Room on the Bandwagon

Well, for those of you who didn't sprain an ankle jumping off of the Illini bandwagon, there's plenty of room on there, still. My early season predictions still seem to be holding form. The only other "must win" against a team that's any good is when Michigan St. comes here. Of course, as bad as Iowa is this year, maybe the game at Iowa gets dropped from the "tough games" list that I had. I know that we're currently 3-4, but all of a sudden 11-5 doesn't appear out of the question and 10-6 looks somewhat reasonable.

As far as today's game, we just handled Indiana relatively easily, even without Brian Randle. Our defense held them to 43 points on 38% shooting, and really, they got two three-pointers after the game was over, so it could have easily been 37 points on 36% shooting. I thought that we played great straight up defense. We didn't have those little lapses that killed us against Wisconsin (that little three play stretch where Taylor lit us up for 2 assists and a 3-pointer because Chester got just a little complacent on D comes to mind). Pruitt gets a gold star for his defense against DJ White, playing on a gimpy knee, no less. White got off quickly, getting 7 points in the first 5 minutes, but after that only had a single free throw in the first half and had two consecutive buckets in the middle of the second half. Pruitt also added 10 points and a game-high 13 boards. If he would've been better than 0 for 3 from the line, I would've had nothing to complain about at all.

Of course, that was as much Indiana being bad on offense as it was us being good on D. There were multiple possessions where they just stood around until the shot clock was under 15 seconds, and then had to scramble for a lousy looking jumper. As well as we played, they made it a lot easier on us. But we'll take what we can get.

Chester had some ups and downs today, but I love watching how hard he plays. He's got an attitude out there, which I love. He wants the ball more than anyone else out there, and does whatever it takes to get it. His shot looks off - short, even on his free throws (and 3-7 from the line from a point guard is not good). Maybe his legs aren't all back, yet, but he still works hard out there. He had a couple lapses where he gave the ball away, but more often than not, he makes up for it by getting the ball right back and making something good happen.

Richie has been shooting much better over the last few games. He nailed a 3 to put us up 23-21 late in the 1st, and he nailed two consecutive 3's that put us up 31-23 at the start of the 2nd. Really, the only shot that he took that I really didn't like was the long three that he missed to start the game. It wasn't that he wasn't open - he was. And it wasn't even the distance of the shot (about 22 feet). It was that his feet weren't set, and as a result, the shot had no chance. My scouting report on him from Dec. '04 was that he's deadly from up to 22' if he gets his feet set, so this isn't a new revelation, but somehow, we still get an very ugly looking shot every now and then from him. But to make up for it, he had a beautiful little mid-range baseline pull-up J that helped us quell a little Indian run in the middle of the 2nd half and also knocked down two free throws to make it a 6 point game with about 3 minutes left to go that really iced the game.

Jamar is still just off with his shooting, but it'll fall. His shot it too good to not fall. He got one today, but was close to breaking out of the slump when a couple of other 3's just rimmed out. He's still doing alright on D, though his lack of strength is evident a couple times a game. He'll lose out on rebounds because of sloppy box-outs and a lack of strength to make up for it. I think that he'll continue to get better, though.

Calvin Brock is a pretty decent defensive player, and did well on that end of the court today. However, he still looks a little lost at times on offense. Part of that is that we asked him to play at the 4 spot for a good portion of the time he was in the game (yep - we had a 4-guard lineup in there quite a bit). There were times where his movement looked stagnant and he ended up in the same spot as other players on multiple occasions, which is never good. Let's put it this way. When Calvin was in the game with three other guards and Pruitt, I found myself saying, "We can't run our offense unless Warren's in there." Which is a sentence that I never would have imagined myself saying (particularly if you read this last season).

I also found myself wishing that Warren was getting the ball more (well, when he was working in the high or low posts, anyway). He has this nasty habit of sort of drifiting mentally, and just drifiting 20' from the hoop. Last couple of games, he's done a lot of damage shooting from about 16', as well as in the low block. Early on today, he looked great on offense beating the crap out of smaller, less athletic players from 12' in. But there was a stretch in the 2nd half where we only scored 6 points in 10 minutes (from just under 17 minutes to about 6 minutes left), Indiana closed to 37-35, where Warren didn't show himself in the high post at all, and our offense got real ugly. This culminated with a possession where the ball is moving, and Warren sets a screen on the baseline, about 17' from the basket. From there, he has the choice of either stepping back to the corner (which is what he usually does) and setting up for a 3 or flashing high post (which I prefer for him). Taking the low block is out because Pruitt also set a screen on the play, and just takes the low block. Naturally, Warren does neither and just stands there. And our guard (Richie, I believe) decides to just swing the ball to the corner, where Warren normally is. He almost killed a cheerleader with that pass, which takes us a the TV timeout. Of course, our first possession after a TV timeout, Warren drifts toward the arc, his defender tries to jump the pass, and Richie hits Warren going hard backdoor for a huge dunk that put us up by 4. Go figure.

I'm sort of curious as to what our assistant coaches do. In the NBA, you'll see the head coach go after a ref during a timeout, but assistant coaches are running the huddle. I've seen the Illini just sit there during timeouts while Bruce goes after the refs. This happened again today. And assistants generally track foul situations, so that when players (big men, in particular) are in bad foul situations, subs are sent in immediately so that disastrous fouls aren't committed. We have a nasty habit of not getting subs in immediately, which leaves our players exposed. Today, Pruitt had 2 fouls, and was looking a little tired in the early part of the 2nd half. Tired players commit cheap fouls, and we saw that, but we saw it about 5 seconds too late. Carlwell was trying to sub in, when the ball was inbounded, and sure enough, Pruitt picked up his 3rd foul with 15 minutes left to go. So, he went to the bench for a few minutes to rest, but when he was back in the game, there was a 5 minute stretch where he played soft on D because he was afraid of getting his 4th foul. I mean, it all falls back to Bruce putting in a system to make sure that things like that don't happen, but I wonder what the assistants are actually doing.

Bruce does an alright job, but I'm still not sold on him as a nationally elite coach. I see too much stuff that we do that seems to fall on the coach. We are still waiting too long to get into the offense (we rarely get going before 25 seconds on the shot clock). We still get stagnant on offense with the same combination of players, and it seems that we drift mentally (Warren may need to be subbed out for a minute if he drifts on offense, just to remind him what he's doing, same for Calvin). Our in-bounds plays are mediocre at best, and we often surrender position (most teams love inbounding from under the basket) and just throw the ball back toward half-court, and we seem to be unable to get the ball inbounds at crucial moments. A lot of that is on the schemes that the coaches put in. Where I'm struggling with this team is that we tend to come out flat in games (and after halftime, in our losses). Bruce had always preached winning the first four minutes of each half. Not being able to do that seems to reflect poorly. My impression of Bruce had always been that he was a great planner and good at responding when he had time, but was only so-so on the fly. Now he's not looking as great in planning.

From here on out, we've got 9 more Big Ten games. The toughest game left is at Indiana. Going 8-1 is not out of the question, though you figure that we've got some games that aren't gimmies at Purdue, at Iowa, and with Michigan and Michigan St. still coming here. I'm holding to my preseason prediction of 10-6, though 11-5 is certainly attainable (12-4 may be asking a little too much, though :-) We're a tournament team. And if things develop the way that I figure, we'll be making more noise in the dance than anyone really figures.

-Chairman