SampsonRelpenk
- Edwardsville, IL
Paint the Farm Orange? :noidea:
Underwood: Grading out of Nebraska game, by far and away the best job we've done defensively... Up until the rebounding.
Underwood: Liked our balance offensively. Good to see Kipper get goin' again. He was efficient.
Underwood: Cassius Winston is having an MVP caliber year. The 20 assists per game they get is largely him. Very, very good team. Excited for the challenge.
Underwood: I wanna get where if you ask players & coaches 'who's the toughest team in the league?', I want them to say Illinois.
Underwood: We've gotten better. Saw a power ranking the other day where we were 35 in the last 30 days.
Underwood: Have a meeting with Ayo today at 3 o'clock. He wants every bit of information he can get (scouting an opponent). He's way ahead of where freshmen are usually at with his mental approach.
Underwood: Post touches against us are way down this year because of our perimeter defense. Trent and Ayo have been good. Da'Monte is a rock. Giorgi is elite as a freshman in ball-screen coverage.
https://twitter.com/DPiper247
I think the Nebraska game was a sellout. Doesn't mean that the seats were all filled, but they were sold. The rest have fallen way short.Any idea what the likely attendance is for this game?
Hoping for a near sell out
This actually doesn't surprise me - lets hope the 'good' Illini team shows up and not the 'meh' cause it will at least give us a shot. No doubt they try to limit Winston as much as possible with Trent in his face. Trent can guard and frustrate him...US official line opening at +10.
Didn’t know where to post this, but I thought it was kind of weird when looking at West Virginia and South Carolina, two teams coached by Bob Huggins and Frank Martin who come from the same coaching tree and employ similar styles of play as Brad Underwood have all had very similar seasons. All 3 teams lost a few key players, and seemed to struggle to the point of being the worst team in each respective conference during the non conference season. Then conference play rolled around and it seemed like these coaches finally got through to their new rosters, and got them to buy in and start winning. If you saw some of the teams South Carolina was losing to in non conference you would not expect them to be 6-2 in the SEC. Meanwhile Illinois and West Virginia’s records look bad still, but are figuring out how to win as of late. WV over Kansas and Oklahoma, and us over Minnesota, Maryland, and Nebraska. Maybe it just takes time in these systems and the playoffs are money.
I don’t think anyone has said we can’t win. It’s unlikely. MSU is a better team, but they lose games they shouldn’t just like every other team. We play our best, we have a decent shot. They play their best, we probably don’t. But if we are making progress, games like these at home are ones we need to start winning a more of. I’m hopeful.
Anybody watching this team for the last 4 or 5 games that thinks we can't win this game at home is just not paying attention.
If we play the same defensive game we played against Nebby (very realistic) and just make 70% of our FT's....this is a W.
Michigan State's offense is rated 6th according to Kenpom. Nebrasa is 28th and that's while they had their best offensive player. Possible, but not very realistic.
I never bet on basketball or much of anything else, but +10 sounds way extreme to me. The only way MSU wins by ten or more is if they are in the bonus before the first TV timeout.
The other teams offensive rating has nothing to do with how we play defense. It's very realistic that we will play the same defense, what is unknown is how that 6th ranked defense responds to it.
The other teams offensive rating has nothing to do with how we play defense. It's very realistic that we will play the same defense, what is unknown is how that 6th ranked defense responds to it.
I’m not sure its an either or situation. Nebraska last year showed a winning record won’t necessarily get you in. (They got screwed imo.) But under .500 and you have no chance either, so SOS does not help in that case. Key is to find the right balance for the team you have. If your really good, challenge them and get them ready for the big dance ala MSU. We just were no where near ready at this point for what we played. Hopefully we are never in this situation again with a team that depends on freshman to be ready from day 1.What is more important strength of schedule or number of victories?
Suppose we had played a weaker schedule and our record was 11-11.
Would the perspective on remaining season be significantly different?