Illinois Defensive Matchups | Page 2 | The Boneyard

Illinois Defensive Matchups

The thing that would worry me is if they put Hawkins at the 5 to bring Clingan out the paint. If they did that they’d have a huge disadvantage on the boards and on defense though.
Yeah, that matchup is a give and take. Clingan will put Hawkins in a body bag on the offensive end, but I think if you’re underwood, you have to do it. With Castle on Shannon, you can’t also have Clingan camped in the paint.
 
Their margin yesterday is a bit misleading because of all the missed FT. And that seems a bit unusual. They shoot about 74% for the year. I think our D vs theirs has to be the difference because they can score. St John’s put up 90 on us. I don’t think we want that type of game with Illinois. There really aren’t’ many teams left that we can write down as a win. And I actually thought SDSU was one of them based on how close almost all their games were against meh competition.
we also put up 95 pts on St Johns and their mid 50's rated defense versus Illinois mid 80's rated defense. Run our offense the way we've been running it and the open shots will be there to make
 
we also put up 95 pts on St Johns and their mid 50's rated defense versus Illinois mid 80's rated defense. Run our offense the way we've been running it and the open shots will be there to make
Yes on our O. But getting into a shoot out with them is a little risky. We had to have 95 to win that SJ game. Illinois is a better offensive team than the JohnnIes.
 
Marquette beat them earlier this year - call Shaka and see what he says. Illinois has a very good offense - right up there with ours (UConn 1 vs Illinois 2 on KenPom). Their defense is rated 84th while UConn is 6th. They have to guard us too and that's where the advantage is
In last year's Elite 8 we played a team with an offense equally as good as ours, but with a D that was much worse, and we won by 30.
 
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I think our size on defense is going to present them problems as much (if not more) than their size does ours.
Their backcourt is like 6'6, 6'6 6'6 and probably accustomed to getting to bully smaller guards. Not so with us. And that doesn't even get to the impact of Clingan (though I expect them to mitigate this by pulling their center to the 3 point line).

Our individual on-ball D will be a major factor, and I think Castle, Newton, and Diarra are up to the challenge. Spencer may need some help.
 
i haven't watched enough illinois. how mobile is hawkins on those threes? is it reasonable for clingan to run with him?
 
i haven't watched enough illinois. how mobile is hawkins on those threes? is it reasonable for clingan to run with him?
He's very mobile and shoots 38% on 4.5 attempts per game. I'm not particularly worried about Clingan guarding him but Samson is a much better matchup. Clingan will give up some points on defense but he's going to eat him alive on offense like the Northwestern game
 
Their margin yesterday is a bit misleading because of all the missed FT. And that seems a bit unusual. They shoot about 74% for the year. I think our D vs theirs has to be the difference because they can score. St John’s put up 90 on us. I don’t think we want that type of game with Illinois. There really aren’t’ many teams left that we can write down as a win. And I actually thought SDSU was one of them based on how close almost all their games were against meh competition.
Their backcourt is like 6'6, 6'6 6'6 and probably accustomed to getting to bully smaller guards. Not so with us. And that doesn't even get to the impact of Clingan (though I expect them to mitigate this by pulling their center to the 3 point line).

Our individual on-ball D will be a major factor, and I think Castle, Newton, and Diarra are up to the challenge. Spencer may need some help.
So you think Clingan will follow Hawkins to 3 point line? How many and at what % does Hawkins shoot 3’s?
 
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Yes on our O. But getting into a shoot out with them is a little risky. We had to have 95 to win that SJ game. Illinois is a better offensive team than the JohnnIes.
And Illinois is a worse defensive team than St John's - we will have open shots against their defense.
 
So you think Clingan will follow Hawkins to 3 point line? How many and at what % does Hawkins shoot 3’s?
Their main lineup is a true 5-out offense, Hawkins takes half his shots from 3, and makes a good clip.

We can either park Clingan in the paint and hope Hawkins doesn't go 5-8, or lose his rim protection and rebounding.
 
Newton needs to be careful on that. Sometimes he throws a lazy pass and knows it.

I think the key will be UConn playing a full 40 minutes. They haven't had to do that yet in the tournament. Even Diarra and Cam have thrown some soft passes at times. I think ironically it's Clingan and Karaban that always seem to have at least a little zip on the passes.
Many have described them as streaky and the best thing to beat a streaky team is to consistent on the defensive end and never let them feel like anything they throw up will go in.
 
The thing that would worry me is if they put Hawkins at the 5 to bring Clingan out the paint. If they did that they’d have a huge disadvantage on the boards and on defense though.
Let Coleman Hawkins take threes. Lock up Shannon and have Clingan anchoring our D down low.
 
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Getting into a shootout bodes well for UConn, because we have the defense to get a few stops down the stretch and they do not
All I’m saying is that they are dangerous in a shoot out and better at it than St Johns. You disagree? 95-90 vs St. John’s wasn’t our shining night. 90 points isn’t a lot of defensive stops.. I think it is risky against Illinois, especially if our shooting is off. Our D must be the key and, as usual, keep DC out of foul trouble.
 
