I definitely hear you. I’m just thinking that these donors are business people so I’m sure they understand the long game more than the regular fan. I would be disappointed if they were already making threats with a young team like this that has tons of potential.
Tennessee 66, Illinois 64 Postgame
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Yes we could have won the Tn game there is no doubt. They did not outplay us. It went down to the last 4 seconds against the number 1 team. I am sure the coaches are looking at what went wrong and will correct it. Shots did not drop. The issue of Ben and Morez, or Will and DGL will work itself out. If the coaches want to see another player start don't you think they would do it. Great game. Should we have pressed up court to slow him down, probably. They are an old team and we are a young team. i like our chances in the BT. The Illini will win many games. Gosh elite 8, win the BT tourney last year. With a new team we will win!
Whether we like it or not, this is college basketball now. Plus, this is a rebuild year b/c he built last years team around TSJ, MD & CHawkins with a bunch of role players. It wasn’t a bad strategy b/c if we hadn’t run into UConn, we were easily a Final Four caliber team. When those guys left, we were left with role players that were not going to win. So instead of going into this season outmanned, he pivoted and brought in the best group in many many years. Just don’t understand how you can complain about that.
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There is only one player in the last five years that I would classify as playing like a bum for us and it's not Ben! Jayden Epps gets that title all to himself.
Where did I advocate for mistreating a college player? I simply pointed out that with them being paid, criticism will inevitably come. You got bent out of shape because someone called Ben a bum. That is far from inhumane or even terrible for someone to call a player who is getting paid to play. I didn't say I would call him anything even that it's good but that it will come with the territory of college being a semi-pro sport now. Shoot, be mad as you want at me or that poster for calling him a bum, but I bet you my life savings that Underwood has called a player something worse than a bum before lol.
rmlsr
- El Paso,IL
Every year Illinois fans including the donors get upset and angry after pretty much every loss. It’s kinda ridiculous but if we end up having a successful year and do well in the tournament fans will be okay.
Eh, I think you're giving Ben way too much grace here. I don't disagree that Brad deserves some of the blame- 1) he recruited him knowing what he was getting (a subpar defender and defender) 2) He's playing him too many minutes. BUT Ben has 2 rebounds in 2 games!! Kylan, our shortest player has 11 rebounds in those same 2 games. So much of rebounding is toughness, finding a body to box out, using leverage, and want to. Ben is 6'9 and sneakily athletic vertically and decently strong. I watched countless rebounds he could've had if he held his box out, was more physical, or high pointed the ball with more intensity. 2 rebounds in 2 games for a guy playing the 4 spot is unacceptable, no matter the circumstances.
This is the kind of stuff from pollyannish folks that drives some of the insane criticism. I have no assurances that things will get fixed. They didn't get fixed two years ago, after all.
I think there's an incredible negative overreaction on the result, but not on some of the components of the loss (i.e. OOBs and BHPT).
I literally wouldn't trade BU for any coach in the country right now with the exception of Nate Oats. I don't think you'd see any appreciable gain in success for the lack of stability. But I also think that BU has plenty of flaws, as most of these coaches do.
sacraig
- The desert
True, but having a bunch of new pieces is a challenge for the coach just like it is for the players. Figuring out how to piece together a bunch of newbies isn't trivial.
What? Are you saying even great coaches can have chinks in their armor or make mistakes occasionally? How dare you bring sanity and levelheaded thinking into the chicken little discussion.
Well stated. I can't help but wonder about a possible agenda for some of these donor groups
Entertaining.Great post. I agree with you substantially. It's infuriating and something that should be fixed easily, no doubt. Perhaps I'm just not paying sufficient attention to how often this goes badly. My question is whether it's a play design problem or execution problem due to lack of cohesion. The two plays on Saturday seemed to me to be the latter. I simply see it as a coordination problem borne of the players' unfamiliarity with each other at this early stage in the season.
I went back and watched the two plays. I'll just offer my take on the first one for the interest of not running too long.
#1 (1:38 remaining): the crux of the problem here, IMO, is that Ivisic sets an ineffective pick for Boswell. It's useless in large part because Boswell, as he breaks, gives his man (#5) too much space to get around Tomi. If the pick had been set rigidly and Bos runs his man properly into it (having groked where Tomi was positioned via his peripheral vision), then KJ could have gotten Bos the ball, wide open, heading along the sideline, and uncovered with a lot of real estate around him near the corner (because UT's #5 guarding Bos would be far behind him after fighting through the pick.) There would be no UT player anywhere near him, only the center low post, mid-paint. Tons of space for Bos at that point to turn, assess the sitch, move sharply toward the basket, draw in UT's center as he did so, and send a crisp bounce pass back door to Ben, who would be breaking toward the hoop from the far corner, completely uncovered for an easy flush. Or both the FT-line UT player and the low post player might break toward Bos and both Tre and Ben are then options for easy buckets. Executed properly, BU's a genius.
