Like I stated before, Illinois was going to miss Chester Frazier more than anyone would have ever imagined. I know that eveyone wants to see offense. As soon as we saw that Brandon Paul and DJ Richardson could score 20 points a game with little effort, everyone forgot about Frazier and Meacham. However, if you ask any decent coach if they would rather have a great defensive team or a great offensive team, every one of them would take a defensive team. Hence the reason that I think John Beilein is a garbage coach at Michigan. The rational behind this is simple; you can have an off shooting night on any given day. On defense though, if that is what your bread and butter is, you never have off nights. It is all about position and effort on defense, where as offense is execution and touch. Ever person who has played basketball has had days where they have shot lights out, and also days where they couldn't hit shit. When was the last time you heard of a defensive team taking a game off?
If this team does not learn to want to play defense, then they will probably finish around .500 in the Big Ten and be a bubble team at best. Anybody can learn to play defense, it has nothing to do with athleticism. Trent Meacham was probably the least athletic guard Illinois has had in at least the last decade, yet he was 10 times the defender that the stable of athletic guards on Illinois are. Explain that to me.
Here are the Illini's defeciancies right now:
1) Defense - All across the board, Illinois is below average compared to what they used to be. Nobody can stop dribble penetration, and nobody fights over screens well. No one rotates well enough to help on dribble penetration. Illinois does not close out on shooters well, and the post defense is not great since we cannot guard a post player without double teaming him. Due to the fact that we can't guard the perimeter without giving up penetration, we cannot pressure the ball. This directly leads to bad post defense since any guard can enter the ball into the post without any ball pressure. These were all things that Illinois took pride in during previous seasons, and it also helped hide the weak post defense. Now Illinois is not going to turn into a great defensive team overnight, and they have shown flashes of playing good defense all year. In order for them to be a top tier Big Ten team, they are going to have to put forth more effort for longer periods of time.
2) Rebounding - Georgia exposed a glaring weakness in the Illini. Georgia crashed the boards with at least 3 players on every shot, and Illinois did not have the strength to stop them. After watching the game again, it wasn't so much that Illinois was out muscled, it was the fact that nobody boxed anyone out. Mike Davis is athletic enough to grab any rebound around him, and Tisdale is taller than everyone, so they get sloppy rebounding. Since they didn't box out, they were pushed out of the way so many times for rebounds, it was disgusting.
3) Ball Handling - Without McCamey, Illinois looks horrible on offense if a team plays any type of pressure defense. It takes so long for Illinois to get into their offense when Jeff Jordan is playing point that they might as well scrap the offense and give the ball to Paul and let him drive to the hoop. Mizzou scares the hell out of me because they play the exact same trapping defense as Clemson did. I almost want McCamey to stay on the offensive end so that he doesn't get into any foul trouble trying to play defense. None of the other 4 guards that we play look like they can dribble the ball at all.
4) Shot Selection - So far you have to be happy with DJ Richardson's 3 point shooting, and I have no problem with any of the ones that he takes. The only thing I would like to see more of is passing when the Freshman guards penetrate. Everyone on this team can shoot, so dribble penetration and kick outs should be a major part of the offense. I really would like to see Tisdale and Davis get the ball in the post more. Davis can shoot over anyone with unorthodox angles, and Tisdale has had a great hook all season long. As much as I love the Freshman, DJ is shooting 44% from the field and Paul is shooting 39%. I like all the 3's that they have taken, but they take a lot of poor shots on penetration.
5) Substitutions - Bruce Weber has been notorious for having a short bench and not getting a lot of people playing time. This season he has made a concious effort to play at least 9 people if not more. He needs to stop doing this immediately, and I am pretty sure that he will. The only reason that Alex Legion or Tyler Griffey need to play is if we are up 20, or if we have 2 guards or post players in foul trouble. I will never understand why people will scream for a player that they have never seen before to get more minutes as a Freshman. I wanted to see Legion get more minutes because he played pretty well as a Freshman for Kentucky, and last season his 3 best games came @ Purdue, @Michigan and @ Michigan State. He scored in double figures in all of those games and played well. This season he has clearly been outplayed by the Freshman and Bill Cole, so there is no reason to appease him by giving him 8 crap minutes a game. The rotation should be the starting five, and then Bill Cole and Dominique Keller for the posts, and Jeff Jordan coming in for a guard. If you need to go deeper than that for foul trouble, then you can play Legion or Griffey, but just to steal 3 minutes.
6) Screening - Nobody on this team will set a solid screen.... EVER!! Everyone is way too concerned with getting to the ball, and they don't wait for their screens, and the post players don't want to screen at times. If they were a little more patient on offense, then they would get better looks for sure!!
Now that I have dispatched with the unpleasentries, lets talk about the positives.
