Jenksismyhero

How disgusting is college athletics when a dude that was blackballed from the sport for decades for lying to the NCAA, and who was eventually allowed back into coaching only to do the same thing again, is the hottest commodity out there?

QUOTE (Jake @ Mar 18, 2014 -> 08:30 AM) It does seem off that the excesses of the program tend to be distributed everywhere except the players. The players need not get everything -- Nick Saban, the infrastructure at Alabama, etc. all play a big role in player success and revenue generation -- but it seems like there ought to be some way to spread the benefits to the players. The coaches are in a marketplace that demands higher salaries. The players have a hard cap. Even if it doesn't come in the form of paychecks, can there be some way to cut off some of the excess revenue generation and make it benefit the players rather than fighting tooth and nail to keep it from doing so? Is this really true? From a fans perspective, it seems to me that the perks of being a D1 scholarship athlete have gotten a lot better over the last 20 years.

Everyone remember to not watch the basketball game tonight against the Thunder. It means nothing and therefore cannot be enjoyed.

Florida, Creighton, Wichita State, Michigan State. Dougie McBuckets and the Shockers are for real.

QUOTE (Brian @ Mar 17, 2014 -> 11:25 AM) Lip is the only likable Gallagher. When the girl went up to Debbie with the bat, I laughed. I'll say it again: what they're doing to Fiona basically flies in the face of everything we've been shown/told about her the last 3 seasons. It's basically a complete 180 and it looks like it's going to get even worse.

QUOTE (GoSox05 @ Mar 17, 2014 -> 10:02 AM) Who laughs at something like that? I think if you step back and look at the situation, it was kind of ludicrous.

QUOTE (Tex @ Mar 16, 2014 -> 04:08 PM) My middle school girls and boys both finished third in our first two tournaments. Sizing up the competition, that may be as good as it gets. The top team has the country club kids from our town. We may catch the second place team one of these meets. On the best note, my top 8th grade female is very coach-able. She was already developing into a solid player but had some set up, posture, and swing plane issues. We needed to move her hands closer to her body and stand a little more upright. She stuck with the changes even though she went downhill a little bit. Last week she won her first invitational by three strokes. Her dad called me and said he had promised her clubs when she won her first tournament. They were planning a shopping trip. On the boy's side I had a kid finish in the top 5 in his first ever tournament. It may have been a combination of beginner's luck and poor score keeping. Anyway, it decided that he really needed to practice more with his driver and skip all that short game stuff I've been preaching. He finished last for our team in his second tournament. I must say I an enjoying coaching more than playing at this point. I still take a few swings each practice to demo some stuff. But seeing new players hit a solid shot where they intended is pretty cool. That's awesome. Golf is one of those sports that can teach you good life lessons (patience, persistence, love for the outdoors, etc.). Even when I play bad, I always enjoy my time out on the course. And there's always a new challenge to overcome (and some challenges that you never overcome despite decades of trying). I went to Golfsmith this weekend for a club fitting session and ordered up some new clubs. Got the Taylormade Bladez irons from last year and the R1 adjustable driver, all for about $775 including tax. I'm torn on the adjustable driver because I think it will keep me from correcting my swing, but really on my drives i've had a pretty consistent fade/slice for the last 15 years. I'll go a few rounds with the problem "fixed" and then i'll spend the rest of the summer back in the same funk. If I can adjust the face angle slightly and get the ball to go straight, well, that would be great.

QUOTE (pittshoganerkoff @ Mar 17, 2014 -> 07:56 AM) Tough to watch episode of The Walking Dead last night. TWD and Shameless were not good for many laughs last night. I think, for the most part, the TWD scene worked for me. Seems like some people were shocked and horrified, others laughed. I was kind in the middle, shocked but I also chuckled at it being a little ludicrous.

So at what point does the debris sink for good?

QUOTE (Brian @ Mar 17, 2014 -> 05:46 AM) Why not try hosting in Bloomington or AllState? They tried Bloomongtin in the past but the NCAA denied the request. Not sure why Huff wouldn't work. What's the capacity there?

Illinois a 2. Would like their chances better if they had some home games. Oh well. Indiana not invited. Ouch. Quite the fall in one season.

