Pregame: Illinois vs Kansas, Saturday, September 7th, 6:00pm CT, FS1

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#151      
IlliniInBuckeyeState
madillini4 said:
https://twitter.com/x/status/1831127615454765160
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What?!?!

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#155      
Glaurung44
WWWWRocU said:
The stage is set for us to do to Kansas what we did in the revenge game against Virginia just a couple of years ago.
Let it be.
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This Kansas team is better than that Virginia team. A W could happen, but barring a bunch of turnovers on the part of Kansas, it's going to be a game throughout. And if you look at Kansas's record the last two games, they don't roll over. Even when they get down a few scores, they always scratch their way back in it. The attitude of the team is the biggest change LL brought to that program. The only times they've lost by multiple scores outside of against a very talented Texas team, has been when their starting QB was injured and they had to play with a walkon, and even then, they made it interesting in the end. Illinois can win, but it's going to be a tough game.
 
#157      
illinifan1987
Fighter of the Nightman said:
Just a reminder what a big deal this is, this is just the second time we have hosted a ranked non-conference opponent in Champaign in the last 25+ years! It's a huge chance to get a win that helps elevate the respect the program gets nationally. KU is a bit of a media darling right now, and it would be great to nab that spot from them. ;)

P.S. For those who want a trip down memory lane, such matchups seemed to be much, much more common before 2000!

2024: vs. #19 Kansas
2011: W 17-14 vs. #22 Arizona State
2001: W 34-10 vs. #25 Louisville

1997: L 35-22 vs. #19 Washington State
1996: L 55-3 vs. #19 USC
1995: W 9-7 vs. #17 Arizona
1993: L 16-14 vs. #15 Arizona
1991: W 51-10 vs. #21 Houston
1990: W 23-22 vs. #9 Colorado
1987: L 21-7 vs. #15 Arizona State
1986: L 59-14 vs. #6 Nebraska
1985: L 20-10 vs. #6 USC
1982: L 20-3 vs. #3 Pitt
1979: L 14-6 vs. #11 Missouri
1975: L 30-20 vs. #5 Missouri
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Wow, that win % seems about right :confused:
 
#159      
Glaurung44
lstewart53x3 said:
We rank 65th in the nation in returning production.

Kansas? 78th.

Full list:

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This is very misleading.

Kansas returns 100% of their receiving production. They return 100% of their RB production. They did lose their starting TE, but they still return 2 of their top 3 TEs. The big drop of in "returning production" is at QB, where KU returns only 25% of their QB production, which drops off the returning production quite a bit. And that's misleading, because Jason Bean, the backup, started 9 of the 13 games. Jalon Daniels was the named starter for a reason, as Illinois saw last year. So you should think of it this way. KU returns 95% of the production from the KU/Illinois game last year. All the RBs, all the WRs, and Jalon Daniels at QB. Illinois was the only team last year to play KU at full strength. Daniels played two more games last year, but he didn't look close to 100% in either of them. He looked 100% in the Illinois game. So KU returns all the skill position players and 3 of the 5 starting OL. The center from last year was replaced by Bryce Foster, a former 5* recruit who started C at aTm. They replace Puni at LT, and he will be a loss. He was pretty good. Cabeldue though is a 3 year starter on the OL and isn't a pushover. Overall, KU should be stronger at OL and more athletic, but maybe not as crisp early on. It will probably take the OL time to gel as a unit. KU lost their OC to Penn State, but the OC they brought in(Jeff Grimes) was the OC of the year in college football a few years ago and generally I trust anybody who Lance Leipold hires. He doesn't hire bad coaches. Not sure what to expect from KU from a style standpoint. They didn't show anything in the Lindenwood game. I know Lance Leipold wants to keep most of their current offense in tact, so Jeff Grimes isn't going to revamp the offense so much as he's going to mix what KU did last year with some of his own philosophies. So I'd expect what they do to be somewhere in between what they were doing last year and what Baylor has done the last few years, from a schematic standpoint. They have a ton of experience and talent on offense and that should make the transition go a lot more smoothly. I expect Jalon Daniels to have some run plays drawn up on Saturday. He didn't run against Lindenwood, because he didn't have to, and I'm guessing Leipold wants Illinois to think they're afraid to run Jalon.