Because the initial pick fails, and KJ then fails to think coolly about his options (TBF, Ben in the far corner didn't act to give him one), he sends that terrible pass toward Tomi. It's terrible because it's a slow, telegraphed pass and because the UT guy on Tomi is already breaking in that direction following Tomi. After Tomi's broken pick what should have happened is that Ben in the near corner (hands on his hips... grrrrr) breaks toward midcourt while Tre moves in to screen the UT guy at the FT line. KJ can make an easy, unobstructed long pass to Ben and then they set up to run the O.
Complete fail, all around. Problem is that I have no idea whether Ben is gassed, or spacing out, or has no awareness of what he needs to do. Or whether Bos is unfamiliar with where Tomi is going to be on the initial set-up. Or whether KJ just panicked. Or whether any of them have a sense for how the others are going to move.
Then there's my general objection that I don't like a design with the primary inbound pass along the near sideline to a player breaking toward the corner where he might be easily trapped. In this case it would have been brilliance. Other times, face plant depending on the defensive set and movement. So there's that.
Anyway, no argument that is is badly executed and shouldn't have been. I just don't know what the contribution of coaching/prep and unfamiliarity among the players is here, and I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt at this point. If it happens in late January/Feb/Mar then I'm right with you and having an aneurysm about it. Right now I'm just "fix the mf, stat." And "dang... y'all had #1 in the bag and let it out."
I'm also mindful of the old tag line for the wonderful (now long since folded into SB Nation, IIRC) college football blog Every Day Should be Saturday: "Second guessing the split-second decisions of nineteen year-olds since 1999."
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I know it probably seems that way from a couple of these posts. But I don’t think I’m gonna have an aneurysm. Lol
Good call…on the old tagline…truer words were never spoken.There is no doubt our inexperience/unfamiliarity with each other is a factor…I don’t profess to know how much of a factor it is comparatively speaking. I would very much like to give them the benefit of the doubt, myself…but man that’s a pretty tall order.
I would push back a little here to say:
1.) We already have seen it in Jan/Feb/Mar with a number of Underwood teams.
2.) I feel like a well devised set play…(because that’s what this is) outta take a lot of the guesswork out of predicting a teammate’s action. IMO.
You might be right too…and it prolly is a combinations of factors. BUT it might also be that they simply don’t all know the play(s) as well as they should.
I sympathize, because it’s a lot of stuff to cover with an all new team…and to get down well…but that is a staff problem.
3.) The primary objective of an inbound play is getting the ball inbounds.( If you can utilize the opportunity to score…even better…because you’re attacking from a different vantage point than your general Half Court, O-attack.) But, at bare minimum…it seems to me a well-devised SLOB would generally have AT LEAST two potential targets/options…since that is the goal. Preferably happening simultaneously…preferably with some sort of consecutive action. (That sounds more complicated than it is….I’m sure you get it)
4.) It seems to me that we should be better at executing OOBs than we are…solely based on the fact that our playbook doesn’t seem all that robust. Think about it. How many BLOBS have you seen us run in one season? How many full court press breakers? (What ever happened to starting in the same alignment and running about 3 separate plays out of that alignment?) If I am wrong someone please tell me…How many do we have?
5.) Two botched plays in a row out of timeouts…followed by a failure to call one to set up our D. Yeah, that’s kind of a lot.
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Coach has a relationship with the players. We both know that's just a wee bit different. Hes doing it to motivate them and get their best out of them. For what reason is a sports fan calling guys bums- because they didn't win their game? I mean sorry go punch a hole in some drywall and name it Ben, I don't care.
After the E8, this surprises me…
I just want him to get a crackerjack X’s and O’s dude that he’ll actually listen to…and stay right here and figure this thing out.
Whitman is VERY pleased to have Underwood leading his—Whitman’s—basketball team. Underwood can be here as long as he wishes. When it comes to running an athletic department, Josh is smarter than any of us on this forum. And I’ll say the same about Brad’s talents as a basketball coach.
POTD!
Every coach has bad games. Every single coach alive. And if they coach long enough, bad seasons.
Anyone with any common sense knew this was going to be a tough job with hardly any returning minutes. I don't like the manner in which we lost Saturday, but I actually think this team is ahead of schedule of where most would have predicted.
This just isn't accurate. Large donors are thrilled to have BU and are not changing their tune because of a young team with some tough loses to good teams. The is from the horse's mouth of one of the biggest donors (sometimes fly's with the football and bball team to away games) in the last 5 plus years.
