I agree with a lot of what you said but let’s try and refrain from calling one of OUR players a bum. It’s not a good look
Tennessee 66, Illinois 64 Postgame
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Good post. Great teams do the little things right. Little things like setting hard screens and brushing against the screen as you run by so that you can free yourself for a second from the defender. Like not standing around on an inbounds play. Like not letting a ball handler go coast to coast for a game winning layup. Like not taking difficult 3 pointers early in the shot clock. Like blocking out on rebounds. We have top 10 talent but our discipline and execution are below average.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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Fair point, didn't mean it in any kind of personal way if it was construed that way.
But in the words of SAS, he is playing like a bonafide scrub (and being paid hundreds of thousands to at that).
I would blame them 100%. I would also blame any of our fans for going down this path 100%.
We all knew that this was going to be a wild ride to start the year. It was going to look amazing at some points(Arkansas and Wisconsin), then befuddling at others(Northwestern).
With 10 news guys, replacing 99.5% of the expiring minutes, this was always expected, going back to June. Heck, Tomi didn't even get cleared until the exhibition game.
If the donors didn't want the roller coaster ride, skip putting money towards Riley(Prep player) and KJ/Tomi(young and learning what physicality is all about).....and pony up the NIL dollars for the star upperclassmen. That's what we had last year and it's amazing how that worked out.
This young and inexperienced group has beaten two 25 teams and took #1 down to the wire. Whoever doesn't understand the situation and how far this team has come in only 6 weeks doesn't deserve the time of day to be listened to.
Seriously? With a totally reconstructed roster? We're all unhappy about some of the coaching stuff, but having this team at a place where it's a toss-up game with a team that had only trailed for about 3 minutes all year is pretty incredible. Surely these donors aren't nearly that short-sighted. If so, that's discouraging and doesn't bode well for the long-term.
I don't disagree with the sentiment (and personally try to refrain from this as well, though I'm guilty of it from time to time). These are no longer just a bunch of kids playing ball for fun and a convenient scholarship. These are semi pros getting paid a lot more than most of us make in our professional careers. Would you be mad at someone for calling an NBA player a bum? Fair or not, the reality of college sports is that it's a highly lucrative business in which players get paid now. AKA, expectations and kid gloves are no longer used because this is not a profession.
A question for someone who knows - What percentage of Illini plays are set plays that we run, as opposed to a general "do a lot of screens and take what is given" type of plays? I think, especially with a young team, that defined plays might be preferable in consistency. Obviously, not all plays, but I can't really detect just what offense strategy the Illini are using.
Illini2010-11
- Sugar Grove
Sure there are legit flaws in Coach Underwood (as do virtually all coaches), but come on now. The seat is nowhere close to warm after winning the B1G Tourney Championship and making S16. Losing in the first weekend for another season, you would see some warmth of the seat possibly, but what Brad has built outside of the Tourney success is quite remarkable. 5 straight 20+ win seasons, two B1G tourney championships, and a regular season championship. During that five year run, the Illini have gone 69-31 in conference regular season games! The NCAA tournament is such a wild card and requires a lot of luck. Underwood is getting the Illini to championship tier contention.
Our talent is was also vastly overrated this season. Boswell was 36, booth was 96 and the rest were outside of the top 100. We didnt do a good job in the transfer portal this season at all.
Like it or not, many of us have some humanity to us and don't get our rocks off trashing and name calling young men that chose to represent our university. It's not like when you reach a specific income level you aren't still a human being.
Be better.
Dude we also brought in 2 lotto picks and Tomi
You still waiting for AJ Storr to save us?
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I think Ben is playing about as hard as he can. It’s not his fault that Brad is playing him close to 30 min a night. He was a below average defender last year and only averaged 4 rebounds a game at Evansville playing against less competition
Right?!?! That post was so wild I just assumed it was sarcasm.Dude we brought in 2 lotto picks and Tomi
You still waiting for AJ Storr to save us?
Whoa, relax a bit my Illini brother. Wasn't getting any rocks off or anything like that, just pointing out that Ben is playing like a bum. Which he has been!
Not talking about him as a man or anything like that and certainly not "dehumanizing" him lol.
Hmmm…I didn’t know that. Not ideal.
I was responding to some other guy, I haven't seen you do this other than 'bum' which frankly I think isn't too bad lol. I don't know why, but I really dislike 'trash' though. Always hate it when guys are called that. You're right tho, I should chill if its just 'bum' lol
Definitely agree with your point in theory, but I assume that the rationale is a bit different when it's *your* actual money going into these guys' pockets. As Indy said, its more of an ROI thing probably than unhappiness with the program as a whole.
Can't imagine how the donor who got convinced into dropping a significant bag for Humrichous feels right now lol.
If you’ll accept a mid-range 11-ft fadeaway jumper from Kaspar…then, Yes.
I never said anything about a specific player and didn't name call anyone. I pointed out that someone calling a player a bum is far from egregious or somehow being inhumane. My point is that there is little divide between college athletes and professional anymore and that college players will inevitably get criticized more harshly in this new era. And while I'm not planning to participate in major disparagement of a player, more criticism is to be expected now that they are making sometimes millions of dollars.
To be fair, the fact this roster is totally reconstructed is in fact a result of decisions by Underwood. How many players have transferred since he's been here? Why didn't he build a roster that wouldn't have this much turnover? In some ways he chose to have a roster that looks like this, he didn't have to...
Seemed like Davis was coming in for Ben vs Booth
Fan Since '70
- OBS, Florida
Frustrating, winnable game. Tennessee made plays and got defensive stops, Illini turned ball over. I'm hoping this team matures sooner than not and they make better decisions at critical junctures. The talent is there, but just needs to all come together against the better competition.
You didn't in this instance, you're simply advocating for it.
How much more criticism would you like to see? How much harsher would you like to see it?
Can't disagree with the issue of roster construction because I despised the total overhaul. That can't continue.
That said, is that the issue with these "donors" or is the issue that they're getting what they paid for?
I mean, they could have put up the money for Tim Anderson or Chet, if continuity were a thing?
If the issue is the wins and losses and people are upset over the start of the year, Brad needs to RUN from our program and let the "donors" figure it out. We haven't had a five year stretch like this in what....two decades?
Where's Xavier and the great Sean Miller at? Wasn't he the hot topic after the last two off-seasons? Wasn't he the comparison around here? That dudes program is 8-3, which includes a 25 point loss to Michigan, a loss to TCU and a loss to Cincinnati. They were about to sneak out a three point W against South Carolina State.
Some of our fans are insufferable and apparently our "donors" are too.
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