on December 15, 2025, 20:03:32, in reply to "The counterpoint is that this is what it's like for virtually every college basketball"
I’ll also say I’m in a little bit of a sports black hole right now with my teams, so I’ll admit I might be a little in my feelings on this. 
Previous Message
program except maybe 4-5. And even among those 4-5, nobody is dominating year in and year out save maybe Duke and UConn. Even Kansas, UNC, and Kentucky are seeing slight downturns.
Granted, we're not hitting the 1 seed level every few years like those teams, and that's what's missing. But we're also only 5 years removed from our last 1 seed. And that's par for the history of our program too. Previous Message
Dominate Oregon on the road, lose to USC at home.
Beat Tennessee and then OSU on the road, lose at home to Nebraska.
Whenever it’s about to click, it doesn’t. And there’s always an injury to point to, or a lack of practice time or something, but I think it’s mostly that our rosters have not quite hit the level we want.
If Tomi somehow turns back into a top C, maybe it can happen for this team. But that’s tough to envision right now. Previous Message
But we were back to #6 by the end of the year. So I think it’s fair to say that was a legitimate top 10 team at minimum.
I definitely want us to be a dominant #1 seed type team again, but I also don’t think the benchmark for success should be if we are as good as the best team in the whole country. We just need to keep stacking top 20 seasons with some on the higher end of that sprinkled in.
I do get the frustrations though, Saturday really hurt for me because I had started to fully buy in on this team. Previous Message
And while we were borderline one of the top 5-6 by the end, the actual top team murdered us.
So I sort of agree and sort of disagree. We were largely our typical top 15-20 team most of the year. But maybe I’m forgetting. Previous Message
But we’re only one season removed from being objectively one of the 5-6 best teams in the country by the end of the year. So it just feels like a bit of a stretch to say we haven’t been great in a while. Previous Message
We could wind up top 10 kenpom in 2 weeks and I’ll still think we’re a rung below the true contenders. I mean, I’ll need to see what everything looks like then, who knows, my opinion always changes based upon what I’m seeing, but this is not just about our kenpom.
Texas tech does not seem great this year. I don’t believe this is one of Tennessee’s stronger teams. UConn is the true top level team and they punked us again. We’re a good team. We’ll always be a good team under Brad. But we haven’t felt great in awhile. Where you go into Michigan and dominate them like we did that year after Ayo got hurt. Like I can’t even envision this team doing that to anyone. I want to dominate some good teams again. Like Oregon last year. We used to be a team who did that more often and sustained it. Previous Message
So I struggle with this current situation being an indication that something drastic needs to change. Because I really had no problems with how we defended against Texas Tech, Alabama, or Tennessee. Or Ohio State for that matter, Thornton made nothing but tough shots and then we shut him down.
It feels like we’re in ‘prisoner of the moment’ mode here because of losing one game to a legit top 25 team who had a guy go nuclear while we defended poorly. Not dismissing that the defense has been a problem for years and I’d like to see it get corrected, but I’m not ready to say we need a full roster construction reset. If Sandfort just plays a normal great game rather than an otherworldly one, we’re sitting here with 4 Q1 wins in mid-December and a top 12 ranking.
I also think that ship has sailed on changing course too dramatically, we are in too deep with prioritizing Euros at this point and I think we’ll need to continue going to that well. Really don’t have as many reliable stateside connections anymore. Previous Message
Both of which fall on him.
We’ve tried for a few years doing it this way. We’ve had some really good offenses, yet we never felt like a true contender. We were always a half step to a full step below, even if we tried to talk ourselves into being better than that during good stretches.
It’s time to try a new way. Brad has always been good at pivoting. This is a necessary pivot. Previous Message
And given that Underwood has had exactly 1 top 25 defense in 10 years at the high major level (20-21), and 7 of his 10 teams have been outside the top 30, pretty sure it's a Brad problem. Previous Message
Make Illinois play defense again. Previous Message
NEWS: Croatian forward Toni Bilić has committed to Illinois, his agent Misko Ražnatović told DraftExpress. The 6'9", 20-year-old will arrive at semester break and be eligible to play immediately. pic.twitter.com/jJBtE0GV8z — Jonathan Givony (@DraftExpress) December 15, 2025 .
72
- osklister December 17, 2025, 9:04:21