There’s a nice little moment in this piece where Isaiah notes that Dickinson has picked up a lot of these moves over the last few weeks, notes that he wasn’t as polished when he arrived. (!!!) For those wondering whether he can thrive in the NBA, it seems possible that the guy still has a mountain of upside.
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I don’t know if Giorgi is in Underwood’s doghouse or what. Only 7 minutes tonight. Bad matchup?
He’s strictly Cockburn’s backup. Cockburn played 33 minutes so only 7 for Giorgi
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Curbelo took 12 shots tonight. Seems like if you can force him to take shots that’s a good strategy to defend Illinois, but don’t know if that was attributable to Maryland’s defense or to poor execution by Illinois
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From splits, looks like they’ll try to steal some minutes here or there, but yeah very few Giorgi at PF minutes recently
I agree and he has a great coach who knows how to groom him for the NBA!
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I like Illinois and they have the most talent in the league. But I do think there are ways to beat them and this is one of them. Illinois should be running everything thru Kofi and Ayo. Curbelo is good don’t get me wrong and he makes some spectacular plays. But he is so ball-dominant that it limits Kofi and Ayo to some extent. Really they need Kofi, Ayo and 3 shooters and say good luck trying to defend that. But Curbelo gums that up a bit and Illinois has shown they are prone to outings like this.
I do think you have to credit Maryland to move some usage to Curbelo and they did a nice job making Ayo pretty inefficient by largely keeping him out of the middle and not letting him go right. Morsell being back is a nice piece for them as he did a lot of the work there.
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Does IL have the most talent in the league? Asking not because I am sure of the answer but because I have also seen it asserted that beyond Ayo and Kofi they get thin pretty quickly. One through six I think that WE might have the most talent. . .
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I didn’t watch any of the game except the last couple of minutes so I can’t say this with any confidence…but didn’t Illinois get almost all of their offense from Kofi and Ayo? I think you could argue that they didn’t go back to Kofi enough down the stretch and that he should be a difference maker in the post against most teams - but Ayo took like 23 shots!
What seems to be missing for me is that those other shooters aren’t getting or making enough shots. How do you use the focus on Ayo/Kofi with a little Curbelo in there too, to get open threes for your shooters? Those two guys have 31%/27% usage already.
Something is a little broken with Illinois and the sum of their parts but I’m not sure MORE of Ayo/Kofi explains it all.
Yeah, in a playground draft of the two teams you probably pick Ayo/Kofi as the #1 and #2 picks…but then you’re likely picking 4-5 guys from our team before you take Curbelo.
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I’d take Dickinson with the first pick. I think he’s the best player in college basketball.
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Frazier, Curbelo, Giorgi, 60% 3pt shooter Damonte WIlliams, and Adam Miller is not thin depth
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If you’re just going by volume of consensus top 100 players (not sure it’s the best metric), MSU would be the most talented team in the league with 9 such players and IL and us next at 6 (at least that’s my recollection when I last looked).
EDIT: We are second with 5 (but Franz isn’t counted due to not being from the US so I will call it 6), Illinois third with 4.
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I think Illinois’ issue is that, while talented, they aren’t the most well-constructed team in the league. Their top six players are 4 guards and 2 centers (1 of which is mostly useless because he barely plays since he isn’t effective as a 4). I like Michigan’s roster construction better even if Illinois may have the top 2 players between the two teams.
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Eh I think that’s reading too much into one game. Clearly Ayo and Kofi dominated the scoring/shot volume this game, but against NW they had 4 guys between 14-18 points. The previous game against Purdue they had 4 guys between 10-14.
If you look through their games one by one you’ll see plenty of games where they have a good balance scoring between 4 or so guys, and sometimes you’ll see Kofi and Ayo dominate the scoresheet. But that’s expected, some game those two are good enough where you need to just keep feeding them the ball. And some games the team is struggling to score so the onus falls on those two.
I definitely agree that in this past game, not feeding Kofi as much in the second half was a major problem. But I still think they ran way too much of their offense through Curbelo at the end. Yes Ayo took 23 shots, but if I remember correctly he was 2-11 in the first half and 7-12 in the second. So by the time the game was close in the second half Ayo was the dominant force in the game.
By the same token Curbelo was 4-10 in the second half. So Curbelo took almost as many shots as Ayo, on much worse efficiency. And so many of Curbelo’s shots were contested and/or mid-range shots, so just low percentage shots. Even a contested 3 would be better than a lot of those shots he took. If you’re playing Illinois and can force double digit second half shots by Curbelo, you’re probably pretty happy with the defensive effort. If someone not named Ayo is going to be taking 10+ shots in a half, it can only be Kofi.
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I agree with that. They don’t have many (any?) true wings
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Agreed that the roster construction is the biggest issue here, But beyond that, have Ayo’s longstanding problems creating (for himself and others) in the halfcourt persisted? My eyes tells me he’s been better there, but still not elite and somewhat turnover prone. Do the numbers tell the same story? In theory then it probably makes sense to get Ayo more touches against a scrambled defense. But to do that you’ll need to run more offense through Curbelo, the only other perimeter creator on the roster. However talented, he’s still a freshman making his share of freshman mistakes.
Wait, what?
Ayo is probably the No. 1 or No. 2 ball screen creator in the Big Ten along with Marcus Carr. He’s been elite creating in the half court this year.
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He’s had issues creating in the past, no? That’s what I was referencing. If those issues–turnovers, efficiency–have been cleaned up, or I’m mistaken entirely, then the point is a bad one and should be disregarded 
Though Curbelo is still their only other (perimeter) playmaker.
I think it is more that he’s insanely effective in transition that maybe some people took that to mean he can’t create in the half court? I’m not really sure. He was an elite creator for them last year (watch the Michigan game) and has been this year.
I’ve never thought of him as having turnover issues at all.
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