Tennessee 86, Illinois 79 Postgame

#26      

sacraig

sacraig
The desert
sacraig
Jimmy Fallon Wow GIF by The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon
 
#30      

BackThatPassUp

B
BackThatPassUp
This definitely had the tone of a March tournament game. I'm glad they got experience doing so and wish we would've pressed sooner or perhaps do so more often in general.

Also, I'm not convinced the tall white ref with the male pattern baldness didn't have money on Tennessee because he made several odd calls.
 
#32      

IlliniKat91

IlliniKat91
Chicago, IL
IlliniKat91
AyoDos11 said:
This game showed that we can still compete with great teams even when our best players aren't having a good game.
Click to expand...
And that we still play as a team.

It seemed to me that last year guys would blame each other when it went wrong. I didn't see any of that today. It feels like a team that'll keep working and growing together, and I think that'll mean a very happy March for us
 
#33      

JSpence

J
Evansville, IN
JSpence
Tennessee is officially bad at closing out games. That gives everybody out there a chance against them, in spite of everything. I would NOT want to trade places with them.
 
#34      

dbeverly26

dbeverly26
dbeverly26
If the blueprint for stopping Shannon becomes to just grab and hack him, he’s gonna need to get used to it and keep driving the ball.

Seems like we blew a number of defensive coverages in the two-man game today as well, and we didn’t shoot the ball well, but we were still pretty close for much of the game. Hope we learn from playing a great defensive team and don’t settle for what we’re given quite as much the next time it happens.
 
#37      

illini510

I
illini510
A win would've it's a tall order on the road. Defense did not come out to play today. I think that was the main difference. This group can definitely score and hit 3's when needed but the defensive efficiency definitely took a hit today.

I did like that Guerrier and Hawkins were hitting their 3's today and that our guys were making their free throws. Guerrier and Rodgers in particular made the majority of their free throws, so that is improving as well. Nothing to get too upset about. I think we learned that our team can play with the top teams in the country and I'll take 2 out of 3 during this tough road/neutral site game stretch. I personally thought we'd go 1-2 or 0-3 so to end this stretch 2-1 is a win in my book

I'm a little worried that Dainja is kind of getting lost in the shuffle. We're going to need him for next year so hopefully Brad can find him some more mins so that he doesn't get disgruntled
 
#44      

aaeismacgychel

A
aaeismacgychel
I like the effort we showed those final 7 minutes after going down by 10. Showed a lot of fight and a lot of promise. Tennessee played really well today and simply beat us. It happens on the road. Now we just need to make sure we come out and play against Colgate, who is a far more dangerous team than they appear. We come out sleepwalking in that one, with the way they methodically slow down the game we will be in a lot of trouble.

We played hard in this one, can't let a tough loss carry over looking ahead to Mizzou.
 
#46      

NASchamp

NASchamp
Atlanta
NASchamp
Never could recover from that tech. and 5 pt possession that turned the momentum back to Tennessee. Impressed the guys fought so hard to the last second. This was good experience for later in the year and hopefully we learn from it.

Would have liked to see more attempts to get it inside. There were often just 5 players standing outside the 3-pt. line. Hard to win a full game doing that. We were too dependent on the 3-pointer today.
 
#48      

Goillinikobd

Goillinikobd
Southeastern US
Goillinikobd
Gotta find a better way to clog up the middle.

We got one of those middle clogger uppers, but how many minutes did he play.

I know, I know once you have to press to play catch-up, DD is not on the court.