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This vacation talk is getting old.  Can we move on to a more pertinent topic, like what are the coaches having for meals each day and how that meal impacts their ability to coach and recruit?!

The last thing we need is another Crean bomb in a recruits house.  I mean CMW didn’t have to worry about what meals he had and when in the pros or where he took a 💩.  Completely different game in college and I am not sure he’s up for the task.

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1 hour ago, AxnJxn said:

Really? I like Rob, and certainly don't mean this as a dig, but I didn't really see much improvement in his game this year, outside of the one game against Purdue. 

Rob has been the number one defender on the team for a while. I think he was a different player before his concussion. It seems as though when Woodson and staff arrived, he played a bit more relaxed and towards the end of the season, he wasn’t so rigid and had more confidence to be more productive on the offensive end.

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20 minutes ago, Inequality said:

Rob has been the number one defender on the team for a while. I think he was a different player before his concussion. It seems as though when Woodson and staff arrived, he played a bit more relaxed and towards the end of the season, he wasn’t so rigid and had more confidence to be more productive on the offensive end.

I appreciate your perspective, I just didn't see the same thing. Since that Purdue game, he was something like 3-21 from 3. Completely agree that things changed after the concussion, as he seemed like he was going to be a top notch PG by his senior year, and his defense has always been good to excellent, but IMO, he looked pretty awful on offense after that Purdue game.

TBF, we had a lot of guys that seemed to completely lose the ability to shoot in the second half of the season.

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7 minutes ago, AxnJxn said:

I appreciate your perspective, I just didn't see the same thing. Since that Purdue game, he was something like 3-21 from 3. Completely agree that things changed after the concussion, as he seemed like he was going to be a top notch PG by his senior year, and his defense has always been good to excellent, but IMO, he looked pretty awful on offense after that Purdue game.

TBF, we had a lot of guys that seemed to completely lose the ability to shoot in the second half of the season.

Phin and Parker. I think most of the others shot a better % from 3 the last bit of the year, then the first half. I know that is true for Kopp, XJ, and RT. 

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4 minutes ago, btownqb said:

Phin and Parker. I think most of the others shot a better % from 3 the last bit of the year, then the first half. I know that is true for Kopp, XJ, and RT. 

Yah, fair enough, and agreed. Trey's shot seemed to go awry down the stretch, too, but it wasn't really all that great at any point this year, anyway. The rest of the guys really didn't get enough volume to make any sort of determination.

Rob's issue just seemed to be one of confidence throughout his career, and it was kind of hard to watch down the stretch this year - he was 1-14 from 3 in the last 7 games. Oof. It's almost painful to watch when a guy is clearly struggling mentally, like Ben Simmons from the FT line in the playoffs last year, and it's even worse when it's a guy like Rob, who seems like a really good kid.

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1 hour ago, AxnJxn said:

I appreciate your perspective, I just didn't see the same thing. Since that Purdue game, he was something like 3-21 from 3. Completely agree that things changed after the concussion, as he seemed like he was going to be a top notch PG by his senior year, and his defense has always been good to excellent, but IMO, he looked pretty awful on offense after that Purdue game.

TBF, we had a lot of guys that seemed to completely lose the ability to shoot in the second half of the season.

Yeah, everybody wants to bash CAM as much as possible, but I don’t think RP’s issues had anything to do with CAM. Not claiming you were suggesting otherwise, just adding my opinion on the subject. 

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13 hours ago, BobSaccamanno said:

 

I have no idea what on earth he’d think he’d get out of another year at Illinois.  That relationship has maxed out.   

Lots and lots of NIL $$. More than he'd make playing in Europe or G-League. As I mentioned earlier, is that enough or maybe he'll just want to get on and starting playing pro without having to be a student.

13 hours ago, BobSaccamanno said:

I have no doubt you will land some good guys.  Who is your ace recruiting assistant?

You are a good poster here and obviously a knowledgeable and good fan.  I can be critical of IU at times although I try to be optimistic for the most part.  I say that because I want to see what you think about an aspect of Underwood.  I promise to you, if I saw an IU coach do this, it would concern me too so this isn’t meant to troll you.  

Setting aside the performance in the tournament—which is obviously a different animal than conference play—or the ill-advised note he left in Bloomington, one thing about Underwood that would concern me if I were an Illinois fan is his makeup.  Specifically, he gets very defensive, especially late in the season. 

As someone who works in a high stress field where you get challenged a lot, I have learned that being defensive is one of the worst traits you can have.  It does not play well at all in front of others. It shows weakness and potentially denial to actually address the issue.

I have been working for decades so I have seen this over a long time.  Underwood is at a cringeworthy level of defensiveness.   If I were in meetings with him, I’d be uncomfortable watching that and I would pull him aside and tell him to knock it off.

It’s not just a PR thing IMO.  I think it’s a makeup problem.  If there’s a weakness or something where the opponent is attacking his set up on some way, he gets super defensive when challenged publicly about it.  And the denial portends lack of awareness to address issues and counter-adjust.   

Like I said, if an IU coach did that, I’d be all over his case.  Archie had that too and I never liked it.  He was also dismal at adjustments.

I think the guy will be around and he recruits well.  But when it comes to adjustments, in the tournament where it matters, he’s got to prove himself.  There’s a lot of Dale Brown there.   At least so far.   

 

 

 

Appreciate the reply.

The top recruiting assistants are Tim Anderson and Chester Frazier. Anderson is very well connected in Chicago and has already landed some top guys like Ty Rodgers & Morez Johnson. Also has the connection with Skyy Clark. Frazier is a former Illinois player who has more national connections particularly in the mid Atlantic as he's a Baltimore native and coached at VT. He's also off to a pretty good start at Illinois.

I can see your point on Underwood when it comes to adjusting, he's certainly stubborn especially on defense. IMO he really loves the other side of the court, drawing up schemes, etc to get points. The Loyola game last season really sticks out there, he claimed they made adjustments in that game but if they did they were very subtle and obviously unsuccessful. 

Like you said though, conference vs post season has been really interesting. In the league, it's hard to argue that he's been anything but outstanding. Yet the interesting thing is he's done really well against most of the league but has had issues with a couple of programs, namely Maryland and Ohio St. This year's game at MD was one of those stubborn moments - they kept isolating Scott on whoever was guarding him, mainly Williams and Grandison. And he scored 25 in a win. Now we didn't have Kofi and that made a difference but we didn't really try anything to change that match-up. No doubling on Scott to make him give up the ball, no zone, nothing. Part of it is personnel, bigger wings have been a problem and that's been addressed in recruiting. But still a weird blind spot it seems.

IMO the post season stuff is still a small sample size but of course a concern. As mentioned, the Loyola game was terrible. This year was just a really tough match up with Houston as they are loaded with those bigger wing types and the Illini season was just so screwy with injuries that for me at least the expectations of any tournament run were pretty low.

I haven't really noticed the defensiveness in his demeanor that much but then again Illini fans are still badly scarred from Bruce Weber who was the absolute worst there, never accepted any blame at all. His exit from KSU was very familiar, blaming the fans, media, etc but not himself.

And no idea on this "ill advised note"?

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