whitesoxfan99

QUOTE (fathom @ Mar 28, 2015 -> 09:31 PM) Trey Lyles just sucks tonight. ND playing so much smarter. All their perimeter players except for Booker have been really bad tonight.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Mar 27, 2015 -> 03:22 PM) I thought both were signs of "we're here to stay for a good while." How f***ing wrong was that. And yet people in this various thread still defended Weber when I said he destroyed Illinois basketball. The guy is a clown who did more damage to Illinois basketball than sanctions in the 90s. He is close to completely destroying KSU as well (although easier to do that than Illinois). Groce isn't doing a good enough job but I'll never forget how much Weber killed Illinois basketball when a good hire post Self had the chance to cement Illinois at the top of the Big 10.

QUOTE (Buehrle>Wood @ Mar 24, 2015 -> 02:24 PM) Jevon Thomas transferring from Kansas State. From everything I heard, he was the center point of all the problems with Marcus Foster, but he was certainly on the "correct" side of the drama. I hope he's transferring on his own accord and not being pushed out and not to appease Foster. Weber has been known to hang on to certain players too long so who knows. Foster gone as well.

QUOTE (Brian @ Mar 24, 2015 -> 05:58 AM) LoL. Even if LeVert leaves, they're the 5th or 6th best team in the B10 next year, barring anymore injuries. MAAR and Dawkins will only get better. Agreed. Michigan looks like a middle of the pack team and a tourney team to me for next year. Interior play will still be weak but they will be really solid on the perimeter.

QUOTE (fathom @ Mar 22, 2015 -> 10:17 PM) This Friday/Sunday combo of games have been awful. Other than the early games on Thursday (which I didn't even get to watch) I thought it was a really boring first weekend of games in general.

QUOTE (Rowand44 @ Mar 22, 2015 -> 02:06 PM) I know I'm in the minority but I loved watching the MSU-UVA game. Love the physical slop fests. Yeah, no thanks. No ball movement, very few basketball plays being made and a march to the free throw line? Awful.

It still pisses me off that the NCAA dropped the freedom of movement rules they tried to implement. The vast majority of these games are basically unwatchable for 38 minutes. That MSU/Virginia game was horrendous basketball. I don't get how anyone can prefer college basketball to the NBA right now unless your team is playing.

QUOTE (Buehrle>Wood @ Mar 22, 2015 -> 01:04 PM) Shocker an Izzo coached team is playing in an unwatchable basketball game. Great coach but man does he have a horseshoe up his ass in the tourney as well. 1 seed in this bracket is already out, Virginia hasn't been the same since Anderson's injury and is 1-12 from 3 today and a number of those were really good looks.

Horrendous call against OSU. College refs are such an embarrassment. They get the block/charge call wrong 90% of the time.

Lol at Big 12

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Mar 19, 2015 -> 02:48 PM) This is why I picked GSU, please hold on You knew Baylor was going to stand there with their dicks in their hands for the last 5 minutes?

Baylor choking hard.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Mar 19, 2015 -> 01:21 PM) Cant expect the call there. Need to run an actual offense. They had the pick and roll wide open twice. People give refs way too many breaks. s***ty possession by Northeastern but its hard to play offense when the other team is grabbing and hacking at your arms without getting called for it.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Mar 19, 2015 -> 01:20 PM) Great D by ND on that last possession. Aided by multiple Purdue style grabs and hacks.

Looked like a ton of contact on ND on those reaches.

That is a brutal call against Northeastern. Jackson clearly fouled the Northeastern player first.

