Five Issues

Okay. I have time for a quick breath since I got volunteered to run an experiment at 9, and I have office hours at 11. Some random thoughts on our Illini.

The Stylin' Illini (thanks, Scoop). Still the best team in the country. We just took our foot off the throttle and let someone zip by us when we weren't looking. That's OK. All things being equal, you'd rather win than lose, but if you can still learn a lesson after a loss, then great.

Of course, I'm not convinced that we've learned our lesson. A few things to note:

1) We still like to use Roger to guard much bigger guys. That seems to lead to easy baskets for the other team in important situations. That really should change once we see some huge guy get 2 easy ones on him. I mean, the good Reverend is massive in comparison to normal humans. But he's giving up 2 inches and 25 pounds to most 4's out there. That's like Martha Stewart trying to keep from having to toss a Mighty Bertha salad while she was away on leave for the last few months.

2) Our in-game tactics are somewhat suspect, too. First of all, teams have scouted our our alley-oops. They get broken up more then they work now. Time to run that play from a different set. It's a bad sign when the other team is telling our guys where to cut.

3) Dee's fallen in love with that 3-point shot in someone's face. That's not high percentage. Open 3's are great. Contested ones? Not so much. I'm OK with someone missing open shots. That will happen. Taking bad shots? Not good, and if he's off, someone needs to yank Dee over and remind him to stay in the flow.

4) No more stalling out the offense, unless you have a really good reason to, and being up by 4 with 2 minutes left is not a good reason. Up by 4 with a minute left is. Here's the thing. All year, we've seen how teams will try to slow down the game on us by just dribbling out 25 seconds before triggering an offense. If the defense cuts off your initial move, this leads to kicking the ball out to someone 27 feet away, not in position to score, with only 6 or 7 seconds left on the clock. This is why we force turnovers and bad shots in the half-court. Of course, we then start to do the same thing. We let Ohio St. back into that game the last 3 minutes when we stopped trying to play offense, and tried to just take a knee and let the clock run out.

5) Last point. We need to know our opponents. When you're playing poker, if you know that you're superior to an opponent, you don't make risky calls when someone puts you all-in. You should be convinced that you're winning. You may not always be right, but that's how you play. Given more time, the better team is more likely to win. On the converse, if you're the inferior team, you're looking to exploit any possible opening. You go all-in if you're slightly ahead in the hand. You're looking for that one shot to take down a top gun because you know that if you have to play it out over the long haul, you'll get beat. Knowing that, realizing that we're up by 2 with 10 seconds left to go, what do you expect the inferior team to do? They're going to go for it all. You have to know that a 3 pointer is going up. They're much more likely to beat us by 3 points in one possession than they are to beat us by 1, given 10 possessions (like in overtime).

When it was all on the line, Thad Matta made Bruce Weber look like Chris Webber. Granted, Thad Matta is one of the truly excellent in-game coaches today, but still... why did it feel like we had Mike Martz on the sidelines? Now, I'm of the belief that we'll figure this out and just throttle teams, so that coaching tactics won't matter, but imagine this... tied ball game. 2 minutes left to go. Both teams have 3 timeouts left. Who would you rather have on the sidelines? Bruce Weber? Or Coach K? Rick Pitino? Bob Huggins? Boeheim? Calhoun? Tubby? Roy Williams? Gary Williams? Billy Dee Williams? Lute Olson? Bill Self? Mark Few? Eddie Sutton? Skip Prosser? Paul Hewitt? Tom Izzo? Bo Ryan? Rick Barnes? Larry Eustachy? That guy's my idol.

We've seen Weber allow bad matchups to linger way too long. Not switching Head earlier on to Pierce against Iowa at home (allowing Deron to get his 3rd and 4th fouls when Luther had none, making that game close, when we should have killed them). Leaving Powell on Breuner in the same game (he was their only offense, other than Pierce). Leaving Powell on Dials. Leaving Powell on Wilkinson. Switching on the high screen, leaving Dee on Sylvester. If your players don't recognize that, you need to call a 30, get them over and let them know where to switch and where to stay. (BTW - switching that screen is the best way to allow mismatches. Personally, I prefer hedge and recover. You can make your guys fight through, but that takes energy out of you and can often lead to easy buckets when there's a miscommunication...).

As far as where Weber stands, I'm not sure where I'd rank all of the coaches, but here's the thing. It's very, very likely that once you hit the Sweet 16, Weber will be in the bottom half of coaches remaining. If it comes down to a situation where coaching tactics can swing a game by 3 or 4 points... let's just say that I'd like Weber to have some more seasoning. If this is the NBA where you get 7 games to assert your dominance over a team, then I love our chances. Problem is, with one and done, you have to make sure that you're not letting an inferior opponent even have a chance to throw that haymaker, much less land it.

Like I said - it probably won't even matter. We're a cut above the other squads out there (save possibly UNC) and can play any style that anyone will want to throw out at us. We can run and gun. We can bump and grind. We can even alternate seamlessly. I just really hope that it doesn't come down to tactics. Because at that point, I'll just be hoping that I'm proven wrong.

But here's the call. We'll be stylin' and profilin' in April at the Arch.

-Chairman