Muscle memory is absolutely a thing.
Physically and mentally disorienting on the court.
Like I said, we didn’t bring it yesterday to get it done. Factors played a role in that as well.
UConn 74, Illinois 61 Postgame
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Physically and mentally disorienting on the court.
Like I said, we didn’t bring it yesterday to get it done. Factors played a role in that as well.
True. On the other hand, Ty often found himself on the bench in late game situations precisely because he couldn't shoot. Defenders wouldn't guard him, leaving us playing 4 on 5 when he was on the floor. Pick your poison.
I have been preaching this for a few years, we have no offensive scheme. Just a lot of ISO and platters standing around. If Weber could recruit we would not have fallen at all as his offense is what we need. Constant movement and flow. Made defenses work which tires them out. We are rarely making the D work. Tyler is so far under water here. He needs to go somewhere and learn how an efficient offense works. Brad. Is so blinded and ignorant of how to develop a championship caliber team
There's a certain % of Illini fans who year-in and year-out overrate our talent. It's one of the most obnoxious things for me as a fan.
Luke Murray is going to be the Ben Johnson of college basketball coaches.
Hurley basically said their game plan was to stop Stojakovic from penetrating and keep Mirkovic off the boards. He gave the obligatory ’Illinois is a great shooting team…he mentioned Boswell is a great player…team has a high ceiling…blah, blah, blah’.
Reading between the lines it sounded to me like he was saying: Boswell is going to get his. We can’t let Andrej get 20 and get to the line 10 times or Mirk get 10 boards and score in the paint. Shut them down and let the other guys beat us. He even said if we made more threes we probably win. I think he made a reasonable gamble knowing history says we don’t shoot the ball all that well.
Isn’t that a fairly reasonable (if not very expected) gameplan? And if so, doesn’t our coaching staff kind of know that? Does anyone say:
‘If they try to take away player X, we’re gonna do this…’
‘If they take away X number of shots from Andrej, who gets them? How do we make up those X number of shots?’
This is what frustrates me about the coaching. Teams seem to do exactly what we would expect them to do and we don’t have an answer. Or the answer is shoot more threes, which is not our strong suit.
Reading between the lines it sounded to me like he was saying: Boswell is going to get his. We can’t let Andrej get 20 and get to the line 10 times or Mirk get 10 boards and score in the paint. Shut them down and let the other guys beat us. He even said if we made more threes we probably win. I think he made a reasonable gamble knowing history says we don’t shoot the ball all that well.
Isn’t that a fairly reasonable (if not very expected) gameplan? And if so, doesn’t our coaching staff kind of know that? Does anyone say:
‘If they try to take away player X, we’re gonna do this…’
‘If they take away X number of shots from Andrej, who gets them? How do we make up those X number of shots?’
This is what frustrates me about the coaching. Teams seem to do exactly what we would expect them to do and we don’t have an answer. Or the answer is shoot more threes, which is not our strong suit.
She looks like her BS detector is pegged
The thing is they never took anything away. Stojakovic missed layups, everyone on the roster missed wide open looks...... he's right, if we make open threes, it's a different game.
There was no change in game plan needed. Knock down the GD free throws vs Bama, knock down the GD shots you're paid to make vs UConn and everyone feels differently.
Some of these guys are paid 7 figures to make those. It's their job and the level of difficulty was not high.
He missed contested layups, I agree. Which seemed to lead to some frustration which led to Underwood chewing his a$$ out, and arguably our best player sitting the bench for the last five minutes. Hurley had to be eating that up.
And yea, we did miss open shots that need to be made. But we do that in about every game we play, including all of last year.
If we have hot shooting it’s great. If we don’t, we don’t always seem to have a plan B, is all I’m saying.
I had to go back and watch and the Underwood --> Stojakovic butt chewing happened at the 17:08 mark in the 2nd half.
Watched it like 5x just now, didn't look terribly out of the ordinary to me, seemed like something that happens every game idk.
As far as the context, I can't be exactly sure and am not great at reading lips, but the previous 3-4 possessions Andrej just stood there and watched everyone else fight for rebounds.
Watched it like 5x just now, didn't look terribly out of the ordinary to me, seemed like something that happens every game idk.
As far as the context, I can't be exactly sure and am not great at reading lips, but the previous 3-4 possessions Andrej just stood there and watched everyone else fight for rebounds.
If you think that "certain %" is anything less than 100, there's a bridge to Illini-shortcomings in Brooklyn that I will let you have for heck of a deal.
