Now that’s a Illini win and Victory. Well done. Oskee WOW WOW!

Devon Witherspoon, Sydney Brown and Quan Martin will all be on with Jim Miller and Pat Kirwan (SiriusXM 88) sometime this afternoon.

It's still technically possible for us to finish in a 3-way tie with Wisconsin and Penn State and get the 11 seed in the Big Ten Tournament. If we then lose to Minnesota in the 11/14 game it might be damaging enough that we miss the NCAA Tournament altogether.

After the bizarre Epps story yesterday (sounded almost like a Damar Hamlin situation when we first heard) followed by the wacky caffeinated antics of Matthew Mayer, my confidence level in this team totally cratered. A no-show loss to Juwan Howard and Hunter Dickinson on Senior Night and a John Groce style March flameout is still sadly in play.

We're almost in the Tyson Zone with this team. Will Matthew Mayer and Dain Dainja get in a TikTok face-slapping contest after shootaround and give each other concussions? Will RJ Melendez quit the team at halftime and move to Puerto Rico? I hope not but there is no way to know for even a single game tonight if we will win by 20, lose by 20, or have a 20-0 run for either team.

At this point I just want to win at least one more time before Selection Sunday and make the NCAA Tournament field. Anything else is gravy.

November is a long way away and I just want the off-season misery to be as minimal as possible. I don't want to have to sign up for a baseball message board.

Lost at Ohio State! Pathetic.

I have watched all but one game this year and over and over again I hear various on air commentators talk about how talented the Illini are, how no one will want to play them in March, how at least 3 will be drafted as nauseum.

Then as I’m watching the games I see a few where that seems accurate but mostly I see a team that is wildly inconsistent, a team that is seemingly in love with the three despite being a very poor three point shooting team and a team whose defensive intensity varies from game to game or even half to half.

My first question is what am I missing that commentators see?
Secondly if they are that talented why are they playing so erratically?

I don’t think BU is a great coach but he has proven to be at least a better than average coach over his career. It seems to me that if these players are as talented as some suggest that he should be able to get more out of them. Is he not seeing what I see or is not able to get thru to them?
Thoughts?

I posted about this in another thread, but I think this deserves its own conversation. What is the identity of the Illinois basketball program? I remember over the offseason hearing Underwood talking about how it was one of the best development program in the country. He might have said "the best". I'm not seeing it. Guys don't stay on campus long enough to be developed. Recruiting seems to be all over the place. They rarely seem to identify a guy, recruit him for a couple years, and then bring him on campus. Morez Johnson and Hansberry are the exception, not the norm. A lot of guys pop up on the radar late, and then they go hard and fast. Skyy Clark, Perrin, Moretti, and Gibbs-Lawhorn are recent examples. It's great to recruit nationally and globally, but none of those kids have anything that ties them to the university, and it's not surprising to see them leave so quickly.

Then you have patch and play guys. I like TJS, Mayer, and Dainja, but they all moved on from successful programs. When we have guys leave, we say screw them, they clearly have issues. Yet we take on transfers that probably had issues themselves. I understand it's the new way of college basketball, but bringing in more than a handful of newcomers every year seems like a bad strategy.

Underwood also talked about his juco experience and how he was ready for this new wave of college basketball. Well, it's year 6, and we are about as mediocre as it gets. I'm starting to think that Underwood was the right guy to get us back to respectability, but not the right guy to get us over the top.

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Iowa is just destroying Indiana, at Indiana. Is this what parity looks like?
Up 21 with 3:30 left.g

Patrick Beverley now playing for Bulls. I seem to remember he was high on the Illini wish list in high school before committing to Arkansas. Can’t remember why - was it admissions or just not a good job of recruiting by Weber or all the politics in Chicago recruiting?

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Some guys we are interested in seeing this spring.

That's a terrible loss.

I got smart and recorded the game.

I feel Great !

Went to Conn Middle School Wrestling Championship in New Haven.

Grandson # 4 was SPECACULAR ! over the 2 weekends !

Qualifier was last Sunday and Finals today.

Went 7 - 0 with EVERY match a PIN. Fastest was 19 seconds, longest was 49 seconds. Average of the 7 pins was +/- 30 seconds. He allowed NO points !

He weighed in @ 156 for the 165 bracket !

He is a 2 time Champion in Conn, last year @ 136.

He heads for the Youth New England's where he returns as Champion @ 136 and goes @ 154 this year.