Defensively KU returns the entire secondary, and should have one of the best secondaries in the country. Two CBs who will be playing in the NFL and two athletic safeties who like to hit. The LB crew will be better than last year, though that isn't saying a ton as last year's LB group was NOT good. More talented, but maybe less assignment sound. At DT they return everybody and should be improved. Solid players but none who are going to stand out. Strongside DE returns as well and is finally healthy, he's a good player when healthy. Booker on the other side of the DE is a big loss. Not sure if KU has another rush-end who can come close to matching his production. They have a really good freshman they like, and they brought in Jobe from Michigan State, and they have a redshirt freshman who got the starting nod last week and he looked like he's got some wheels, but remains to be seen how good he will be. KU's defense should be improved overall from last year's unit, but not world beaters either. Probably a borderline top 1/3 Big XII defense, but not a shut-down defense. They don't blitz a ton, so more of a bend but don't break defense. You'll move the ball between the 20s, but struggle more in the red zone. They like to make you run a lot of plays and wait for you to make a mistake, whether it's a holding penalty or a turnover. Illinois should be able to score some points, but KU will get some stops. It will just depend on how many stops Illinois' D can get against the KU offense..
 
#160      
IlliniInBuckeyeState
Fighter of the Nightman said:
MEMORIAL STADIUM CAPACITY BY SECTION
(Roughly in order of how I think they would fill up as ticket sales increase)
West Main: 13,000
East Main (Visible): 13,000
North End Zone (Student Section): 5,000
West Balcony: 5,000
Horseshoe: 9,800
East Balcony: 10,000
East Main (Invisible): 5,000
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This changes almost nothing of substance within your post, but wanted to provide detailed counts - down to the seat - for each group of sections as they appear on the official tickets website (and in the Memorial Stadium Sellout Watch tracker).

West Main: 10,186
- the first five rows of sections 125-129 are tarped off. If those seats were opened up, the theoretical capacity of the West Main is 10,786.
East Main (Visible - first 43 rows): 10,380
- like the West Main, the first five rows of sections 103-107 are tarped off. If those seats were opened up, the theoretical capacity of the East Main (visible) is 10,980.
North End Zone (Student Section, excluding the band): 4,350 (I'm sure you can fit more people than this into the student section)
West Balcony: 3,705
Horseshoe: 10,106
East Balcony: 9,852
East Main (Invisible - top 32 rows): 7,804
Colonnades Club: 1,164
77 Club: 224
*the visible rows in the East Main may go a little higher than row 43, but that is where the overhang from the East Balcony sits, so we'll just use that as the cutoff.

Interestingly, if you add all that up, you only get 58,221, so there is another 2,449 seats of capacity hidden in the stadium somewhere. 1,200 of those are under tarps in the first five rows of the West and East Main. Perhaps the Marching Illini seating counts for some, but I honestly don't know where the other ~1,000 of seating capacity is....keeps me up at night lol.
 
#162      
Birdus
Glaurung44 said:
This Kansas team is better than that Virginia team. A W could happen, but barring a bunch of turnovers on the part of Kansas, it's going to be a game throughout. And if you look at Kansas's record the last two games, they don't roll over. Even when they get down a few scores, they always scratch their way back in it. The attitude of the team is the biggest change LL brought to that program. The only times they've lost by multiple scores outside of against a very talented Texas team, has been when their starting QB was injured and they had to play with a walkon, and even then, they made it interesting in the end. Illinois can win, but it's going to be a tough game.
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We are going to have to play ball control and get some turnovers sprinkled in or this could be a long night. I could see us winning by 3 or losing by 17. I know what the spread says but I have not seen enough yet to convince me that we are on par with Daniels and Kansas. If I am wrong I will gladly admit it. I bleed orange. Go Illini!
 
#163      
Glaurung44
Illini2010-11 said:
And this is misleading as well.

Some of this is very well true, but as we know, a lot comes down to the offensive line vs defensive line. I thought I saw that the offensive line for KU is revamped quite a bit with some newcomers. I think it is a very large stretch to say that KU returns all of the offensive production from last year's game, when the offensive line is not the same as last year.

Either way, I expect a very good, close game.
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I posted before I finished. Had to run out of the office to pick up my kid. I dropped another post more in depth and finished my thoughts. Didn't know this post went through actually, since I got a message my registration wasn't complete.

Basically, the OL isn't revamped. KU returns most of the 2-deep from the OL. The two major losses were Puni and Novitsky. Novitsky is replaced by Bryce Foster from aTm. He's a 3 year starter at aTm, and bigger and more athletic than Novitsky. Should be an improvement at that position. Puni is the big loss. But he's being replaced by Cabeldue who is a 3 year starter. At RT, it's Logan Brown, a transfer from Wisconsin who was supposed to be a starter last year, but missed the season with an injury. Overall a talent improvement there too. He's got 2 years in this system. He graded out the highest of our OL on Thursday night. Overall the OL should be more talented than last year's OL, but yes it might take them time to gel as a unit. They looked pretty assignment sound and communicated well on Thursday night, but the opponent was NOT good, so it's hard to tell right now. But they're replacing the same production on the OL as they did from 2022 to 2023. Pretty normal OL turnover. I wouldn't expect much dropoff at OL. They're all veterans who know what they're doing. None of them are green.

