(04-01-2013 01:32 PM)Toledo Football 1st Wrote:  

(04-01-2013 10:37 AM)temoxley Wrote:  I am not sure that there wasn't just some good fortune for Illinois in this game. I am pretty sure that they did not start out in a zone. But they had 6 or 7 fouls and two starters with 2 fouls each within tne first 4-5 minutes. I think that they switched to the zone to protect players who were getting in foul trouble. Then they saw that the zone was shutting down Toledo's offense, or the Toledo perimeter players were not hitting shots so they stayed with it. Can anyone confirm whether Illinois BEGAN THE GAME with a zone?

Gosh, all the intercepted passes, the steals, the stuffed shots, the tie ups; I don't believe even CMU stymied the Rockets like that, did they? I think that comes from a superb defensive plan and execution, not luck. I was hoping that early foul trouble would play in or favor, but it didn't seem to. They managed the situation very well. As far as the zone, weren't they kind of pressing early on, thus all the intercepted passes? I can't remember for sure, I was too excited. LOL!

Yes, zone from the start. That's the defense that Illinois generally plays - an aggressive zone - and it's the same defense that Eastern Michigan used against us the past couple years to good effect.

This has been an interesting discussion. If I hadn't watched the game, some of the comments might give me the indication that Illinois blew us out in the game, but that was far from true. We were actually leading with 6:20 left in the game. So, up until that point, we were still making a good showing, although it might not have been as pretty as we would have liked.

I'd also like to correct something, UT actually lead the rebounding battle 47-40. Not sure where that 44-34 number came from. But, as much as I like statistics, this one is a little misleading, as I was watching live stats during the game, and Illinois actually lead the rebounding stats for most of the game. In my opinion, that was the big difference in the game. UT had been a dominant rebounding team all season, and Illinois a pretty mediocre one. EIU absolutely destroyed IU on the boards, and I thought we would too, but that didn't happen. Credit IU with playing hard and having the right game plan, and for whatever reason we didn't get things done in that aspect of the game.

Did we shoot poorly, yep we did. I give IU some credit for that, but I also think we just had a bad night. Naama missed 2 out and out layups which was very uncharacteristic. And we missed a number of other open shots. IU's zone defense bothered us at times, but on several occasions when they went to their "buzz" defense (the trapping zone) that they only played periodically, we burned them for open layups by Yo.

So I think the bottom line is, IU rose to the occasion on this particular night, and UT didn't. I don't see any reason to conclude though that this indicated that UT was not as good a team as we thought, or that they were "only a WNIT sweet-16" caliber team. Again, we lead with 6 minutes left. We were not blown out. We lost to a better team on that particular night, but a different night, and it easily could have been a different story.

But, as Coach C tweeted today: Next season starts now! #GoRockets!!!

(04-01-2013 07:10 PM)northcoastRocket Wrote:  This has been an interesting discussion. If I hadn't watched the game, some of the comments might give me the indication that Illinois blew us out in the game, but that was far from true. We were actually leading with 6:20 left in the game. So, up until that point, we were still making a good showing, although it might not have been as pretty as we would have liked.

I'd also like to correct something, UT actually lead the rebounding battle 47-40. Not sure where that 44-34 number came from. But, as much as I like statistics, this one is a little misleading, as I was watching live stats during the game, and Illinois actually lead the rebounding stats for most of the game. In my opinion, that was the big difference in the game. UT had been a dominant rebounding team all season, and Illinois a pretty mediocre one. EIU absolutely destroyed IU on the boards, and I thought we would too, but that didn't happen. Credit IU with playing hard and having the right game plan, and for whatever reason we didn't get things done in that aspect of the game.

Did we shoot poorly, yep we did. I give IU some credit for that, but I also think we just had a bad night. Naama missed 2 out and out layups which was very uncharacteristic. And we missed a number of other open shots. IU's zone defense bothered us at times, but on several occasions when they went to their "buzz" defense (the trapping zone) that they only played periodically, we burned them for open layups by Yo.

So I think the bottom line is, IU rose to the occasion on this particular night, and UT didn't. I don't see any reason to conclude though that this indicated that UT was not as good a team as we thought, or that they were "only a WNIT sweet-16" caliber team. Again, we lead with 6 minutes left. We were not blown out. We lost to a better team on that particular night, but a different night, and it easily could have been a different story.

But, as Coach C tweeted today: Next season starts now! #GoRockets!!!

Here is the problem as I see it. There has been a lot of conversation on the blog about the NCAA focusing at large picks on big schools while short changing mid majors. So Illinois, which was in the middle of the Big Ten, comes into our house and wins. They also beat Miami by 12. That makes it difficult for us to argue that we are deserving of more teams in the NCAA tourney. So we beat Butler and Youngstown State but to validate that we were deserving of an NCAA at large I think that we need longer runs in the NIT. And we need to beat the bigger schools particularly on our floor.

(04-01-2013 07:10 PM)northcoastRocket Wrote:  This has been an interesting discussion. If I hadn't watched the game, some of the comments might give me the indication that Illinois blew us out in the game, but that was far from true. We were actually leading with 6:20 left in the game. So, up until that point, we were still making a good showing, although it might not have been as pretty as we would have liked.

I'd also like to correct something, UT actually lead the rebounding battle 47-40. Not sure where that 44-34 number came from. But, as much as I like statistics, this one is a little misleading, as I was watching live stats during the game, and Illinois actually lead the rebounding stats for most of the game. In my opinion, that was the big difference in the game. UT had been a dominant rebounding team all season, and Illinois a pretty mediocre one. EIU absolutely destroyed IU on the boards, and I thought we would too, but that didn't happen. Credit IU with playing hard and having the right game plan, and for whatever reason we didn't get things done in that aspect of the game.


Did we shoot poorly, yep we did. I give IU some credit for that, but I also think we just had a bad night. Naama missed 2 out and out layups which was very uncharacteristic. And we missed a number of other open shots. IU's zone defense bothered us at times, but on several occasions when they went to their "buzz" defense (the trapping zone) that they only played periodically, we burned them for open layups by Yo.

So I think the bottom line is, IU rose to the occasion on this particular night, and UT didn't. I don't see any reason to conclude though that this indicated that UT was not as good a team as we thought, or that they were "only a WNIT sweet-16" caliber team. Again, we lead with 6 minutes left. We were not blown out. We lost to a better team on that particular night, but a different night, and it easily could have been a different story.

But, as Coach C tweeted today: Next season starts now! #GoRockets!!!

Rebounding stats can sometimes be misleading. For example, one way to out rebound a team is to make a lot of turnovers. More turnovers = fewer shots for the other team to rebound. So you may out rebound them but you'll probably lose.