All I’m saying is that they are dangerous in a shoot out and better at it than St Johns. You disagree? 95-90 vs St. John’s wasn’t our shining night. 90 points isn’t a lot of defensive stops.. I think it is risky against Illinois, especially if our shooting is off. Our D must be the key and, as usual, keep DC out of foul trouble.
I do disagree, they're a really good team and better than St John's on offense, but they're a much worse defensive team than St John's. They don't force turnovers and much like UConn like to force teams off the 3 point line, which I think UConn will be more than happy to do and let Clingan abuse Hawkins inside and our guards drive to the basket.

St John's is also the only team to break 70 points since January 10th so I'm not even really sure of the relevance. And that includes 5 games against Creighton and Marquette who are both better offensive teams than St John's. That game was pretty clearly an abberation
 
Their metrics are very similar to Bama. Lots of O, not much D. Interesting matchup - but again - play our game our way and it should play out in our favor.

At this stage I think this is much more about how Hurley (and staff) have our team prepared and making sure our heads are in the game than who the opponent is. And I've seen no reason to believe that the preparation and focus will be anything short of on point.

We now have the 3rd highest KenPom rating in history with 3 more games left to play. That's how historically good we are.
Fast paced teams who are bad at defending usually don’t do well in tournament. They usually meet the fate Kentucky met. But there is a degree of randomness in the tournament.

slow pace/great D/ weak O > fast pace/Great O/ Weak D.

Ill be pretty shocked if we lost to a team that grades out as bad defensively as Bama and Illinois do
 
I do disagree, they're a really good team and better than St John's on offense, but they're a much worse defensive team than St John's. They don't force turnovers and much like UConn like to force teams off the 3 point line, which I think UConn will be more than happy to do and let Clingan abuse Hawkins inside and our guards drive to the basket.

St John's is also the only team to break 70 points since January 10th so I'm not even really sure of the relevance. And that includes 5 games against Creighton and Marquette who are both better offensive teams than St John's. That game was pretty clearly an abberation
Please note that if it comes down to a shoot out, there is a strong implication that we are not getting the stops all game long that you say we will get in crunch time. I guarantee you that the last thing Hurley wants is a shoot out. i hope we don’t get to find out. If they are a much worse defensive team than the Johnnies we should score an easy 100.
 
All I’m saying is that they are dangerous in a shoot out and better at it than St Johns. You disagree? 95-90 vs St. John’s wasn’t our shining night. 90 points isn’t a lot of defensive stops.. I think it is risky against Illinois, especially if our shooting is off. Our D must be the key and, as usual, keep DC out of foul trouble.
We oddly gave up a lot of ORB in that game. St. John’s had a great shooting night from 3. And they took 17 more shots then us in a pretty up and down game.
 
Please note that if it comes down to a shoot out, there is a strong implication that we are not getting the stops all game long that you say we will get in crunch time. I guarantee you that the last thing Hurley wants is a shoot out. i hope we don’t get to find out. If they are a much worse defensive team than the Johnnies we should score an easy 100.
They have little to no rim protection and Iowa State got to the bucket at will. Their guards were just small and struggled to finish.

Similarly, they're lazy at defense. They make aggressive attempts to jump the passing lane, but forcing them into a deliberate defense is exactly the sort of thing that will lead to defensive breakdowns and wear them down on offense.

Nothing against Underwood, but he ain't Pitino.
 
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The thing that would worry me is if they put Hawkins at the 5 to bring Clingan out the paint. If they did that they’d have a huge disadvantage on the boards and on defense though.
No snark, just asking a question I don't know the answer to:

How did Illinois do against Purdue/Edey?
 
Full court ball pressure— they. Have no pg

Not team pressure. Ball handler. Diarra will be nightmare for them
 
No snark, just asking a question I don't know the answer to:

How did Illinois do against Purdue/Edey?

Lost by single-digits both times. Edey played okay in the first game, and had 28 in the second game.
 
I like the idea of putting Clingan on Rodgers so he can float towards the ball handler off ball. If Hawkins is capable of posting up Karaban consistently, move Clingan back over.

Just like playing Clingan off Ledee was an idea on here, I really doubt this happens. It will be interesting to see what we do. This matchup could be big one for Samson. At the end of the day, Hawkins isn't going to beat you... If we shut down Shannon, we win. So we keep Clingan in the post.

IMO they have one player who can beat us. We have 5 who could beat them. Illinois is a damn good team, so this probably won't be easy, but we have more margin for error.
 
I do disagree, they're a really good team and better than St John's on offense, but they're a much worse defensive team than St John's. They don't force turnovers and much like UConn like to force teams off the 3 point line, which I think UConn will be more than happy to do and let Clingan abuse Hawkins inside and our guards drive to the basket.

St John's is also the only team to break 70 points since January 10th so I'm not even really sure of the relevance. And that includes 5 games against Creighton and Marquette who are both better offensive teams than St John's. That game was pretty clearly an abberation
Creighton had like 84 against us in our loss
 
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