Somebody who you MIGHT see at Tackle is Calvin Clements, who was expected to be a starter this year, and started in KU's bowl game last year. He was injured in training camp though and is just now getting healthy. Not sure if LL is going to throw him into the fire in a road game.

Anyway, I expect a very good and close game as well. I'll be pulling for you guys outside of Saturday. Y'all dislike Mizzou, so the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
 
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#165      
Illini4Christ
Glaurung44 said:
This is very misleading.

Kansas returns 100% of their receiving production. They return 100% of their RB production. They did lose their starting TE, but they still return 2 of their top 3 TEs. The big drop of in "returning production" is at QB, where KU returns only 25% of their QB production, which drops off the returning production quite a bit. And that's misleading, because Jason Bean, the backup, started 9 of the 13 games. Jalon Daniels was the named starter for a reason, as Illinois saw last year. So you should think of it this way. KU returns 95% of the production from the KU/Illinois game last year. All the RBs, all the WRs, and Jalon Daniels at QB. Illinois was the only team last year to play KU at full strength. Daniels played two more games last year, but he didn't look close to 100% in either of them. He looked 100% in the Illinois game. So KU returns all the skill position players and 3 of the 5 starting OL. The center from last year was replaced by Bryce Foster, a former 5* recruit who started C at aTm. They replace Puni at LT, and he will be a loss. He was pretty good. Cabeldue though is a 3 year starter on the OL and isn't a pushover. Overall, KU should be stronger at OL and more athletic, but maybe not as crisp early on. It will probably take the OL time to gel as a unit. KU lost their OC to Penn State, but the OC they brought in(Jeff Grimes) was the OC of the year in college football a few years ago and generally I trust anybody who Lance Leipold hires. He doesn't hire bad coaches. Not sure what to expect from KU from a style standpoint. They didn't show anything in the Lindenwood game. I know Lance Leipold wants to keep most of their current offense in tact, so Jeff Grimes isn't going to revamp the offense so much as he's going to mix what KU did last year with some of his own philosophies. So I'd expect what they do to be somewhere in between what they were doing last year and what Baylor has done the last few years, from a schematic standpoint. They have a ton of experience and talent on offense and that should make the transition go a lot more smoothly. I expect Jalon Daniels to have some run plays drawn up on Saturday. He didn't run against Lindenwood, because he didn't have to, and I'm guessing Leipold wants Illinois to think they're afraid to run Jalon.

Defensively KU returns the entire secondary, and should have one of the best secondaries in the country. Two CBs who will be playing in the NFL and two athletic safeties who like to hit. The LB crew will be better than last year, though that isn't saying a ton as last year's LB group was NOT good. More talented, but maybe less assignment sound. At DT they return everybody and should be improved. Solid players but none who are going to stand out. Strongside DE returns as well and is finally healthy, he's a good player when healthy. Booker on the other side of the DE is a big loss. Not sure if KU has another rush-end who can come close to matching his production. They have a really good freshman they like, and they brought in Jobe from Michigan State, and they have a redshirt freshman who got the starting nod last week and he looked like he's got some wheels, but remains to be seen how good he will be. KU's defense should be improved overall from last year's unit, but not world beaters either. Probably a borderline top 1/3 Big XII defense, but not a shut-down defense. They don't blitz a ton, so more of a bend but don't break defense. You'll move the ball between the 20s, but struggle more in the red zone. They like to make you run a lot of plays and wait for you to make a mistake, whether it's a holding penalty or a turnover. Illinois should be able to score some points, but KU will get some stops. It will just depend on how many stops Illinois' D can get against the KU offense..
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Looks like an Illini win by 15.
 
#166      
Glaurung44
Birdus said:
We are going to have to play ball control and get some turnovers sprinkled in or this could be a long night. I could see us winning by 3 or losing by 17. I know what the spread says but I have not seen enough yet to convince me that we are on par with Daniels and Kansas. If I am wrong I will gladly admit it. I bleed orange. Go Illini!
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Good luck. I'm a Jayhawk so obviously I don't hope you win. But I hope everybody gets out of there without any injuries and wish you luck in all your other games. Especially against Nebraska. I grew up on the Kansas/Nebraska border and heard "go big red" too many times. Good luck.
 
#172      
Saturdaze
IlliniInBuckeyeState said:
This changes almost nothing of substance within your post, but wanted to provide detailed counts - down to the seat - for each group of sections as they appear on the official tickets website (and in the Memorial Stadium Sellout Watch tracker).

