Week of 12/1 Games Thread

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#152      
illinifan1987
EmeraldCityIllini said:
IU /UK game will be epic next week. Can’t wait.
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If UK keeps playing like this, the Loosiers will win by 15+
you sure.gif
 
#153      
EmeraldCityIllini
There’s some pretty gnarly rumors going on with that team. Just rumors, but it’s something annoying a fanbase that was bragging all summer about spending $20M on this team.
 
#158      
OrangeKrush1981
ChiTown said:
https://twitter.com/x/status/1997007459718672420
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As Coach says, playing on the other side of the world would, naturally, elevate the Illini brand across the planet. Should that opportunity arise, I suggest (to sustain the rabid interest of our fanbase in Illinois and heartland surrounds) replacing 2-3 of the --- let me see, a term that is clear but not derogatory ... um ... yes, "buy games" ... with the potential contests in Dubai.

In accord with this thought, the program would retain in future seasons contests analogous to the high-impact non-conference games played this year: Alabama at the United Center, Tennessee in Nashville, UConn at Madison Square Garden and Texas Tech at the State Farm Center. Games played against high major D1 opponents on the shores of the Persian Gulf would replace ones analogous to this year's contests against Long Island U, UT-Rio Grande Valley and Jackson State. Inevitably, more losses would be accrued if a schedule of such substantially-elevtated challenge were to be implemented. But interest in the Illini basketball program would be both raised world-wide while also continuing to be nurtured at the highest level here in the US, including in Urbana-Champaign.

The thrust of my proposal is based upon the idea that Dubai is a tad inaccessible for an awful lot of the natural fanbase of the Fighting Illini (students in Urbana-Champaign, denizens of Chicagoland, folks all over the Midwest, and fanatics willing to fly or drive from Maryland to New York or travel from the Bay Area south to LA). I realize that, in the form of a counterpoint, there are for example plenty of Manchester United soccer fans here in the US who've never been to Manchester and manage quite successfully to get by exclusively via televised content to feed the visual element of their fandom. I am merely suggesting that many current Fighting Illini fans, in the topic at hand, will appreciate maintaining a high-end schedule played in this hemisphere of Sol-III. (Blah blah, Big Ten conference schedule, Big Ten tournament, NCAA tournament. Obviously.)
 
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#159      
altgeld88
Chase321 said:
I don’t like to Dubai having a college basketball tournament but a fit 20 year-old athlete isn’t going to need much time to recover from the jet lag. A couple of days. If the payout is huge then players are gonna like it.
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I did 12-hour time zone travel at 25 and 55 (and will do it again soon at 60). I learned to manage it as well as possible, and got to the point where I could largely get over it in 3-4 days by managing my sleep on the inbound legs. However, to believe for one moment that the nine-hour Dubai time difference (oh, wait... there's my Eastern Time Zone centrism showing: 10-hour Dubai-IL time difference) isn't going to kneecap a 19-year-old absolutely, let alone relatively in a huge way compared with a peer competitor who isn't jet-lagged isn't realistic, to be gentle about it. Being an athlete has little to nothing to do with the matter. And good luck getting a 19-year-old NIL recipient to take the multiple steps necessary on a flight home after any more than 48 hours in country not to get hammered by the body-clock reset.

There are few things worse than being halfway around the world wide awake at 2 a.m. as if it's noon ('cause it actually is to your brain). Sitting through the Duke-Illinois and Indiana-Illinois games this year is close.

I get the $$$ and status angle of this tourney. That drives everything. So my comment earlier is pi$$ing into the wind. Just let's make sure to schedule weak opponents for at least 10 days afterward. Too bad the BT schedule begins in early December.
 
#160      
Chase321
altgeld88 said:
I did 12-hour time zone travel at 25 and 55 (and will do it again soon at 60). I learned to manage it as well as possible, and got to the point where I could largely get over it in 3-4 days by managing my sleep on the inbound legs. However, to believe for one moment that the nine-hour Dubai time difference (oh, wait... there's my Eastern Time Zone centrism showing: 10-hour Dubai-IL time difference) isn't going to kneecap a 19-year-old absolutely, let alone relatively in a huge way compared with a peer competitor who isn't jet-lagged isn't realistic, to be gentle about it. Being an athlete has little to nothing to do with the matter. And good luck getting a 19-year-old NIL recipient to take the multiple steps necessary on a flight home after any more than 48 hours in country not to get hammered by the body-clock reset.

There are few things worse than being halfway around the world wide awake at 2 a.m. as if it's noon ('cause it actually is to your brain). Sitting through the Duke-Illinois and Indiana-Illinois games this year is close.

I get the $$$ and status angle of this tourney. That drives everything. So my comment earlier is pi$$ing into the wind. Just let's make sure to schedule weak opponents for at least 10 days afterward. Too bad the BT schedule begins in early December.
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The fact they are there for 48 hours makes the games there harder but the adjustment home easier. I’ve done many trips to Japan and Taiwan over the years and never had much trouble recovering in a couple days. Some trips I’ve take were for 2 or 3 days and some for a couple weeks. Those shorter trips I find easy to recover from.

