thedoctor

QUOTE(SleepyWhiteSox @ Jan 14, 2007 -> 11:48 PM) No more illini updates?? no, it's clear all illinois fans have now quit supporting their team. anyways... much like krush i watched via dvr. no doubt a brutal second-stretch totally cost them a win. however, i was strangely encouraged by some of the things i saw today. for the first time this year i saw a semblance of a new "team" instead of just various parts trying to find their place. i'm never happy with a loss, but i saw some encouraging things today. either that or i'm just a bit drinky after the bear win.

illinois football added a new defensive line recruit today, 6-foot-4, 320-pound defensive tackle renaldo sagesse out of montreal. he's only rated a three-star prospect, primarily because he's canadian, doesn't speak much english, and hasn't been scouted heavily. however his is a monster and has some ridiculous speed measureable and reportedly is running sub-4.8 40s. who knows how accurate that is. sagesse either way, the defensive line recruiting has been stellar in this class, which is important considering that's possibly our weakest defensive position. however, there has been rumors that d'angelo mccray is waffling on his commitment, so i'm not counting on him until his fax arrives in champaign.

QUOTE(Jimbo @ Jan 13, 2007 -> 11:11 PM) Illinois fans who is Ed Warriner, he is the new OC at Kansas. warriner was our o-line coach and i think he previously held that position at kansas (maybe d-line coach there, too) so he had some jayhawk connections. in terms of his performance, our o-line was so-so last year. we were pretty good at run-blocking but bad at pass blocking. and talent wasn't a problem on o-line, considering we had two kids who were five-star prospects starting at points this year (millington and o'donnell). he did do a good job bringing matt maddox along.

a marginal catcher who at best projected as a career back-up for a guy who throws upper 90s and is young? seems like a no-brainer to me.

big win for ohio state and the big ten. this conference desperately needs all the quality non-con wins it can get.

oden=

QUOTE(IlliniKrush @ Jan 11, 2007 -> 10:12 PM) No, it's when will YOU get over the whole EJ thing. You bring it up in basically every post in response to anything any Illinois fan ever says. If you aren't doing that, you're busy posting bulls*** pieces about how Weber's honeymoon is over. And then people wonder why Illinois fans want IU to crash and burn. yep. and anyone with any appreciation for basketball history knows that indiana and illinois have had a good rivalry for a long time. he makes it sounds like it just started when sampson showed up. that just shows no appreciation for the history of the big ten. and for the record, the rivalry was 10 times more heated back in the day than it is now. knight and henson were classic. "he's a big bully." lol.

great game tonight. taylor and tucker played really well. as much as i'm not a huge wisconsin basketball fan i have to say that after a few years tucker has grown into one of my favorite all-time hoops players. he just gets it done. i'm not sure how his game translates to the pro's, but time and time again he gets it done. i'm also becoming more and more convinced that ohio state has a final four team on its hands. i'm not sure they're going to win it all, but i truly believe they'll be right there when it's all said and done.

QUOTE(Rex Hudler @ Jan 10, 2007 -> 03:08 AM) A few random thoughts on last's night's debacle.... 1. That was not the OSU team we saw all year long. 2. That was not the Florida team we saw all year long. 3. I think there has to be some validity to the idea that Ohio State was mentally spent after the Michigan game. That game was hyped so much, I think that was their "national championship" game. I think they went into the Florida game at least subconsciously overconfident, if not overtly. Running the opening kickoff back for a TD didn't help in that regard. Neither did your kick returner/star wide receiver getting hurt while celebrating said TD. 4. Anyone who says last night's game was an indictment of how much better SEC football is than the Big Ten is very quickly forgetting the Big Ten was 2-1 head-to-head against the SEC. Last night was one game, not an idictment of how a whole conference plays. That said, there is no doubt the SEC was a better conference top-to-bottom this year, but it is not 41-14 better - except for last night. 5. I have never seen Troy Smith so indecisive and timid as he was last night. He held onto the ball in the pocket way too long and whenever he tried to scramble he seemed to go the wrong way or slip/trip. 6. I agree that OSU should have played more straight up football early in the game, rather than trying to match Florida's spread. 7. Give Florida credit, they put an A-1 ass whippin on OSU last night. 8. In the confines of the regular season, I still think OSU wins 6 or maybe 7 out of 10 times. i'd agree with most of that. last night was kind of a perfect storm in the sense the right combination of things went wrong for ohio state. i'm not saying they ever would have won, but i think there were circumstances that made the score much more lopsided than it would have been nine out of 10 times.

you know, as an illinois fan i'd love to jump on the bandwagon and give zook a bunch of credit for florida's nc, but i just can't do it. any illinois fan wanting to claim credit for zook better be a charter member of the bill self fan club because those situations are very similar. yes, zook brough 23 of 24 (not 22 of 24 because people are missing nelson) recruits into that program. that said, zook has yet to prove he can outcoach anyone and last night urban meyer outcoached jim tressel. so the great majority of credit has to go to meyer and the players he has now, just as the huge majority of credit for illinois's final four run in 05 goes to weber and his players, not self. just trying to be consistent here.

field position has been the story of the game so far. twenty four of the gator points have come on really short fields. with ginn likely out for the game, this is going to be a really tough mountain for ohio state to climb. with ginn maybe. without? not so much. ohio state's receivers aren't even getting open. they look very ordinary right now.

couple more here then gotta go. about 20 minutes to game time. about 65 percent buckeye fans.