West Main: 10,186
- the first five rows of sections 125-129 are tarped off. If those seats were opened up, the theoretical capacity of the West Main is 10,786.
East Main (Visible - first 43 rows): 10,380
- like the West Main, the first five rows of sections 103-107 are tarped off. If those seats were opened up, the theoretical capacity of the East Main (visible) is 10,980.
North End Zone (Student Section, excluding the band): 4,350 (I'm sure you can fit more people than this into the student section)
West Balcony: 3,705
Horseshoe: 10,106
East Balcony: 9,852
East Main (Invisible - top 32 rows): 7,804
Colonnades Club: 1,164
77 Club: 224
*the visible rows in the East Main may go a little higher than row 43, but that is where the overhang from the East Balcony sits, so we'll just use that as the cutoff.

Interestingly, if you add all that up, you only get 58,221, so there is another 2,449 seats of capacity hidden in the stadium somewhere. 1,200 of those are under tarps in the first five rows of the West and East Main. Perhaps the Marching Illini seating counts for some, but I honestly don't know where the other ~1,000 of seating capacity is....keeps me up at night lol.
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You got me curious…

Your total above 10786 + 10980 + 4350 + 3705 + 10106 + 9852 + 7804 + 1164 + 224 = 58,972 including the tarped off capacity.

per fightingillini.com there are 42 600 and 700 level suites with each having an entitlement of 18 tickets. That’s 756 total.

58,972 plus the 756 is 59,728.

This map indicates 800 level suites as well, but I didn’t see reference to them anywhere for sale so assuming there isn’t demand and they’re currently not in use.

Memorial Stadium Seating Map (PDF) - University of Illinois Athletics

Memorial Stadium Seating Map (PDF)
fightingillini.com fightingillini.com

ADA also requires 36 handicap seats plus 1 additional for every 200 seats over 500 = 36 + (60,670 - 5000) / 200 = 314 (potententially lower by a couple seats depending on if the math includes or excludes ADA seats)

221 Assembly Areas - ADA Compliance - ADA Compliance

221 Assembly Areas - ADA Compliance 221 Assembly Areas Wheelchair Spaces/Companion Seats. Owners of large assembly areas have historically complained to the Department that the requirement for one percent (1%) of seating to be wheelchair seating is excess
www.ada-compliance.com www.ada-compliance.com

The suites and ADA brings the total to 60,042.

The 3D render linked from fightingillini.com shows 4 rows of band seats, and Wiki claims membership at 400 but 300 surrogate cardboard cutouts were used during COVID in place of band members.

en.wikipedia.org

Marching Illini - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

Band brings total to 60,342 - 60,442.

Seatgeek shows 3 800 level suites that occupy similar space to 8 lower level suites. Presuming similar capacity that 8*18 = 144.

New total 60,486 - 60,586.

That still leaves 14 to 114, and now I’m going to lose sleep over it too. Lol.
 
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#173      
Fuze
IlliniInBuckeyeState said:
This changes almost nothing of substance within your post, but wanted to provide detailed counts - down to the seat - for each group of sections as they appear on the official tickets website (and in the Memorial Stadium Sellout Watch tracker).

West Main: 10,186
- the first five rows of sections 125-129 are tarped off. If those seats were opened up, the theoretical capacity of the West Main is 10,786.
East Main (Visible - first 43 rows): 10,380
- like the West Main, the first five rows of sections 103-107 are tarped off. If those seats were opened up, the theoretical capacity of the East Main (visible) is 10,980.
North End Zone (Student Section, excluding the band): 4,350 (I'm sure you can fit more people than this into the student section)
West Balcony: 3,705
Horseshoe: 10,106
East Balcony: 9,852
East Main (Invisible - top 32 rows): 7,804
Colonnades Club: 1,164
77 Club: 224
*the visible rows in the East Main may go a little higher than row 43, but that is where the overhang from the East Balcony sits, so we'll just use that as the cutoff.

Interestingly, if you add all that up, you only get 58,221, so there is another 2,449 seats of capacity hidden in the stadium somewhere. 1,200 of those are under tarps in the first five rows of the West and East Main. Perhaps the Marching Illini seating counts for some, but I honestly don't know where the other ~1,000 of seating capacity is....keeps me up at night lol.
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The thing with the tarps is they come on and off depending on ticket sales. I'm not sure at what point they pull them and sell the seats but they've pulled them before (I know they did for MSU in 2022). Off the top of my head, I don't think they did it at all last year but they may have. It'll be interesting to see if they're on this Saturday. They're obviously pretty crap seats just cause they're too close to field level so you can't really see well (if you've noticed, they tarp the same rows that are fenced off without bleachers behind the benches), but if you're going to sell out, you might as well get them sold.
 
#174      
Fly Illini Fly!
Glaurung44 said:
Illinois can win this game, but I think KU will score more than 20. If Illinois wins, it's going to have to probably be a high scoring game. maybe 35-31 or something like that.
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In terms of similarity in play...Both teams are better built to win a high scoring game rather than a low scoring game IMO.
 
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