QUOTE (illinilaw08 @ Mar 14, 2014 -> 02:56 PM) On 1, you can never have too many guards in CBB. It's reasonable to have a 5 guard rotation. Starks spells Tracy at the 1. Whoever doesn't start out of Cosby/Rice/Nunn takes on the Bertrand role this year. Plenty of minutes to go around. And are you really complaining about too many guys at a position? On 2, there are tons of options at the 4. Paul/Black/Hill should reasonably be able to give you consistent rebounding/effort points. The small lineups will feature Hill at the 4. On 3, some combination of Abrams and Cosby will provide offense at the 1. And you don't need Egwu to score if he's as much of a difference maker on defense as he was down the stretch. Today was a perfect example of Egwu. He got second chance points and influenced the game significantly defensively. It is also reasonable to expect that Morgan will make a leap from Year 1 to Year 2 allowing Egwu to play less minutes which, hopefully, translates to better jump shooting. This team closed the season really well (we all know how hard it is to win on the road in the B1G - especially when you are a mediocre team - so I find it odd that you are saying the win @East Lansing wasn't a really, really good win). Yeah, there are question marks but if you can't see why next year's team should be much better than this year, I don't know what to tell you. 1) Too many guards is not a problem, but when you're trying to project "when we add player A and B we'll be X much better!" it doesn't really work like that. Someone is going to be losing minutes. My guess is that Groce sticks with Abrams because of his "bulldog toughness" and all that, just like he stuck with Bertrand. I doubt anyone will be better than Rice, and Nunn is your future star. So adding Starks and Crosby is going to be nice, and we won't have to deal with Tate anymore, but I'm not sure that's such a huge jump in guard play simply based on available minutes. If they're all shooting 40% from three, maybe you got 4 guards and Egwu. Otherwise your 10 and 12 ppg projections don't mean much. 2) See, this is where the blind optimism comes in. Expecting ANYTHING out of Paul or Black next year is a complete crap shoot. We have no idea how they'll fair against Big Ten competition. None. It took Nunn/Hill 3/4 of the season to make big impacts. That may or may not happen with those guys. 3) We'll see what happens at PG next year. Does Groce take the tough defensive guy, or the offensive guy that can get the offense going (an assumption that Crosby can/will do this). MSU was a great win, but this was such a goofy Big Ten season. MSU lost weird games at home, Wisconsin lost weird games at home. Not much of this season really made sense. You take it as a good win and you move on. They also lost to NW. They lost to Purdue. They lost to Penn State. You can say the roster changed up, and that's true, but again, 3 of your starting 5 still lost to those crappy teams.

QUOTE (illinilaw08 @ Mar 14, 2014 -> 02:48 PM) I agree with you if this is an argument about semantics. Nothing in sports is a "lock." Next year's Illinois team should be much improved, but unless a team is an NC contender, no one is a lock for the tournament. The weaknesses this year, in my mind, were (1) depth, and (2) shooting. It's not a coincidence that the best stretch for Illinois this year came when Hill and Nunn were ready for big minutes (helping with both 1 and 2). Illinois doesn't have a top 10 recruiting class next year by an ordinary metric (incoming freshmen), but I would be surprised if anyone in the B1G gets greater production from newcomers next year than Illinois (save maybe Ohio State with as good as their class looks). Cosby averaged better than 12 ppg on 40% 3 pt shooting in the Big East last year. Starks averaged better than 10 ppg on 40% 3 pt shooting in the Pac-12. Darius Paul has the lowest pedigree of the three, but averaged 10 and 6 as a freshman. Add to that Leron Black, a top 40 incoming freshman at a position of need, and it's reasonable to see why Illinois is adding a LOT to next year's roster (and that's without taking into account reasonable improvement from Year 1 to Year 2 for Hill and Nunn). Illinois loses very, very little this year. Ekey was useful. Bertrand had his moments. But both were really limited players whose minutes should easily be replaced (Bertrand by Cosby; Ekey by either greater minutes for Hill or some combination of Paul/Black). So Illinois improves both depth and shooting next year from a team that won 5 of its last 7 (Nebraska, @Minnesota, @MSU, @Iowa, Indiana) with both losses coming to Michigan. I don't think anyone here is saying that Illinois is going to be a National Championship contender next year, but anything less than the NCAA tournament would be an extreme disappointment. Contrast that to this season when lots of people expressed concern about depth (10 eligible scholarship players, 5 of whom were freshmen) and shooting before the season. The point here... Groce has done a very impressive job of remaking this roster after the end of last season. This year was always going to be a down year because of the roster turnover. It's unreasonable to not be optimistic about Illinois basketball next year. I agree with basically all of this, i'm just trying to temper expectations of being THAT much better. Yes, a tournament berth should be the expectation and it would be disappointing to miss out again next year based on what they have coming in and the hopeful jump that Nunn and Hill will take again next year. But I wouldn't call it a lock and I certainly wouldn't say a 7 seed or better is a lock. Keep in mind the shooting problems will continue next year. Abrams and Egwu are still your starters. Rice/Nunn/Hill played a lot of minutes here at the end and they weren't exactly lighting the world on fire. I understand that Crosby and Starks come in with a proven track record, but whose minutes do they take? And how much can you realistically expect from Black in his first season? I think if he contributes as much as Hill did you run away happy. And Hill was good, but not some unstoppable offensive force.