QUOTE (bigruss22 @ Mar 18, 2015 -> 10:32 AM) Completely on this page. I actually haven't disagreed with too much of what Groce has done, but it hasn't worked out thus far and that's still on him: -Tate - that was an obvious we lost out on everyone and need a pg body and this helps the Simeon relationship. Should never have seen the court this much. I understand the need to take him, but not getting anyone better is on the staff 100%. -Cosby - This blew up so hard, 40% 3pt shooter from the Big 12 comes in and just s***s his shorts. I loved the transfer when it happened, honestly thought it was a brilliant move to get a piece you really needed in, just didn't work out at all. -Starks - This was my biggest problem, it "worked" out that he didnt get to play last year because otherwise we would've been stuck with Tate even more this year. But clearly we took a player that didn't fit what we wanted at pg and didn't fit whatever offensive scheme we have. This was a desperation move by Groce to get shooting last year, but then he didnt get the waiver and never really fit in besides having a PG title next to his name. Cosby being so bad this year makes no sense at all. The guy was a really productive player in the Big East when the Big East was still a top conference and had shot nearly 40% from 3 on a very high volume of 3's over his 2 years at Seton Hall. Impossible to predict that taking him would have blown up in Illinois' face and the sad thing is that if Cosby did play like he did at Seton Hall this team would have easily been in the tournament. The coaches deserve some of the blame for his production but I would love to get their thoughts on what went wrong there.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Mar 18, 2015 -> 10:11 AM) IMO if they miss the tournament next year he should be fired. Not just hot seat, but fired. At that point you'll know whether Groce is the guy or not. You can't afford to wait another year. In 2016-2017 Hill and Nunn will be seniors. That'd be the time to make a run before a massive loss of players in 2017-2018 (6 i think). Give the next coach a chance to win his first year before starting a recruiting rebuild. If you wait a year and they suck again, now you're rebuilding the roster with nothing to sell. 3 straight NIT's and 3 NCAA appearances in 9 years? That's a tough sell. Agreed. I liked Groce when he was hired but I'm not afraid to admit I was wrong and cut bait and that was Ron Guenther's biggest flaw. Hell, I wouldn't bat an eye if Groce was fired this year. And I'll go further and say that merely sneaking into the tournament next year shouldn't be enough for him to keep his job. They need to be solidly in the tournament for me to think he should be back for year 5.

QUOTE (Buehrle>Wood @ Mar 18, 2015 -> 09:49 AM) Our best player going forward, Malcolm Hill, committed under Weber which is often conveniently forgotten. And stayed committed under Groce and would have committed to any Illinois coach that offered him a scholarship. Weber deserves some credit for getting him to commit but if he hasn't signed when the new guy takes over I'm not giving the former coach too much credit because it is pretty common for guys to decommit in those situations.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Mar 18, 2015 -> 09:30 AM) I don't know why you keep beating this drum when it doesn't matter. It's akin to blaming Bush for crap Obama does. At some point you gotta let it go. Yes, the class sucked (although even scouts were wrong about Henry and Shaw, both 4 star, 90+ graded recruits). Yes, it didn't help Groce. But we're three years down the line now. Groce had a couple of good players from the prior staff and that's about what you'd expect when a coach gets fired. Rarely is anyone fired with tons of talent on the roster. Is it a factor here? Sure, but not a big one. The bigger one is Groce's offensive coaching sucks. And as much excitement as he's brought in recruiting, frankly his recruiting hasn't done s***. Nunn is a bust unless he works on his right hand dribbling (and he was basically a Weber recruit, although not 100%. Groce just had to close the deal). Hill, a Weber commit IIRC, is easily the best player on the roster, and has the most potential. Everyone else Groce has signed and/or brought in has sucked. Rice was his savior last year, but maybe the biggest problem this year. They were better without him. He didn't fit with the other guys on the team. I'd love to throw Groce a bone and call this a bit of bad luck. The suspensions of Paul and Rice didn't help. The injuries to Abrams and Rice didn't help. Losing Snider at the last possible second after getting a verbal didn't help. Signing Tate and having to play 4-5 (or 3-5 with Egwu) for extended stretches clearly wasn't the plan, but that's what he gets for signing him. We're trending the wrong direction. I never bought last year that this season was going to be miraculously different. I laughed at those that said this was a tourney team for sure. And next year they're in the same position - bubble team. Although next year without Egwu and Rice there's a strong possibility of not getting to .500 in conference. It could be worse. I've said several times Groce isn't doing a good enough job. I've ripped on him for offering Tate. Groce has two classes on campus. Weber didn't leave a single good player outside of his 2009 class that Groce inherited. There was no 2012 class and the 2011 class sucked. That matters but it isn't an excuse for Groce because in basketball you can turn things around pretty quickly by landing the right players. The right guy could have turned things around and had Illinois in much better shape than Groce has but Weber left the program in horrendous shape. Not really that important to the discussion but Nunn was purely a Groce recruit by the way. Weber had zero chance of landing him.

