Pregame: Illinois vs Wisconsin, Wednesday, February 2nd, 8:00pm CT, BTN

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#276      
RockfordIllini
Well I guess I will go ahead and pile on. Anyone who thinks Belo isn’t one of our 3 best players (at least) is dead wrong. He does things on a basketball court few others can do. Reports from summer were he was our best player, and it wasn’t particularly close. If we get frosh Belo back, we are a final four contender. If we get a Belo that’s taken a sophomore leap, we can easily win the NC, and he could go in the lottery. He is absolutely one of our 3 best players, if not our best player. Full stop.
 
#277      
skyIdub
groundhog_day_once_a_year-DMID1-5hnyea1mm-636x342.gif
 
#280      
alaskaillini
RockfordIllini said:
Well I guess I will go ahead and pile on. Anyone who thinks Belo isn’t one of our 3 best players (at least) is dead wrong. He does things on a basketball court few others can do. Reports from summer were he was our best player, and it wasn’t particularly close. If we get frosh Belo back, we are a final four contender. If we get a Belo that’s taken a sophomore leap, we can easily win the NC, and he could go in the lottery. He is absolutely one of our 3 best players, if not our best player. Full stop.
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While I agree with this, BU needs to somehow keep the strengths that we have developed without Belo while integrating him back in. Our 3 point shooting has been excellent - can't remember the game, but we had one where we averaged a ridiculous PPP - something like the highest in years - because of that 3 point shooting. We need Belo to be the same player that he was in the second half of last year - like the Purdue game - to stay as efficient offensively. You can't have a lot of turnovers and missed shots in the PNR offense and overcome the fewer opportunities that will result for 40% from 3. The challenge for BU is to maintain most of our production from 3 point range (with one less shooter on the floor), while Belo increases our efficiency in the paint and mid-range, and even helps pull defenders off our shooters. If we can do that, we are a NC caliber team. This is where BU earns that salary. I don't think it will just happen instantaneously even if Belo is back 100%. The players have to learn how to work together to do that as well. I won't be surprised if there are a few growing pains as this happens.
 
#281      
DeonThomas
D43 said:
I've never posted here, but read all the comments. Has anybody noticed we seem to lose every time Curbelo plays? If you exclude the beginning of season cupcakes, I think he's 1-4 this year. He may have great ability, but he makes a lot of unnecessary fancy passes and the team seems confused and tentative when he's out there. He also turns it over a lot with stupid plays and bad shots. He has no business shooting outside of 7 feet with the shooters he has around him. He's clearly trying to feed it inside, but our perimeter game shuts down. Trent, especially, shuts down when he's out there and, in my opinion, any hope of a title of any sort start and end with Trent Frazier.
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Oh, and don't forget that we were 24-7 last year too....all with Curbelo, while he was healthy. (I believe he played in all 31 games. And not many "cupcakes" in that Big10 schedule.)
 
#282      
Point-Illinois
The Galloping Ghost said:
This is just driving me nuts. I'm gonna try to break this down step by step. Belo got a concussion in the first preseason game. He suffered from the concussion and then post-concussion syndrome. Yes, he tried to play through his issues after missing two games. Unfortunately, and quite obviously, he was still very hurt and unable to play like his usual self. During the games in question (Marquette, Cincy, and K-State), his erratic play was due to his injury. He was suffering so much during those games that he had trainers checking on his head while he was on the bench. He also literally had to have a towel over his head to block out light.

Following those games, he was deemed too injured to participate in any team activities. Not only did he miss two months of games, but he also missed two months of practice. The fact that he didn't play for two months following those early-season games shows just how injured Belo was. I mean, we know for a fact that he had to see a specialist about it.

Once he finally cleared concussion protocol he practiced for two days before he played in the Purdue game. In that game against a top 4 team, he shot 53.3% from the field, scored 20 points, 6 rebs, 3 assists, with no turnovers.

Then, unfortunately, he gets sick. He tries to play through it against Maryland, but isn't able to. He only plays 14 minutes and struggles. He then is forced to miss the following two games due to that sickness.

Thus far this season Belo has had 1 game where he was healthy. In that game, he puts up a hell of a performance that directly contradicts everything in D43's post. Do you know what else directly contradicts everything in that post? Quite literally everything we saw from Belo in the second half of last season. Trying to extrapolate anything from the games where Belo was injured/sick is extremely foolish, it does a disservice to the player, and is an extremely bad look for the community at large. Be better.
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Fantastic!

