

I
ILL-Intentions
I find it hard to believe an intense guy like Underwood is content with our effort on defense. Even if we won 91-90, we still gave up 90 to a Penn State team. I dont think Iowa is the "get right" game we need since our struggle is on the defensive end. Sandfort and Perkins will probably have career nights and make this close but I hope we can pull this out. It doesn't seem like we have any set plays for anything. Out of bounds plays we never get a good shot, we just get the ball in. Against a press, we do the 5 on the line (which can work if you dont just all run around aimlessly, someone set some screens) but that is all I have seen. Defense is the problem but we win a few more games with the current defense if we have a few more Xs and Os. Seems like we try for the minimum to win and sometimes it doesnt go our way.
 
#147      

jrichisamazing

J
jrichisamazing
Iowa is going to be just as fired up for this game as we are. Coming off back to back Q1 wins, they have a chance to sneak their way into the tourney. This is their remaining schedule....

@ILL
PSU
@NW
ILL

If they go 3-1 they will be right on the bubble.
 
#148      

bleedorange and blue

B
bleedorange and blue
Tyrone HoggLegg said:
We don't throttle anyone, Were Illinois, we just hold our breath and "Squeak by".
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Play to the level of the competition, sometimes good usually bad. It's an Illinois thing and except for a few seasons it's been this way forever. This still has a chance to be a special year but if Iowa is keeping it close then it's more of the same. This needs to be a blow out but something tells me we let them hang around, hope not.
 
#150      

Goillinikobd

Goillinikobd
Southeastern US
Goillinikobd
jrichisamazing said:
Iowa is going to be just as fired up for this game as we are. Coming off back to back Q1 wins, they have a chance to sneak their way into the tourney. This is their remaining schedule....

@ILL
PSU
@NW
ILL

If they go 3-1 they will be right on the bubble.
Click to expand...
If they beat us twice, I don’t want to think about what it does to our seed
 
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