1) The Freshman - They have been playing much better than I ever expected. DJ Richardson has been shooting from long range better than he ever did in high school, and Brandon Paul can score from pretty much anywhere. The nice thing about the Freshman is that they have grasped the motion offense very quickly, and they also have shown improvement on defense. By their Junior year, they will be the best backcourt tandem in the Big Ten.2) Demitri McCamey - All Illinois fans and Bruce Weber have asked of McCamey is to be consistant. Well he has played well in almost every game. He is shooting over 50% from the field, which only 2 other guards in the Big Ten Top 20 scorers are doing, and he is shooting 41% from 3. He is also second in the Big Ten in assists behind all world Evan Turner. If he could pick it up on the defensive end, he will be a lock for First Team Big Ten.
3) Bill Cole - Cole was the odd man out in the Junior class, but he has completely changed his style of play in order to get minutes. The knock on Cole was that he was a defensive liability on the floor. Well this season all he is doing is playing defense, and scraping for loose balls. He provides another spark off the bench just like Dominique Keller. It is apparent that Cole has realized that defense and rebounding, not offense will get him on the floor, something that Alex Legion hasn't grasped yet.
4) Style of Play - Illinois tries to run every chance they get, and it seems to work. Something that is completely overlooked is how well McCamey runs the secondary break. It is something that Deron Williams did extremely well, and McCamey is doing the exact same thing. He is extremely good at pushing the ball and finding open people, yet at the same time, pulling the ball out when nothing is there. Early on, he was trying to make ridiculous passes, but that was during blowout games. Everytime you see a long pass for a dunk by one of the post players, you can bet good money on the fact that the pass came from McCamey. If Illinois ran an offense where the point has the ball in his hands all of the time, then McCamey would average at least 4 more assists a game. The beauty of the motion offense is that everyone touches the ball, and with solid ball movement, you will get open shots all of the time. It doesn't need a playmaking point guard necessarily.
5) Depth - As much as I would like to see Bruce cut down his rotation, if the need becomes apparent, Bruce can bring in another 2-3 players and you they won't lose a game for you. Imagine if Joseph Bertrand was still healthy, and you had 6 guards that you could play if need be. Rich Semrau who hasn't played many meaningful minutes lately, but he has played them before in close games. Alex Legion can hit shots if need be, and during a grueling Big Ten season, you will have games where you will need some people off the bench to contribute when they haven't before.
Here are some things that have been driving me crazy this week:
1) We need bangers inside - When we went to the Final Four, we didn't have one player who was a major inside presence. Although when we did have a major presence inside (Shaun Pruitt) we had the worst year for an Illinois basketball team since Lou Henson's ball players went 13-15 in 1992. It will never cease to amaze me how dumb and delusional Illinois fans are. That is the reason why I chose to start a blog instead of get into a pissing match with moronic message board posters. Now people have decided to bitch about the fact that Tisdale and Davis aren't big post players, and why Bruce doesn't recruit those types of players. If you want Shaun Pruitt and Brian Randle back in the front court, you are a fucking idiot, and for the record, they were both higher ranked players coming out of high school than Davis and Tisdale!!
2) Bruce Weber is getting outcoached - How the shit is this happening?? Because his players are beating teams who are better than them, but losing to teams who are not as good?? So when Bruce coaches up a group of players without major talent and has them overachieve (last season and the final four season) he is an amazing coach, but when he has players who take games off he is being outcoached?? Shut the fuck up!!! People wanted Bruce gone 2 years ago because he couldn't recruit. When he started to recruit, people said that the players that he got commits from wouldn't sign. Well now he got them to sign, and now people say that he is getting out coached. I am starting to come to the conclusion that Illinois has one of the most delusional fan bases in the country. As much as I hate Indiana, I think they are better sports fans than Illinois is. I watched the entire Indiana vs. Loyola (MD) game today, and Indiana got the hell kicked out of them from the opening tip. They were down 15-0 to start the game, yet there were no fans booing! They were down 46-22 with a minute left, yet fans were cheering every made basket by Indiana.
If that were an Illinois home game, people would have started booing as soon as we were down 5-0. Bruce Weber said at the begining of last season that we had to win the fans back. Win them back from what? One bad season after we made the NCAA tournament for 7 straight years and had a national championship appearance in 2005?? Guess what, I came from Oregon to go to college at University of Illinois, and trust me, the rest of the country has no clue that Illinois even has a sports program. We are a flash in the pan every time we make it big, so get a fucking grip and realize that you are not North Carolina, Kansas, UCLA, or Kentucky in basketball. Neither are we USC, Florida, LSU, Ohio State or even Notre Dame in football. Nobody will give you credit until you win big consistantly, and Illinois has never done that!!! Be glad that you have competative teams year in and year out.
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