Just absolutely fantastic post!
 
#283      
pruman91
The Galloping Ghost said:
This is just driving me nuts. I'm gonna try to break this down step by step. Belo got a concussion in the first preseason game. He suffered from the concussion and then post-concussion syndrome. Yes, he tried to play through his issues after missing two games. Unfortunately, and quite obviously, he was still very hurt and unable to play like his usual self. During the games in question (Marquette, Cincy, and K-State), his erratic play was due to his injury. He was suffering so much during those games that he had trainers checking on his head while he was on the bench. He also literally had to have a towel over his head to block out light.

Following those games, he was deemed too injured to participate in any team activities. Not only did he miss two months of games, but he also missed two months of practice. The fact that he didn't play for two months following those early-season games shows just how injured Belo was. I mean, we know for a fact that he had to see a specialist about it.

Once he finally cleared concussion protocol he practiced for two days before he played in the Purdue game. In that game against a top 4 team, he shot 53.3% from the field, scored 20 points, 6 rebs, 3 assists, with no turnovers.

Then, unfortunately, he gets sick. He tries to play through it against Maryland, but isn't able to. He only plays 14 minutes and struggles. He then is forced to miss the following two games due to that sickness.

Thus far this season Belo has had 1 game where he was healthy. In that game, he puts up a hell of a performance that directly contradicts everything in D43's post. Do you know what else directly contradicts everything in that post? Quite literally everything we saw from Belo in the second half of last season. Trying to extrapolate anything from the games where Belo was injured/sick is extremely foolish, it does a disservice to the player, and is an extremely bad look for the community at large. Be better.
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POTD
 
#284      
dbeverly26
alaskaillini said:
While I agree with this, BU needs to somehow keep the strengths that we have developed without Belo while integrating him back in. Our 3 point shooting has been excellent - can't remember the game, but we had one where we averaged a ridiculous PPP - something like the highest in years - because of that 3 point shooting. We need Belo to be the same player that he was in the second half of last year - like the Purdue game - to stay as efficient offensively. You can't have a lot of turnovers and missed shots in the PNR offense and overcome the fewer opportunities that will result for 40% from 3. The challenge for BU is to maintain most of our production from 3 point range (with one less shooter on the floor), while Belo increases our efficiency in the paint and mid-range, and even helps pull defenders off our shooters. If we can do that, we are a NC caliber team. This is where BU earns that salary. I don't think it will just happen instantaneously even if Belo is back 100%. The players have to learn how to work together to do that as well. I won't be surprised if there are a few growing pains as this happens.
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I agree that the offense has a distinctly different flavor with Curbelo on the floor than without him, and that can be challenging for the team. But it's also got to be a screaming pain for other teams to prep for, assuming we can pull it off. Where I think it can be particularly useful is on days when Curbelo is not making shots around the rim, which is kind of rare but does happen from time to time. If he's not able to score going to the hoop it becomes pretty easy for defenders to stay at home on the shooters and gum things up.

I don't think we've seen it much this year but it seems like running a lot of the actions they run when he's not in the game instead of working around his drives to the lane could help solve that problem. I hope we don't have to worry about it that much but I'll be interested to see how the offense adjusts when he's not on-on from here out.
 
#286      
JFGsCoffeeMug
Belo has to adjust to the team, but the team also has to adjust to Belo. That can take some time. Certainly more than a few games and some intermittent practices interspersed with lengthy interruptions in both conditioning and availability.

I'm confident we can put this all together by the end of the season. We just have to be patient.
 
#287      
The Galloping Ghost
JFGsCoffeeMug said:
Belo has to adjust to the team, but the team also has to adjust to Belo. That can take some time. Certainly more than a few games and some intermittent practices interspersed with lengthy interruptions in both conditioning and availability.

I'm confident we can put this all together by the end of the season. We just have to be patient.
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Yup. We haven't had one full week of everyone healthy and practicing together since November. We really gotta keep that in mind.
 
#288      
Timj83
Hopefully Belo can give us ~15 solid minutes to spell Trent. Anything else will be gravy. We are way over due for a good shooting night from 3. Teams have really figured out how to take that away from us last few games. If we shoot 35%+ from 3 with a standard Kofi game we should be in great shape. Who wants to take the bullet and take the Badgers money line bet for some extra insurance?
 
