And… the Mega-Jinx

So much for the vaunted Braggin’ Rights streak.  Probably should’ve known better than to gloat before the game…

Talking to my brother and other fellow fans after the game, the consensus goes something like this:  The Illini aren’t very good.  They lack toughness, rebounding, and continuously get beat off the dribble.  They rely too much on jump-shooting on offense and lack poise.  At this point, it’s a dog-fight to reach the NCAA tournament, and I don’t really see it happening.  Adjust your expectations on this team: they have a long way to go.

Merry Christmas!

Your Pentagram thoughts on the game:

Keep on Braggin’

It’s a simple bit of calculus:  Beemsville presence at the annual Braggin’ Rights basketball game in St. Louis = Illini victory over Mizzou*.   We’ve attended nine straight games at the Kiel/Savvis center and tonight will make number 10.  Here’s hoping the Orange & Blue can run the table on the decade of the aughts.  It’s become a beloved holiday tradition:  a little last minute shopping at Union Station, a nice meal at Landry’s, and another win for the good guys.  I know, I know, I’m inviting the mega-jinx here, but despite the current team’s uneven road performances, we should be able to handle the Tiggers.  If there was a year for them to break the streak it was last year, when they had a much better team in terms of sheer talent.

Keys to the game:

• McCamey needs to be on the floor.  Shouldn’t matter if he scores 5 points or 25, as long as he’s there to breakdown the Mizzou pressure and run the team, we should be good.  Last year his string of three-pointers in the first half built the Illini lead and put the game out of reach.
• One of the Mike’s needs a big game. Mizzou has lost their front-court bruisers from a year ago and either Tisdale or Davis should benefit from the lack or experience and probably open looks in the transition game.
• A freshman needs to step up. Don’t care if it’s DJ, Brandon, or Griff – one of them needs to have a good double-figure scoring night and show some moxie.  So far they’ve been pretty bad away from Champaign.

Let’s get another one and start the holidays right.  Go Illini!

*Sadly, the converse of this equation seems to be in effect for the Arch Rivalry Football game.

Ronnie G Does It Again?

About six weeks or so after letting us all know head football coach Ron Zook was staying but “changes would be made”, U of I alum and Athletic Director Ron Guenther emerged from the wilderness last week with two shiny new coordinators in tow.  Paul Petrino, formerly of Arkansas and various other places his brother Bobby has coached of late is the new Offensive Coordinator, and Vic Koenning, most recently at Kansas State, will serve as Defensive Coordinator.  Both new assistants will make big money (among the most in the Big 10) and presumably take a larger share of the decisions and strategy on themselves as part of the new football way espoused by Guenther.

And what is this new method?  Call it the Paterno method or the Bowden method.  You simply let your top assistants run their units and call most of the shots while representing the program.  The Zooker is a great recruiter and a players’ coach and he represents the University well.  But the results haven’t been there, mostly due to a lack of discipline (stupid penalties and mistakes), lack of fundamentals, and inability to make tactical adjustments.  In other words he ain’t the best gameday coach.

Pentagram: Vandy @ Illinois

Coach Weber once again got the drop on a former fellow Boilermaker with a 79-68 win over Kevin Stallings and Vanderbilt in  Champaign.  The Illini continue to look impressive on offense – especially against teams without overly physical guards.  When you shoot 60% from the field you’re going to win.  Of course the coaching staff remains concerned about what happens when you don’t shoot all that well and you can’t man up defensively(see Utah second half, Bradley, Clemson first half).  Still, give me a team that can score and needs to improve their defense…

Five points in the pentagram.

Pentagram: All-time Comeback

Some otherwise loyal Illini fans were kicking their dog, throwing the remote, and/or flipping on the PlayStation or movie or whatever after that first half.  I know this because I got the texts from some of them.  And I was very, very close myself, but I wanted to see if anyone would respond in the second half as well as whether McCamey would continue to get the shaft from the officials.  What I and the rest of the truly loyal saw was the all-time comeback victory for Illinois basketball, 76-74 over #18 Clemson.  At Clemson.  With terrible officiating (at least in the first half).

Many are familiar with the old cliche, ‘attitude adjustment’ – and this is precisely what happened after the half.  The Illini “looked like whipped dogs”, as color radio-man Jerry Hester put it, but that all changed when Demetri McCamey settled the team down against the Clemson pressure and guys started to hit some shots.  Of course Clemson also put it in cruise control and played poorly during that stretch, but the last five minutes were back-and-forth and the Illini found a way to make plays.  The win, along with the Badgers’ upset of Duke propelled the Big 10 to victory in the incessantly annoying ACC/Big 10.  Take that, east-coast biased hoops media.

Five points to your all-time comeback pentagram…

Troublesome Illini Weekend

Illini fans had a rough holiday weekend.  First we had the football team’s loss to Cincinnati, a game in which our quarterback missed open receivers left-and-right, the defense looked completely at a loss, which allowed Illinois to prove how not good they are against a top ten team on national television.  The Bearcats, by the way, play the spread offense the correct way – the way Illinois should – but to run it that way you need an accurate passer and willingness to throw.

