the really stuffed all the good games during the week into yesterday. another light day for matchups
Week of 1/12 Games Thread
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Tuesday was great too!
I figured Monday was dead because of the NFL playoffs but I'm definitely disappointed in tonight's slate.
Whose bright idea was it to leave today and tomorrow devoid of Big Ten games so they could compete against the NFL playoffs on Saturday?
RabidDawgClassic
- Los Angeles, CA
Sure glad it wasn’t 8 of 8.
you are totally right. Tuesday and Wednesday we're jammed. surprised today didn't have more
We can run our offense thru Mirk. I highly doubt that would be the case with Johnson.
Well the 8th was Purdue-Iowa, which looked promising until the very end.
Illinois-NW was 10th (Michigan-Washington 9th).
Is this a moving screen?
Why exactly did Morez go to Michigan? Was it because Illinois was bringing in Z. Ivisic and Mirkovic and he didn't want to be a 20 minute a night player? Was there another reason? If he didn't want to be a 20 minute a night player I can see why he would want to transfer. He clearly is getting more playing time at Michigan than he would see at Illinois (assuming no foul trouble). UCLA losing Mara though is a strange one. A California kid, playing for UCLA, and he would transfer to Michigan? I don't get that but I suspect May connects with the players better than Cronin.
AJ Storr? Can anyone tell me about him?
DICKnaggie
- Champaign
From what I have read, he went through three rounds of negotiations and agreed to the pay raise each time only to keep coming back for more. On the final round, the administration was done and said, "Thanks, and good luck." The whole thing about wanting to be more than Kofi, wanting to be a shooter and not being allowed to do that...well, he is playing the same roll there as he was here. More tick for sure, and to his credit, he has improved in a ton of areas. I'd love to have him, but it sounded like the coaches didn't have much of a choice.
Mara is from Spain.
I thought his family moved from Spain to California when he was in high school but it appeared they moved after he committed to play for UCLA when he was in Spain being recruited to play for UCLA.
Gonzaga forward Braden Huff out 4-8 weeks with knee injury
The team confirmed the injury before Thursday night's game against Washington State in Pullman.
www.krem.com
Tough for them - he's their #1 scorer, right?Gonzaga forward Braden Huff out 4-8 weeks with knee injury
The team confirmed the injury before Thursday night's game against Washington State in Pullman.
There's a lot of speculation and a lot that's been said, but my guess...Brad choosing to play Ben Humrichous 35+ minutes a game though ineffective performances ahead of Morez didn't sit well, particularly during games like at Welsh Ryan where we struggled. I think that was the beginning of the end at that point.
Maybe so. The fact of the matter is Michigan offered him a boat load of cash, more than us, and watered the seeds planted from games like @NW
I doubled checked the box scores but Morez did play 28 minutes in the Big 10 tournament game against Maryland. The Illini got beat by 23 and Queen dominated Morez. Queen though was a top top recruit and is playing in the NBA now. His minutes did drop quite a bit in the NCAA tourney games so maybe Brad lost confidence in Morez and he said "I am outa here". Who knows.
The damage was done to our coaches' relationship with Morez mid season when Ben got the lions share of the minutes while being ineffective, and Morez got scraps. Take a look at the box score of our first game at home vs. Maryland.
ptgrd23
- orange county CA
Brad kept hoping that Ben would regain his Evansville 40% 3 pg shooting touch which did not happen.
Morez was a foul machine, had limited offensive moves, terrific rebounder, terrible free throw shooter. Broken wrist Feb 15 made him miss 3 weeks
Riley kept improving and sucked up the minutes.
If Michigan is paying him $1.5M and we stopped at $1M that was our decision. Hard to criticize Brad since he went out and got big Z and David. Illini plays 5 out - this year everybody can hit the 3 -Kylan, Tomas, Keaton, David and Big Z (well Andrej is a work in progress at 22%). I think it worked out well for both sides.
Morez was a foul machine, had limited offensive moves, terrific rebounder, terrible free throw shooter. Broken wrist Feb 15 made him miss 3 weeks
Riley kept improving and sucked up the minutes.
If Michigan is paying him $1.5M and we stopped at $1M that was our decision. Hard to criticize Brad since he went out and got big Z and David. Illini plays 5 out - this year everybody can hit the 3 -Kylan, Tomas, Keaton, David and Big Z (well Andrej is a work in progress at 22%). I think it worked out well for both sides.
Morez started, but had 4 fouls and only 2 RBs in 19 minutes. What is the point other than he couldn't keep from fouling to stay on the floor
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Morez started that game against Maryland and played only 19 minutes because he fouled 4 times.
What are we looking for in this box score exactly? (Besides Morez getting the opportunity to start and being thoroughly destroyed by Queen and Reese - I mean just absolutely annihilated)
Maryland 91-70 Illinois (Jan 23, 2025) Box Score - ESPN
Box score for the Maryland Terrapins vs. Illinois Fighting Illini NCAAM game from January 23, 2025 on ESPN. Includes all points, rebounds and steals stats.
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This isn’t going to be a Morez-Ben comparison post for its entirety, but if we look at the box score in the 3 game stretch of NW, TENN, WISCONSIN — those were three really rough games in a row for Ben, and there does seem to be a hefty minutes gap between him and Morez. I think that’s where you wanna look to support your argument, not the Maryland game.
I remember Mizzou being the first game Morez truly got big, meaningful minutes — yes he fouled out (some of the calls were questionable IMO), but had a productive game and played hard.
From that Mizzou game onward, his minutes did get a pretty decent uptick, but was still never exactly 20+ minutes each night, and more-so in the 15-20min range.
The NW game at home was TRULY the first of many games that he started to play real stater minutes. You can see a pretty sizable minutes uptick from that game onward. Yes Tomi had just gotten mono, but the trajectory of his minutes never looked back after that back, even after Tomi came back.
In that NW game, I personally thought he was AWESOME on Martinelli, after Ben and KJ got cooked by Martinelli the first time.
My personal favorite Morez game was against OSU February 2nd. It was Tomi’s first game back, he had a double double…. but Morez was AWESOME. DGL was AWESOME. Will Riley was AWESOME. To be honest, that was a really fun game, on CBS.
He broke his hand February 15th against Mich St, and only played in 4 games after that.
All in all, take this however you may, but that’s the break down of Morez’s PT throughout the course of his first year.
Whatever we’d like to say about Ben… he isn’t playing the 30min+ role he had last year to start the season, and I’m glad he’s worked his way into being productive in the role that he has.
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