QUOTE(Jimbo @ Jan 8, 2007 -> 10:20 PM) They keep the field in the parking lot i have been told yep. but for this game they didn't have time to change the art on the field from the fiesta bowl. so for this game they just rolled a whole new layer of sod over the fiesta bowl field.

just got to the stadium. here's what it's looking like:

some photos from the buckeye bash ohio state rally at chase field today. 37,000 showed up.

QUOTE(Jimbo @ Jan 8, 2007 -> 05:19 AM) Illinois signs another 3 star basketball recruit and no mention. God i feel for you illini fans, such an awesome and loyal fan base and coming off such a great 3 years. Weber is now stealing players from the likes of Utah, Sd State etc..... four-star per rivals, fwiw

hitting the road for phoenix shortly. gotta love free wireless in port columbus airport.

while that may be accurate across the board i think it's worth noting that most illinois basketball observers see simeon as the most fundamentally sound and disciplined team in the state.

QUOTE(IlliniKrush @ Jan 4, 2007 -> 07:40 PM) Really? I'm not so confident in Saturday's game, and that was before last night's letdown. We were favored last night by like 3, and it was a half-empty arena. I don't think we'll be favorites on saturday. Last night's game was just really frustrating because it was very winnable. The guys constantly let up on defense, and when they had opportunities, they forced shots and made some dumb decisions. Saturday will be interesting, Row and I will be there to witness it. well, i didn't say i was hugely confident in the win, i just said i was more confident in a win at home than on the road. that will be the way i look at most games, and percentages would support that. i didn't see the game last night, but from what i've read it was more examples of the same problems that have dogged us early on. in that respect, i didn't need to see it. frankly, people will rag on the talent thing because it's vogue and you don't have to look very closely to form that kind of opinion. spouting "weber can't recruit" is not news, nor is it showing any insight. yet people keep posting it as if it's some revelation. personally, i don't think talent is the biggest problem with this team. a lack of execution, poor position on defense, crappy ball movement, and injuries are problems that i'd put ahead of "talent" right now. that's on bruce as well, but it would be a lot easier to take people seriously in their criticism of him if the criticism was accurate and not just rehash of stuff that's been posted for months.

every coach does not say "i am not going to be the coach at alabama" multiple times and then end up as the coach at alabama two weeks later. there are ways of talking around it that don't make you look like a complete ass when you end up totally contradicting yourself. and he could have simply said, "i have no comment on that." coaches do that all the time.

QUOTE(RockRaines @ Jan 4, 2007 -> 04:21 AM) I just figured it was well known that there has to be a rebuilding period, where he starts to coach his own guys. i think most illinois fans realized this year was going to be a rebuilding year and that there were going to be difficult times. what consistently successful program hasn't had a "down" year after coming off a string of success? it happens and it isn't a call to sound the alarm and forecast the program's demise. illinois will lose one good player this year in carter, and i'd expect them to be a bit more cohesive and better next year. i'd also expect improved guard depth with mccamey coming in, although i do not expect him to start. going forward after that, weber is clearly going to have to step up the level of talent he's bringing in to the program. although i like the quality of bigs he's recruited, his guard recruiting is lacking and that's apparent now. also, i guess i'm a little perplexed at the reaction from some illinois fans (not talking about people here) about the loss last night. maybe it's just a culmination of bad vibes or something, but when i looked at the schedule at the beginning of the season i chalked this up as a loss. we lost there last year and they returned more significant contributors than we did. frankly, i was more confident in a win saturday than i was in this one. lastly, i agree with rowand that illinois will make the tournament. illinois has 12 wins now, and in a down big ten i look at their schedule and see the potential to another 8-10 wins. certainly in a year when many of the so-called mid-majors are strong a 20-win big ten team might not get in, but i think illinois will. they won't be there long though. probably about as long as kansas usually is.

indiana played well at points last night and no doubt shot the ball extremely well from three-point range. that kept them in the game. what took them out of it was their complete inability to defend pick-and-roll. ohio state just ate them up with it over and over again.

QUOTE(IlliniKrush @ Jan 2, 2007 -> 01:13 AM) This is why USC/OSU would have been the best championship game; too bad they had to blow it vs UCLA. Nice season Michigan, but now you can stop complaining. i totally agree that usc/osu would be a better game than florida/osu. usc screwed that bad though. as for michigan, they looked like they were totally unprepared. another bad loss for lllllloyd.

QUOTE(Brian @ Dec 30, 2006 -> 04:18 AM) Xavier over Illinois 65-57 yep. just not real good this year. the league has the potential to be brutal (even in a weak year) if some things don't change. this team has some inherent athletic weaknesses. those can be overcome by smart play, but that ain't happening right now.

QUOTE(knightni @ Dec 29, 2006 -> 05:59 PM) normally i limit myself to one boob-related post each day but this made me lmao.