So we're dancing. Barely, like white kids at a hip-hop club. But we're dancing. Which is more than I can say for Syracuse, K State, and a few others. I was a bit surprised to see Indiana at 7 and Purdue at 9. But that bode well for us that the other teams in the conference were rated so high when we were so similar. I was surprised that Ohio St. wasn't the #1 overall team, since they have been on a roll. And I was a bit surprised that Florida was the #1 overall team, since they were so spotty right before the SEC tourney. I would've ranked the top 8 as follows: Ohio St., Kansas, UNC, Florida, UCLA, Memphis, G'Town, and Wisconsin. I think that we have a legit shot to beat any of the 3 seeds on down, and maybe even some of the 2's. However, we could also lose to any of about 40 teams in this draw. Which makes this awfully interesting.
Florida has a very easy path to the Final 4. The only team that I could see beating them is Oregon if they're clicking on all cylinders, and that wouldn't happen until the Elite 8. Wisconsin is an overachieving team that can be shut down with good, smart defense. We came close to shutting them down both games, really, but only have half of the equation. We were good ,but not smart. You have to just accept that Tucker will get his. Anywhere from 12 to 30 or so. But you have to not let Kammron Taylor get any cheap outside shots. Let the other guys launch. They may hit a few, but they won't fill it up like Taylor could if he gets hot. They may grind it out a few rounds, but they're not getting by Florida.
Similarly, I like Ohio St.'s path to the Final 4. Xavier would be an interesting matchup because of the geography. But Ohio St. is a lot better than Xavier. The Buckeyes don't have anything interesting until the Elite 8. We don't know how good Memphis is, but they're athletic. Texas A&M (coached by a former Illini assistant) has a heck of a guard in Acie Law IV. Louisville has been a pretty hot team and Rick Pitino seems to be able to squeeze extra juice out of his teams.
I don't like UNC's path at all. Marquette is a sneaky team. And Michigan St. could make for an ugly game, as well. But more importantly, you never want to run into a player like Kevin Durant, who could single-handedly take a team to a championship (like he almost did in the Big 12 regular season and tourney, falling just short to Kansas on both occasions in the last week or so). Plus, a hot Georgetown team will probably be waiting on whoever comes out of that side.
I don't know if anyone's playing as good as Kansas right now, but they have a tough draw. They had a couple bumps early in the season, but they've been mowing people down since. Kansas-Kentucky is a big name matchup, but would be an ugly game in favor of Bill Self's guys. And you know that if we manage to pull together a couple wins, you'd have some big time hype w/ Kansas-Illinois, not only with Self here, and the fact that Warren, Randle, Richie, are Self's guys, but also with Brandon Rush and Julian Wright who spurned the Illini to go w/ the Self (odd... elite recruit not coming here... seems like something like that has happened recently, but I can't quite put my finger on it). More on this later. The bottom half of that draw will be just as interesting with a potential UCLA-Pitt game that features the same story: Pitt's former coach has now done awfully well off at a new school. I'm not so much saying that the Illini will all of a sudden get hot and give Kansas a scare. I'm more saying that UCLA is a good team. The other teams in the draw aren't as scary, unless Duke all of sudden remembers how to play offense.
Final Four Picks?
Florida ----- Kansas ----- Ohio St.
Kansas
Ohio St. ----- Ohio St.
Texas
Florida and Ohio St. have easy roads. Kansas is good, and hot. I don't like Texas on principle. I think that Rick Barnes is a mediocre coach. I don't usually buy into freshman point guards. But let's just say that I'm a Kevin Durant convert.
Kansas is a team that I like against Florida. They match-up well at every spot, and run deeper than Florida. And Bill Self is due. On the other side, I would love to see the Oden-Duran debate go live (for the record, I say Oden, though you can't really lose, I don't think). Interestingly, I think that the Conley-Augustin debate is more poignant in this game, and Ohio St. has a distinct coaching advantage with Thad Matta running their show. Finals? Kansas or Ohio St. Tossup. I'll go with the best player argument, and tip the scales to Greg Oden. I'd probably root for the Jayhawks, though. For that matter, I'll root for any of the coaches that have helped the Illini become what they are today: Bill Self, Lon Kruger at UNLV, Billy Gillespie at Texas A&M. And I'll root against folks that spurned us like Thad Matta, Dana Altman at Creighton, and Tom Crean at Marquette.