QUOTE (Boogua @ Mar 14, 2014 -> 02:48 PM) Alright, so just throw out the wins and lets focus on the losses. Sorry for the blind optimism. Also, we exceeded expectations last year and met expectations this year. I'm saying let's look at both. They also lost games this year too. They didn't play well at times. They had the worse losing streak in 70 something years. You have to factor that in as well.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Mar 14, 2014 -> 02:41 PM) At least this took my attention away from this horrific team that "should" have been better this year. Ugh. Another example of "locks" being a bunch of nonsense. OSU was supposed to be a final four contender. They're not even a top 25 team.

QUOTE (Boogua @ Mar 14, 2014 -> 02:32 PM) So it's wishful thinking because they haven't made much noise since 2005, with 6 of those years coming under a completely different coach. Got it. Completely disagree with the question marks. The starting lineup returns for a team that won 5 out of their last 7 including 3 road wins against 3 likely tournament teams and was a blown bunny away from beating #8 michigan. Come on now... MSU was a gift. They were hurt, not at full strength. Iowa was/is terrible right now. And Minnesota is about as average as you can get. It's nice to see them finish the season well, but I wouldn't call that some amazing sign that this team has what it takes to compete for a top 25 spot all season. Where the hell is all this blind optimism coming from? We're freaking Illinois people. We rarely meet or exceed expectations.

QUOTE (bigruss22 @ Mar 14, 2014 -> 02:18 PM) Illini fans are going to be more optimistic about next year about their chances, 1) we know more about the transfers and how they fill huge needs for us 2) every fan is more likely to be optimistic of their team than others (besides B>w ). Personally, if we aren't making it to the 2nd weekend of the tourney next year I would be disappointed. We'll be deep, experienced, and have strong starting talent with much more balance in our offensive skill sets. Obviously injuries, etc can impact that viewpoint, but again this team is pointing up. I don't disagree. Things are looking better. I just can't go so far as to predict this team is a "lock" for a top 25ish, top 7ish seed. That's insane with so many question marks. I would have said Indiana was a lock for the tourney this year and it didn't work out. And not because of injury, just because they had a lot of good talent on paper that didn't really pan out as their fans had hoped. I mean, you guys realize it'll be basically the same team next year but with a slightly better supporting cast right? It'll be the same starting five next year. You hope that the transfers can be better than Ekey and Bertrand. But that's not a certainty. Here are my issues with next years team: (1) Too many guards for this expected mass turn around - Abrams/Rice/Nunn are your starters. How do Starks and Crosby fit in? How do they play defense? Nunn shows flashes. Rice shows flashes. And both, Rice especially though, disappear for long stretches. (2) The four spot is a sophomore and a freshman. How's that going to work out over 40 minutes a game? Or do you go small (Starks is 6'2", Crosby is under 6') and give up rebounding? (3) The PG and C on the team aren't consistent threats offensively. Abrams will have a good game and then have 5 games with less than 5 pts. He didn't progress this year, why would you think that would change next year? Same with Egwu. All that stuff about him shooting 10000 shots, and by the end of the year he couldn't hit a jump shot to save his life. You can't rely on that.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Mar 14, 2014 -> 01:23 PM) They've been called to improve for years with nothing to show for it. Who can blame the skepticism? On top of that its not like they are pulling in top 10 recruiting classes. Bingo. Look, I want Illinois to be dominate again as much as the next fan, but this expectation for next year is akin to the NC talk back when Richmond committed. It's great to think so positively, but being a realist isn't a bad thing either. The reality is next year's team is still going to rely on a PG that isn't a true PG and doesn't have a great offensive game (Abrams), a SG that can go off for 30 but also be held to 2 (Rice), and a center that is basically a non factor on one end of the court (Egwu). Nunn and Hill hopefully take a leap, and hopefully Crosby and Starks can be immediate impact guys. But we'll have to wait and see.

QUOTE (Brian @ Mar 14, 2014 -> 01:17 PM) So did Rice's uncontested finger role/dunk attempt/airball lose it? They had about 5 missed layups that game (and seemingly every game).

QUOTE (Boogua @ Mar 14, 2014 -> 01:15 PM) Not according to some on this board. Haven't you heard? Illinois players won't improve. Name me a player that improved significantly from last year to this year. Egwu learned to stop fouling. That's about it. I wouldn't call them a lock at all next year. That should be the expectation, but it's no guarantee.

QUOTE (Brian @ Mar 14, 2014 -> 01:02 PM) Phelps and Williams ripping it now Meh, you go zone and that's expected. You switch to man and maybe the play that was designed gets messed up. It's not as if that was a great look/shot.

How perfect. Missed lay up/floater near the rim. Perfect summation of the season.

This is why Michigan will lose early in the tournament. Live and die by the three. Why they're jacking up contested threes at this point is beyond me.

Another missed lay up. And i'm surprised he didn't get continuation there.

Ugh. I've never seen a team miss so many f'n layups.