Brad is a great coach and we are blessed to have him. He's getting most of the results we have been looking for for years. No ncaa championship yet but we have been in contention the last few years which couldn't be said for a good while before he got here. He has raised the level of this program to something we all can be proud of.
There have been some hiccups along the way but there are very few if any programs that have won every game they should have. That's what upsets are about. The hardest one to swallow was the second round tourney loss to Loyola. They came at us with a defensive scheme that totally disrupted or offense and we didn't or wouldn't go to a plan B. Granted that year with Ayo we never needed one. Brad seems to always have us playing our best ball at the end of the year. Many have brought up 2022 as bad coaching and team construction on Brads part but I think with what went on that year it was one of his better achievements. Players leaving the team and others basically quitting while still playing not buying in to the staff's coaching. Even so we made the tournament and might have made a decent run except MM went on a shooting slump, Grandison playing with a sore shoulder and Trent also nursing a shoulder while playing with one eye. That was a set of circumstances that would sink any team, but somehow we were still competing. I trust in Brad and know he will have them humming along come February.
There have been some hiccups along the way but there are very few if any programs that have won every game they should have. That's what upsets are about. The hardest one to swallow was the second round tourney loss to Loyola. They came at us with a defensive scheme that totally disrupted or offense and we didn't or wouldn't go to a plan B. Granted that year with Ayo we never needed one. Brad seems to always have us playing our best ball at the end of the year. Many have brought up 2022 as bad coaching and team construction on Brads part but I think with what went on that year it was one of his better achievements. Players leaving the team and others basically quitting while still playing not buying in to the staff's coaching. Even so we made the tournament and might have made a decent run except MM went on a shooting slump, Grandison playing with a sore shoulder and Trent also nursing a shoulder while playing with one eye. That was a set of circumstances that would sink any team, but somehow we were still competing. I trust in Brad and know he will have them humming along come February.
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This is FAR more likely than the initial commentary.
Underwood has his flaws, but unless we are pulling a top name guaranteed to replace him, I don't want any part of him leaving. He's the best we've seen in 20 years.
I know Sean Miller has been mentioned, but I don't know if that's a significant enough upgrade or an upgrade at all that would get us over the top. Unless he tanks a couple seasons in a row, he's got a really long leash for me as a fan.
I know Sean Miller has been mentioned, but I don't know if that's a significant enough upgrade or an upgrade at all that would get us over the top. Unless he tanks a couple seasons in a row, he's got a really long leash for me as a fan.
lstewart53x3
- Scottsdale, Arizona
I love having a win program.
At the same time, it’s annoying that the more a program wins, the worse the fan sentiment becomes.
How quickly people forget the absolute hell we lived under before Brad Underwood. I won’t mention how silly it is to complain about the winningest coach in the B1G over the past 5 years or the B1G championships or the E8 run just last year.
Instead, I’ll look solely at KenPom.
In the 6 years before Brad arrived, our average end of season KenPom rating: 70.
In our current 6 year run (including this year so far), our average KenPom rating: 19.
Brad’s *worst* year in our current 6 year run (KP 35) is better than the *best* year in the 6 years prior (KP 39).
Donors are complaining about this team that’s currently 16 in KenPom? You know how far back you’d have to go to find a team better than this one before Brad arrived? 2006.
We’re 1/3rd of the way through a season with a team that replaced 99% of its minutes from the year prior. We’re 16 in KenPom. We’re 4 points away from being 9-1 and being ranked in the top 10.
Everything’s gonna be okay guys.
At the same time, it’s annoying that the more a program wins, the worse the fan sentiment becomes.
How quickly people forget the absolute hell we lived under before Brad Underwood. I won’t mention how silly it is to complain about the winningest coach in the B1G over the past 5 years or the B1G championships or the E8 run just last year.
Instead, I’ll look solely at KenPom.
In the 6 years before Brad arrived, our average end of season KenPom rating: 70.
In our current 6 year run (including this year so far), our average KenPom rating: 19.
Brad’s *worst* year in our current 6 year run (KP 35) is better than the *best* year in the 6 years prior (KP 39).
Donors are complaining about this team that’s currently 16 in KenPom? You know how far back you’d have to go to find a team better than this one before Brad arrived? 2006.
We’re 1/3rd of the way through a season with a team that replaced 99% of its minutes from the year prior. We’re 16 in KenPom. We’re 4 points away from being 9-1 and being ranked in the top 10.
Everything’s gonna be okay guys.
blackdog
- Champaign
Even crazier is that the expectation coming in to the season was that it was going to be a rocky start because of all the new faces! Lo and behold they look better than expected but there is angst that the team has had some rough stretches and isn't undefeated. Is only perfection good enough? Because it seems there is a lot of difficulty especially with close loses.
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