And youth and age absolutely have an effect of how quickly one recovers. This can be easily verified online if you don’t believe me.
 
#164      
Illini in Italy
altgeld88 said:
I did 12-hour time zone travel at 25 and 55 (and will do it again soon at 60). I learned to manage it as well as possible, and got to the point where I could largely get over it in 3-4 days by managing my sleep on the inbound legs. However, to believe for one moment that the nine-hour Dubai time difference (oh, wait... there's my Eastern Time Zone centrism showing: 10-hour Dubai-IL time difference) isn't going to kneecap a 19-year-old absolutely, let alone relatively in a huge way compared with a peer competitor who isn't jet-lagged isn't realistic, to be gentle about it. Being an athlete has little to nothing to do with the matter. And good luck getting a 19-year-old NIL recipient to take the multiple steps necessary on a flight home after any more than 48 hours in country not to get hammered by the body-clock reset.

There are few things worse than being halfway around the world wide awake at 2 a.m. as if it's noon ('cause it actually is to your brain). Sitting through the Duke-Illinois and Indiana-Illinois games this year is close.

I get the $$$ and status angle of this tourney. That drives everything. So my comment earlier is pi$$ing into the wind. Just let's make sure to schedule weak opponents for at least 10 days afterward. Too bad the BT schedule begins in early December.
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100% in agreement brother. As someone who did over a million miles a year traveling internationally the last few years I worked, I can tell you it doesn't matter how old you are or what shape you are in, it takes time to adjust to the differences in time zone. I spent a lot of time in Dubai, Nigeria, India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Australia and Japan, among others, usually 2-3 weeks on the road at a time - you really don't adjust until you come home, and hope that you don't get Suharto/Montezuma/Gandhi's revenge when you get home.
 
#166      
Guest
I am dubious about the claim about elevating the Illinois (or any college team’s) brand across the world. I have no real objective reasons for this, just kind of a gut feeling. I just think no one is going to care, other than each team’s fanbase. How is this “elevation’ supposed to happen? There won't be a whole lot of people at the games in person, unless Dubai pays its citizens to attend. It will be televised, but so what? It will be televised just like every other pre-season tournament. And only the respective fanbases and basketball junkies will care. Will people in Europe be watching? I don’t see why. People in Asia? Again, why would they care? They have their own games (whatever sport) to watch. Have the college and NFL football games brought an elevation to those teams or to the game of football itself? I have no idea, but I kind of doubt it. It seems that this is just some kind of ploy by Dubai, although I have no idea what the goal of Dubai is in doing this. But hasn’t Dubai done this for other sports or entertainment? I just don’t see this as any better or worse than any other pre-season tournament. The only thing will be the money. Elevating a team’s brand, doubtful.
Or do I not understand what “elevating” means in this context?
 
#167      
altgeld88
Illini in Italy said:
100% in agreement brother. As someone who did over a million miles a year traveling internationally the last few years I worked, I can tell you it doesn't matter how old you are or what shape you are in, it takes time to adjust to the differences in time zone. I spent a lot of time in Dubai, Nigeria, India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Australia and Japan, among others, usually 2-3 weeks on the road at a time - you really don't adjust until you come home, and hope that you don't get Suharto/Montezuma/Gandhi's revenge when you get home.
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Until last year when I took a long break for the first time in several years, I lifted heavy in the gym. That's the true test of whether you're over jet lag: whether you can squat and deadlift approximately what you were lifting before you departed on the trip. At 57 managed to do that four days after returning from a week in Vietnam via Tokyo.

Iron don't lie.
 
#168      
21ChampaignSt
Guest said:
I am dubious about the claim about elevating the Illinois (or any college team’s) brand across the world. I have no real objective reasons for this, just kind of a gut feeling. I just think no one is going to care, other than each team’s fanbase. How is this “elevation’ supposed to happen? There won't be a whole lot of people at the games in person, unless Dubai pays its citizens to attend. It will be televised, but so what? It will be televised just like every other pre-season tournament. And only the respective fanbases and basketball junkies will care. Will people in Europe be watching? I don’t see why. People in Asia? Again, why would they care? They have their own games (whatever sport) to watch. Have the college and NFL football games brought an elevation to those teams or to the game of football itself? I have no idea, but I kind of doubt it. It seems that this is just some kind of ploy by Dubai, although I have no idea what the goal of Dubai is in doing this. But hasn’t Dubai done this for other sports or entertainment? I just don’t see this as any better or worse than any other pre-season tournament. The only thing will be the money. Elevating a team’s brand, doubtful.
Or do I not understand what “elevating” means in this context?
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I'm with you. There's really just one thing that is going to "elevate" the program. But to be fair, Dubai has a lot of it.

Edit: The one angle I see is that if the NCAA regularly holds games in Dubai to the point where it becomes an annual event with fanfare akin to the Final Four. Over time, this would legitimize NCAA basketball as an American professional basketball league. Which theoretically would raise all boats. But schools like ours who have the most money would rise most.
 
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#173      
Fighter of the Nightman
Purdue in trouble! Also, watching a Saturday 11:00 am game at the Breslin Center is so nostalgic for me. I wish our SFC court design was more old school, with a darker wood like theirs.
 
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