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Bowl game chatter...

bucshon
A couple of things I heard.

Ohio State is flexing its muscles to try to go to the Orange Bowl instead of the Rose Bowl if Michigan beats Purdue. There's apparently a clause in the Rose Bowl bylaws that would allow that to happen. Penn State would then go to the Rose Bowl, and Tennessee would be bumped out of the Orange Bowl.

There's a chance that a Big Ten team in the Orange Bowl will mean the ReliaQuest Bowl will go with its ACC vs. SEC tie-in instead of ACC vs. Big Ten.

That would probably send Illinois to Nashville for the Music City Bowl or New York for the Pinstripe Bowl.

As it stands now, most bowl projections have Illinois going to Tampa.
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Rivals transfer portal coverage..

A
The transfer portal officially opens Monday and it's already been incredibly busy. We have you covered. Rivals has all the latest news on the biggest transfers, we're now ranking every entry into the portal and we also have a message board to talk about everything portal-related.

Please use these resources to find all the breaking news and everything else when it comes to the portal:

Site: https://portal.rivals.com/

Transfer Tracker & Ranking: https://n.rivals.com/transfer_tracker/2023

Message board: https://forums.rivals.com/forums/football-transfer-portal.46/

And please follow us on social for all the breaking news: @RivalsPortal
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Cincinnati Moeller Defensive End Jewett Hayes

L
This is a long post that starts out talking basketball, but ends up about Illini football recruiting.

Had a really fun and totally unexpected interaction while I was in Daytona Beach for the Illini women's basketball tournament this past weekend (after Las Vegas with the men the weekend before). I was in the hotel bar watching the OSU/Michigan football game before the Illini/Delaware game Saturday afternoon. A woman came into the bar and sat next to me, and we started a conversation. She was in town to watch her daughter play for the Cincinnati team in the same tournament as the Illini. Turns out the woman, Kristi, played at Drake and was all conference for 3 years in the early '90's, and then coached at Iowa, Southern Illinois, etc., prior to getting married. (She also coached AAU ball in Cincinnati, and coached Makira Cook, Illini's point guard, in the 4th grade along with her daughter. This was easily confirmed as Makira and her father walked into the bar while we were talking, and they immediately came over and gave Kristi a big hug). Kristi's husband, Jonathan Hayes, played football at Iowa in the early '80's, then for 8 years with the KC Chiefs, and 2 years with the Steelers, before coaching at Oklahoma when they won a National Championship.

Kristi indicated Orlando Antigua and Illinois had recruited her oldest son (Jaxson Hayes) back in 2018. He decided to go to Texas instead, spent one year there before heading to the NBA (now on the Pelicans). She indicated she had two more sons who were high level athletes, a class of 2024 defensive end at Cincinnati Moeller (Jewett Hayes) who is 6' 4 " and 225 lbs. She indicated that Illinois had invited him for a visit, and there were indications that Illinois would offer on the visit. However, he had a previously set up visit to Kentucky on that particular weekend, and it was not in the family ethics to cancel it at the last minute. Her other son, a class of 2025 at Moeller, is a 6' 5" basketball wing who has had some initial contact from Illinois.

An interesting tidbit she let slip, was that her husband would like to see their son Jewett go to Iowa like he did, but that she is dead set against it. She is White, and their kids are bi-racial, and she is very cognizant of the recent stories of racism at Iowa. Doug can you check this out with the football staff?

BTW, after we talked for about 2 hours and I left the bar, I texted Orlando and he immediately got back to me with the fallowing comments, "Wow, small world...wonderful woman and a great family....loved my interaction with them...and she can still beat her kids in a race 🤣"!
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Ryan Walters & Tank Wright

O
Looks like he is plan B at Colorado if Coach Prime doesn’t take the job. Where does BB turn then? I’ve also seen where Tank is being mentioned for the Arkansas Strength job. Tank spends more time with the team then anyone else. Both of these guys are very good at what they do. Both would be huge loses for the Illini.

Let’s talk potential replacements.
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Conference championship games

bucshon
Final (Friday): Utah 47 USC 24. Knocks USC out of the CFP

Kansas State 28 TCU 20. 7:34 4Q. Loss would put TCU on the bubble.

LSU @ Georgia 3 p.m. Georgia is in CFP win or lose.

Clemson @ North Carolina 7 p.m.

Purdue @ Michigan 7 pm. Michigan is in the CFP win or lose

College Football Playoffs headed into to today:

#1 Georgia vs. #4 Ohio State
#2 Michigan vs. #3 TCU
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How will this team look on the road?

I
Friday will be our team's first experience of a hostile crowd. (I do think there will be a healthy contingent of Illini fans but the Maryland student section will be there in full force.)

I think our style of play will hold up well on the road. Our press is not so much about reaching and slapping so I don't think we'll suddenly start fouling like crazy away from the basket. We don't have that classic "foul on Arch" scenario where we need to protect our starting center from getting 2 fouls in the early minutes. We go 9-deep and get a lot of contribution from the bench. It would be hard to imagine our offense going colder than we did in the first half against Syracuse.

Maryland does draw a lot of fouls so I do think we may have that issue at the end of the first half where their front line is living at the free throw line and we have 3 guys with the auto-sit for long stretches. I also worry that our freshmen will play out of control and sped up in a hostile environment and turn it over too much. Physically they are mature and can compete so I just don't think they will get too rattled. Skyy Clark is not going to have two 0-fer games in a row so I'm almost glad he got that out of the way on Tuesday. We have a lot of streaky shooters but they don't seem to all run hot or cold at the same time.

Maryland has absolutely cruised in all of their games and never faced any real adversity under their new coach. They haven't faced a lot of size (except for Louisville which is an absolute dumpster fire of a team.) So I think it's just as likely that we can rattle them as they can rattle us. Maryland isn't exactly brimming with NBA talent. They've just been letting their bigs win one-on-one against smaller teams and also they have one good playmaker at guard.

Brad Underwood is hungry for a win in College Park. I was looking back at the games he lost there and really it's just been a bad matchup with an undersized lineup against Maryland's big wings. We have the positional size to negate that issue this year. I do think we could see a repeat of the Virginia game with the issues at the end of halves and putting teams on the free throw line, but overall I think this team is built to play tough defense and get easy transition points even on the road. We have 7 guys who can score a lot of points so it's really hard to shut everyone down.

We might not win everywhere we go but I think we will always be a very tough out. We are built to win ugly, our defense will travel, and I'm sure we'll get more than our share of road kills.
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