Now what about our Illini? I think that we deserved to be in . I was thinking 11 seed. But 12 is fine. I even like our draw. First and foremost, they kept us in the Midwest for the first round. We'll have refs that are used to the physical play of the Big Ten. Whenever we get refs that call west coast games, we get screwed. I don't see that happening this time. Moreover, Va Tech is beatable. They're not deep. They've got some bad losses, and some really good wins. But I like our chances. Our bigs should dominate in that game, as long as we keep feeding them the ball. NC State (a team that's deeper up front, but doesn't have anyone as good as either Pruitt or Carter on offense) beat the Hokies 3 times, shooting over 50% from the field in all three games, including a game where they shot over 60%. I wouldn't be shocked to see Pruitt, Warren, and Arnold go for 40 points. They've got some good, experienced guards, but nothing that scares you. If we don't have catastrophic foul trouble, I like our chances.
If we make it to the 2nd round, I also like our chances. I don't fear mid-majors with our team. In fact, I was hoping to draw someone like Nevada and Butler in the first round. But Southern in the 2nd round is just fine. We'll defend better than any mid-major will see in their conference. And our bigs will be better than anyone that they face in their conference. In fact, I still think that we play like a souped-up mid-major team, anyway. They're like us - small guard heavy, and with bigs that aren't quite big enough against real teams. Their scoring isn't super deep, with that Tatum dude (who's been there forever) as their lead scorer. They play ugly basketball. But they couldn't out-ugly Indiana. We did 2 out of 3 times. They also shot under 40% against Minnesota, who just isn't any good
I think that we get to play Bill Self. And I think that that just as Weber will beat his old school, that Bill Self will do the same to us. I tried to look at the positive. But man. They're good. They've got 8 legit studs on that team. They're young, but they'll be hungry after getting bounced early the last couple years. The only possible advantage that we have is that we've got 3 seniors who get playing time, compared to their zero seniors at all. Unfortunately, our seniors are only Rich McBride, Warren Carter, and Marcus Arnold, and not Deron Williams, Dee Brown, and James Augustine. They've got equal size. Superior athleticism. Superior guard play. Superior depth. And... at least equal coaching. And that's being kind.
I figure that if we play them 10 times, we win once. Maybe. The recipe:
1) Avoid foul trouble. We're not deep enough. You don't want to see too much of Calvin Brock...
2a) Play aggressive D, keeping them under 40% from the field (they're just under 50% on the season!). I think that in the half court, we can slow them down.
2b) Very related - We'd have to control tempo. Keep the game in the 60's (or 50's, ideally), though this has only happened 10 times this year, and includes a few times when they won by 20 anyway. Kansas is a running team, and aren't as good in the half-court. Very related - But we can't clank threes or give the ball away, both of which lead to transition buckets.
3) Which is a nice segue into one of our issues. We'd need to have fewer than 10 turnovers (we average like 14 a game). Gotta maximize our chances.
4) Shoot 70%+ from the line (we're 62% on the season). Can't miss out on free points. Because
5) They don't let teams score easily, either. We'd need to have the entire team score reasonably well. Frazier and Meachem each hits a couple threes and gets a couple layups. Richie and Randle combine for 24+. We get 24+ from our Warren and Pruitt. I imagine that they'd be too good to let anyone on our team go for like 30 on them. We don't have a Kevin Durant on our team.
6) Pray. There's a saying that God favors drunks and fools. We've got a couple drunks. And I think that we've got a couple fools. Maybe it'll work out.
Long story short - I don't like our chances here. There have been bigger upsets - Villanova over G'Town. Duke over UNLV. But those teams had a lot of future NBA players. A more example would be Bucknell over Kansas :-) And maybe Kentucky or Villanova can knock them off. But I doubt it.
Regardless, if we can make it to the Sweet 16, this roller-coaster of a season would have to be considered a roaring success. And it would make me look like I knew what I was talking about.
-Chairman