I agree with you- this bad call is hard to get over given how much time they reviewed it and still completely blundered it and it’s such a huge swing- down 7 with the ball while you are on a run with 2:10 left vs down 11 and the game is over
The other aspect I haven’t heard discussed is that Davis seemed to be giving a foul because the shot clock reset and Smith saw that and just threw the ball up- if the shot clock wasn’t incorrectly reset he wouldn’t have tried to foul him!! How can you just count that play when it was under false conditions!!! If anything give UConn the ball with 2 seconds on the clock when it incorrectly reset- I don’t see any logic to just count the foul and bucket
I agree with you and it's a personnel issue, not a coaching issue. Our bigs are allergic to the paint and don't play through contact. They weren't brought here to do that. BU wanted this to be a 1 in, 4 out offense, which means surround the floor with shooters. The scheme works, but the execution hasn't.
Now, I'm not one who likes the European style of ball. It works in the NBA because they're the best shooters on the planet. The college game doesn't get that, so the efficiency obviously isn't going to be there.
On the flip side, giving guys the green light helps recruiting. NBA caliber players love this style and that is supposedly the type of talent we have.
I'm not seeing it YET(I am emphasizing YET). I see slow, unathletic and overrated with regards to skill.
Ha! There are some reasonable ones out there, but most fans (not just ours) tend to overrate their teams' talent.
“Hurley has to be eating that up” - isn’t the final minutes with Andrej out when we made our run?
Not totally directed at you, but this is where the “make adjustments!” crowd loses me. Andrej was bad yesterday, we went to as you say, a Plan B, performed better, and now you’re upset Andrej was out.
I agree with the idea of plan B from an offensive standpoint.
Fan Since '70
- OBS, Florida
In comparison to Illini UConn shot 3 well. UConn shot 35.7% from 3 to UI's 20.7%. UConn also hit 41.3% of their FG's compared to 31.7% for Illinois. UConn outrebounded Illini 43-38/ UConn had same TO's as Illini, 10, but UConn had nearly twice the assists 19 to 10. Illini were 17-18 from FT while UConn was 12-17. UConn had big edge in steals and a couple more blocks than Illini. Illini mostly shot the ball horribly and did not guard UConn very well.
I watch a fair amount of NBA ball. And to my untrained eye there is a lot more movement and cutting away from the ball which I fail to see in this Illinois offense.
Who knows Ty may become the x factor on why we make a deep run in the tournament after being up and down all year.
Fan Since '70
- OBS, Florida
With Petrovic, Boswell, Wagler, Mirkovic, Stojakovic and Tomislav, Illini have a lot of good passers and great cutters and drivers to the hoop. Why the offense doesn't have more movement, cutting and crisp passing, I am truly baffled. UConn does a much better job at that.
At least we didn't have to eat a 30-0 run this time around
Agreed, Tomi and Mirkovic are both really crafty passers, they could be a menace together in the paint.
Petrovic has shown he can get past the defense, but when he does and there's no one to pass to, it was all risk with no reward.
Over Underwood's tenure, we average 740 3s a season. Which felt really low to me. That was dragged down by the Ayo years when he would take a lot of midrange shots. His last year we only took 524 3s. If you take out the Ayo's Soph and Jr year when we had Ayo and Kofi, we average 805 3s a season. Last year we took 992, and we're currently on pace to take 986 if we play 34 games.
We've got some pretty good half court players that could run an offense with a lot of versatility, but instead we just shoot 3s or drive with pretty much nothing in between.
You make fair points, and I think the reality is there is blame to go on both directions. Some of those games you mentioned we won were nights we just actually made shots.
Aside from X’s and O’s, part of being a good coach is developing your players and from a shooting perspective that has not been something this staff has figured out.
If teams sag off on you, get to the elbow, drive and draw a defender…or run a set play!
I mean I just want to see one game where something isn’t working and we make a clear adjustment at half that turns the game around, not just something like we start making shots. My frustrations only comes from a point of feeling like we are in a golden era and I want us to get another FF appearance before it all falls apart again and we have another decade + of misery
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This - I said it during the game thread…the game plan and results were just so predictable and we didn’t try to make any adjustments
Beating a dead horse (maybe maybe not, but not gonna weed through all the bs complaints in here). We played terrible. But if not for a blown shot clock call we are within 7 with plenty of time. All while play terrible. We are effin good. Period. Gel and get guys healthy. We run to final 4
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