Illinois Wins At Wisconsin
- Thread starter BillyC80
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First time Illinois has beaten Wisconsin since 2011. The Illini had lost 15 straight against the Badgers.
Big road win for Brad Underwood's club.
Big road win for Brad Underwood's club.
Illinois winning tonight gives them big time mojo heading into our game. Would have preferred them lose.
IL will be a tough matchup for us on Saturday.
I look at it the other way. They are probably less hungry and perhaps a bit over-confident. Either way, we have to bring it on Saturday.
I’m not going to lie, I was quite annoyed they never showed the actual all-time series which we lead by double digits, even after having lost 22 of 25 vs. those pasty polar bears. :P
Huge win for us, but no one is overconfident. We know a hot RU team is coming into Champaign with the belief they can beat us.
I watched the game tonight. It’s always impressive when the road team takes home a win, and from what I saw of their personnel I think we match up as well against Illinois as we did against PSU and Seton Hall. They have two very good players who we will rotate two or three defenders on, and rotate to help out underneath on defense. We have to shoot well from outside and limit their good looks from downtown to win this one. My guess is Illinois will be favored by 4-ish.
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I'm glad they won. It should help ensure we don't show up overconfident. It also could be a letdown game for them coming off an emotional road win that broke a long series losing streak. Should be a good game.
I saw most of the game but unfortunately did not make it until the end. Thought it was well played on both sides. Illinois shot the ball well and Griffin must have picked it up at the end after being saddled with fouls most of the night. In fact several Illini players finished with 4 fouls including their two bigs. I don't think it makes a difference whether they won or lost coming into our game. Underwood seems to do a good job getting them to play consistently at a high level of intensity and effort. We will need to try to turn their aggressiveness into an advantage. Make some shots (including high % of FT's) establish Myles and limit them to one shot per possession and I think we have a shot. Will likely need to play our best game thus far to win.
Illinois shot 43.8% from 3 point range. Their average is 30.8% for the season (including last night). We need force them outside, contest the shots and hope that they shoot their average.
Let’s hope they got those clutch 3’s out of their system.
When you’re fixated on denying every perimeter pass and defending the three, you give up the glass and paint.
We give up 3s, but make life very hard for the opposition in the paint and on the glass.
We just won by double digits hitting 4 jump shots the entire game, we got very few good open jump shot looks, so we scored 50 points by attacking the rim.
Illinois is going to get open 3s, if they shoot their average we win
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This will be one of those most challenging games of the season - we are favored to win, per BPI, the rest of our homes games. BPI gives us only a 30% chance to win in Illinois. This is essentially on par with all our road games. The rest of our home games flip these odds, with us being a 70% favorite. The season will be defined by pulling off a couple road upsets.
LFG.
Rutgers better hit their 3-pt shots against Illinois since Kofi Coburn is tough in the middle.
Wisconsin is a bad shooting club. They should have won.
Wisconsin is a bad shooting club. They should have won.
Why did you quote me on this? Don’t you hope they got the clutch 3’s out of their system?
Good news for us is that Wisconsin doesn't have a defender as good as Young or Mathis. So we should be able to challenge Dosunmu more than the Badgers did.
Bad news is that Trent Frazier had a bad game against Wisconsin and is set up to destroy us, which he always does. He's made 13 three pointers against us in 24 attempts in three games.
More bad news is that Kofi Cockburn exists and is going to make life very difficult for Myles Johnson. Johnson struggled early on with Mike Watkins, and Cockburn is like Watkins but even bigger. We did a good job on him in the second half but we need to bring that kind of defense for all 40 minutes on Cockburn.
Keys:
1. Make Bezhanishvili settle for jump shots. Do not let him get close enough to basket for his hook shots, which he can make with either hand.
2. Don't let Trent Frazier or Alan Griffin get open three-pointers. If we shut those guys down and some combination of Dosunmu, Kipper Nichols, and Andres Feliz end up torching us with three-pointers then you tip your cap.
3. REBOUND! Illinois is not a good shooting team but they make a living off of offensive rebounds and second chances. This is not the game to score a ton of points in transition. We need four or five bodies hitting the glass (not leaking out in transition) every time Illinois throws up a shot.
Seems like you have a good read on the big 10. How do you think we approach this game matchup-wise? Looks like Illinois plays a decent amount with Giorgi and Kofi on the floor. Giorgi killed us in last years game with 35 points.
Of course, but I think our defense will have l lot more to do with it than them just being hot or cold.
When everyone shoots poorly against you, there’s a reason for it.
Offensively, we have the advantage on the wing. Harper, Yeboah, and McConnell could all have good games because they don't really have any talented defenders in the 6'5" to 6'8" range. McConnell had a great game against them last year and even Harper did too... he just couldn't sink a three.
But their defense is different this year, and we're not going to score 60% of our two-point tries. I think we'll see more three-pointers attempted than we did against Penn State, just because driving into the lane near Cockburn is a bad idea. This is where we need the aforementioned trio of Harper, Yeboah, and McConnell to come through. All are capable three-point shooters. I know that's not how Pikiell likes to win but it might be necessary.
Defensively Myles Johnson needs to stay out of foul trouble. He's starting to get some respect from the refs and hasn't racked up more than two fouls since the Wisconsin game, but Cockburn is one of the best in the country at drawing fouls. If Myles is out, then Cockburn is going to be able to feast on Carter and Doucoure (who I think will get some run after getting DNPs the last two games).
Through the years, especially the rugged Bo Ryan teams, Wisconsin is very tough to beat at home. A tip of the hat to the Illini. It accomplished something not done too often, even by the best teams.
A major difference will be RHJ/Yeboah will defend Georgi as opposed to EO/Carter last year. Much better defense. Carter seems more comfortable defensively/offensively guarding/scoring on 5s instead of 4s all last year.