#290      
MTPeoria
KevinC said:
I think that Belo can be enormously helpful. But, everyone is coming down on a 1st time poster because he criticized Belo. Quite a few on here have been highly critical of Kofi, Trent, DMW, and Hawk. That request needs to be made to all of the criticisms on here. And, the poster simply made a few observations that were kind of accurate.
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My personal perspective on reading the post, was that he was saying we would be a better team without Belo.
 
#292      
Navy_illini
KiwaneGarrisValedictorian said:
I totally understand why they are playing the game. Its hard to reschedule a game in a season where they are rescheduling a lot of games already. But, I do think they should offer refunds to people with tickets who don't want to, or more likely are unable to come. If not they are encouraging people to drive in dangerous conditions to get to the game which seems like a bad idea. If it is the literal blizzard that they are forecasting how does it make sense to have this game when we have had so many Big 10 games rescheduled in the name of "safety".

That being said...let's hope they win this one!
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I understand your point of view and it is a legitimate concern. If you are not in the Champaign area tonight it will be hard to make the game. If the University knew how many ticket holders weren’t going to make it they could open the door to students for free.
I am not sure how hard it is for students to get tickets nowadays
 
#293      
Punesguy
I just watched the Wisconsin Preview with Podz ... wow! If you haven't seen it, you should check it out. He is articulate, has a high basketball IQ, he lives to win and is incredibly composed for a Freshman! Kudos to his parents and I can't wait to see him, RJ and Goode over the next few years! The future is so bright and it makes me proud to be an Illini! :shield:
 
#298      
InDaAZ
KevinC said:
He still forced some horrible shots.
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Granted, Belo’s 3-point shooting has been atrocious this year and last - the numbers don’t lie. But on 2-point shooting this season (playing injured and with pretty much no practice reps) he is 52%. Last season he was 55%.

We all see those times when he gets himself into trouble and throws up a low percentage circus shot, but I think some in our midst can’t get those rarities out of their minds to the point they’re blinded to the fact that he’s one of our most reliable scorers inside the arc. Those numbers don’t lie, either.
 
#299      
KevinC
The Galloping Ghost said:
This is just driving me nuts. I'm gonna try to break this down step by step. Belo got a concussion in the first preseason game. He suffered from the concussion and then post-concussion syndrome. Yes, he tried to play through his issues after missing two games. Unfortunately, and quite obviously, he was still very hurt and unable to play like his usual self. During the games in question (Marquette, Cincy, and K-State), his erratic play was due to his injury. He was suffering so much during those games that he had trainers checking on his head while he was on the bench. He also literally had to have a towel over his head to block out light.

Following those games, he was deemed too injured to participate in any team activities. Not only did he miss two months of games, but he also missed two months of practice. The fact that he didn't play for two months following those early-season games shows just how injured Belo was. I mean, we know for a fact that he had to see a specialist about it.

Once he finally cleared concussion protocol he practiced for two days before he played in the Purdue game. In that game against a top 4 team, he shot 53.3% from the field, scored 20 points, 6 rebs, 3 assists, with no turnovers.

Then, unfortunately, he gets sick. He tries to play through it against Maryland, but isn't able to. He only plays 14 minutes and struggles. He then is forced to miss the following two games due to that sickness.

Thus far this season Belo has had 1 game where he was healthy. In that game, he puts up a hell of a performance that directly contradicts everything in D43's post. Do you know what else directly contradicts everything in that post? Quite literally everything we saw from Belo in the second half of last season. Trying to extrapolate anything from the games where Belo was injured/sick is extremely foolish, it does a disservice to the player, and is an extremely bad look for the community at large. Be better.
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Belo, pretty much did the same things that he is being criticized for, last season. If that drives you nuts, there may be a psychologist out there that can help you. Hopefully, you will come out of your denial.
 
#300      
KevinC
InDaAZ said:
Granted, Belo’s 3-point shooting has been atrocious this year and last - the numbers don’t lie. But on 2-point shooting this season (playing injured and with pretty much no practice reps) he is 52%. Last season he was 55%.

We all see those times when he gets himself into trouble and throws up a low percentage circus shot, but I think some in our midst can’t get those rarities out of their minds to the point they’re blinded to the fact that he’s one of our most reliable scorers inside the arc. Those numbers don’t lie, either.
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I don't recall posting any statistics. I simply said that he has taken some horrible shots. No one is denying his talent. But, we do have Kofi, Trent, and Plummer to take big shots at the end of games.
 
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