Then it was the basketball team’s turn to disappoint.  Bruce Weber’s boys got the chance to play a pair of non-cupcakes away from home in Las Vegas and promptly lost both games.  First they let a 32-16 halftime lead slip away against Utah, a game I didn’t watch due to the internet-only TV coverage, but from all reports sounded like the Illini went passive in the second half, trying to work the clock and maintain the lead, which allowed the Utes to adjust, come back, and win on a last second shot in which Illinois forgot to send anyone back on defense.

Against in-state school Bradley, Illinois was simply outworked and outfought.   This was game the team from Peoria seemed to want more (hence storming the floor like it was an NCAA tourney game at the end).  The Braves built an 8-point lead, which Illinois chipped away at in the second half to move ahead by five with about three minutes to go.  After that, Bradley scored nine of the next 11 points, the Orange & Blue, managed a pair of free throws, and that’s how you choke away a second loss in two games.

Pentagram: Illini Basketball Preview

The Fighting Illini 09-10 Basketball season tips off tonight against SIU-Edwardsville.  Coach Weber has four freshman to incorporate, three of which have already proven they will play (and Joseph Bertrand might be in that mix too if not for a knee injury), and his top three returning scorers in McCamey, Davis, and Tisdale.  Illinois has three more talented players coming in next year, and Weber deserves a lot of credit for his recent recruiting success.

But if the football team has taught us anything, it’s to be wary of the local hype surrounding the Illini.  Don’t get carried away with lofty prognostications.  That said, we’re optimistic about this year’s hoops team.  They will be fun to watch with young athletic players and depth on the bench.  The days of low-scoring milk-the-shotclock-and-hope offense should be behind us, and we won’t see many more games in the 40s and 50s (let alone that nightmare Penn State game in the 30s).

Last year’s team overachieved its way to a 24-10 record behind the grit of Chester Frazier and the scoring of the now-junior class.  So what do we see for this year?  Five points in the pentagram…

Some Leaves and Stuff

A beautiful fall weekend, the likes of which we rarely see in November, meant a lot of time outside for the kids and a lot of leaves being bagged by the grown-ups.  There was also time for football, soccer, partying, and even some basketball.  But mostly it was the leaves.  With three big old trees in the yard, you just take it in stride…

53 Bags

Illinois’ offense looked competent and borderline good for the second straight week, scoring 35 points against the Gophers.  We’ve said all along the O&B would need 30+ points a game to win; too bad they waited until the season was halfway over to wake up.  Of course the competition has been less stringent after that brutal September, but how much do we attribute to more manageable foes, how much to the Offensive Coordinator finally getting it together, and how much to having a quarterback who can actually pick up blitzers and hit open receivers?  And we note that Minnesota made adjustments at halftime (and the Zooker did not) and nearly caught up after that terrible blocked punt, but Charest hit McGee on a crucial third down and Illinois got that final touchdown.  To their credit, the Illini never gave up on the season and still have the Illinois rivarly with Northwestern and a winnable home game against Fresno State.  Win those two and we’ll forgive some of the earlier crap…

Hoops Season Pending

Mike D in the House

A quick look at the official website schedule tells us we only have 12 days until the first televised Fighting Illini Basketball exhibition game.  Two weeks after that we have the season opener against SIU-Edwardsville.  For Illini fans, hoops can’t get here soon enough.  We can officially turn our attention to the four heralded freshmen and the talented junior trio of Mike, Mike, and D-Mac.

The Illini are a top 20 kind of team but may not start the season in the polls as it has become fashionable to stock a lot of mid-majors there (a trend Beemsville wholly endorses BTW).  But win against the cupcakes and come into December with one or fewer losses, and the Orange & Blue will get some attention.  If the freshmen can produce and no major injuries befall us, the Illini should contend for the Big 10 – and the conference will be as tough as it’s been in many years.  For a detailed scrimmage report from earlier this year, check out the Rube’s analysis.  More preseason coverage of Coach Weber’s team will be forthcoming.  Turning briefly to…

Illini Fever!

Catch it!  What’s that?  A stable of offensive weapons the likes of which have not been seen in Champaign in many-a-moon?  What?  A new offensive coordinator known for scoring points and rolling up yardage?  Who?   A pair of dark-horse Heisman candidates – wait, HAHAHAHAHAHA.  HA-HA.

We caught the Illini fever.  The boy had about 100 degrees at gametime, a holdover from the little girl’s earlier illness, but like any right-thinking alumni parents, we went to the game anyway, expecting a cure for what ailed us.  We coughed up too much dough in hopes of finally seeing the Orange & Blue beat the Tiggers at the dome.  Instead we bore witness to one of the illest Illinois performances in recent memory. 

To quote the Zooker (and in keeping with the theme): “I feel sick for these guys.  I feel sick for them. I feel sick for the Illini Nation. It’s up to us to make sure we get that fixed.“

We’re all feeling the sickness today.  It’s a good thing beloved President Obama is going to fix healthcare and provide free cures for everyone!  But seriously, did Juice throw the ball down the field even once?  No?  And just what was that strange-looking permutation of the spread?  You run the spread to score points, not play ball control (as the coaches claimed was our objective).  You want to play ball control, line up like Wisconsin or Iowa and run between the tackles.  Otherwise, well …  Nevermind.  It’s not even worth it.

Suffice to say you will not see anymore Illini football blogging on Beemsville until there’s something worth commenting upon.  Because we’re sick of it already.