QUOTE (Brian @ Mar 18, 2015 -> 05:54 AM) I'm not one to say I told you so, but.... What??? I know it comes off as my being hard on Tate and now DJ Williams. Simeon is the one city team I respect. They are well behaved kids and organized. If a kid can leave the city and succeed, that's a great thing. I'm honestly just trying to help Illini fans harness their expectations of them because just because they wear a Simeon jersey, doesn't mean it's a great get. Too bad Morrow will make Illinois fans regret not recruiting him for the next 4 years at Nebraska. Ok, ill stop. I have major concerns about DJ Williams' motor but I also have no doubt he has the talent to play in the Big 10. He was the best player on his AAU team this summer and that was a team including Charles Matthews. He clearly has major issues with consistency and playing hard and that usually is hard to remedy but if the light goes on he will be good. Tate may be the worst shooter at the guard position to ever play in the Big 10 (except for his free throw shooting which is mind boggling good considering how bad of a shooter he is) and he is an average at best athlete for a Big 10 point guard. If you are going to recruit a kid that can't shoot at all he better have some special attributes elsewhere and Tate doesn't. It is the same reason the Michael Orris offer was incredibly stupid by Weber. If you miss on your top targets at least make sure the kid you are bringing in can shoot it.

QUOTE (Boogua @ Mar 17, 2015 -> 09:48 PM) Yup. The only 2 players that were average longterm from the 2010, 2011, and 2012 classes were Abrams and Egwu. That's insane. Groce has screwed up not recruiting a better PG, but he was a bit unlucky by Abrams tearing his ACL too. He had to try to rebuild with a bunch of transfers that ended up being failures. I don't think Groce ever expected Tate to play this much for his program either. If Abrams was healthy Tate and Starks would have been splitting 10-15 minutes per game off the bench. Tate should have never been offered a scholarship.

And I still can't get over how bad the 2011 class turned out. Ibby Djimde and Mike Shaw are terrible even at mid-majors right now, Devin Langford wasn't close to a high major player, Egwu isn't any good, Abrams is an average Big 10 guard and Myke Henry isn't any good either. Then we offered Michael Orris who is a f***ing joke in the 2012 class and Jaylon Tate in the 2013 class. I mean seriously what the f***, basketball isn't that hard.

QUOTE (Boogua @ Mar 17, 2015 -> 09:06 PM) I don't think many were saying that about the Paul and DJ class. I also don't think people will be saying that when Hill and Nunn are seniors, but I know what you mean. This group of seniors just seem dumb. Starks with fadeaway 3s after no passes, Rice trying to go 1 on 5, and Egwu-king of the moving screen. At least Groce is gone if they don't make the tournament next year. I think they make it though (barring injuries). I don't think simply making the tourney should be enough next year. If they get in as like an 8 seed or lower that just isn't good enough in year 4 at Illinois unless Groce has some fantastic players committed. It really shouldn't be this hard to win at Illinois. I think its hard to be great at Illinois (i.e. Self) but it just isn't hard to win there.

QUOTE (Boogua @ Mar 17, 2015 -> 08:48 PM) I'm just happy I never have to see any of these seniors play again. Even Rice. We've said that about every class after Dee and Augustine graduated. We haven't had good enough players or coaches. Time for the university to either make a concerted effort to make the basketball program relevant again or why even bother. And it's frankly incredible how bad some of the players Weber and Groce offered scholarships to have been. Really isn't hard to find players better than CJ Jackson, Djimde, and Tate (among others).