illiniguy

I would pass on DeJesus too, what happened to him last year? He has zero pop at all and again doesn't get on base enough. Plus his defense is nowhere near comparable to what Pie would give you.

I was happy that they didn't trade him for Jason Kidd at the deadline last year. 11 points and 11 boards in the first half so far tonight. O'Neal for Bynum? Jermaine O'Neal for Andrew Bynum would be one of the worst trades ever if it were to happen. O'Neal's body has started to go on him. He isn't half the player he was a few years ago, been hurt way too often.

Why would we want a really fast guy who doesn't walk, can't really steal bases at that high of a level, and is a below average fielder? I don't want any part of Gathright.

This game was a replay of the last three years under Weber. Washington in the tournament two years ago, Penn State two years ago, Arizona last year, and Virginia Tech this year. Trent Meachem is our best player. At Illinois Trent bleeping Meachem is the best player. Bravo Bruce, oh and wipe the marker off of your face you clown. That game was a clinic on how not to coach basektball. We got a big lead because of our bench, so Bruce doesn't sub the last 10 minutes of regulation. Our offense is laughable. Meanwhile, terrible Kevin O'Neill who is so bad he has never had a job of over three years mind you, continues to draw up actual plays. Not just some high school motion where you pass it around the perimeter for three fourths of the shot clock before giving it to some unatheltic guy who can't shoot and then watching him force up some crap. Shaun Pruitt played the worst game I have ever seen for a guy who had 25 points on 10-10 from the field. If you box out at the end of the game Shawn we win. Also free throws, pick a form and work on it. Chester Frazier is a joke. I really don't need to add anything to that. Once we lose to Mizzou this season ans the Weber era will be complete.

Its not a coincidence that the best player of the opposing team gets in foul trouble immediatly in almost every game Duke plays, and it has nothing to do with them going after him. God if only the other coaches had the forsight to go after the other teams best players. But, alas ony Coach K in his infinite wisdom has come up with that plan. Oh well maybe I will email Bruce Weber and let him know of this strategy. I didnt say that, bu tthere is no way that with different referees, wisconsin would win this game. No they wouldn't, but shouldn't they get the chance to have their best shot at it? Maybe the reason your winning percentage is so high is because the chance of an upset is taken away with piss poor officiating that benefits you everytime you play. Oh and by you I mean Duke.

Its not a coincidence that the best player of the opposing team gets in foul trouble immediatly in almost every game Duke plays, and it has nothing to do with them going after him. God if only the other coaches had the forsight to go after the other teams best players. But, alas ony Coach K in his infinite wisdom has come up with that plan. Oh well maybe I will email Bruce Weber and let him know of this strategy.

Wiskys best player Hughes picked up two fouls in the first three minutes. Typical 8-5 match up. The opposing teams best player in foul trouble immediatly against Duke? noway that never happens.... I know and the point guard to boot. I am also a little sick of hearing about how duke has never lost in the challenge. Maybe if they played a true road game in it. We went to Duke and played, they then came to chicago. :roll:

Wiskys best player Hughes picked up two fouls in the first three minutes. Typical 8-5 match up.

He looked slow, but got good elevation on the oop he caught. He will get it back in a month. Plenty of time to get ready for the dance. You guys should have lost last night. That Buddinger travel call with 35 seconds to go and Arizona up two was horrible. i thought he did shuffle his feet on that. But we were the beneficiaries of a lot of calls, and we should have lost. We looked bad. Collins is the key to that offense, I think. He can break people down and he's one of our best shooters. I think Collins is the best player you have. I thought he traveled and so did Bilas. He gave his, "that was a difficult call" crap that he says on a bad call. You hear it a lot during his Duke broadcasts.

He looked slow, but got good elevation on the oop he caught. He will get it back in a month. Plenty of time to get ready for the dance. You guys should have lost last night. That Buddinger travel call with 35 seconds to go and Arizona up two was horrible.

Only a 13 point win? That seems like a pretty close game for them considering they were playing ISU. It's hard to say. Projections have Illinois State anywhere between third and seventh in the tough Missouri Valley. This is one that probably can't be accurately judged until much later in the season when we see how good Illinois State really is, but all the buzz is that they are supposed to be much better than normal. I knew ISU was supposed to be decent, but figured a talented IU could at least win by 20. Where was everybody else on offense for IU? Gordon scoring almost their points is nice and all, but not really something you want to see happen often, right? Did you see the game? (I'm assuming not.) I read with tremendous amusement all the Illinois fan griping about officiating the other day -- it might have been warranted, it might not have been. I didn't watch the game, and therefore didn't comment. This game was also marred by extremely poor officiating by the refs. They were very inconsistent and that hurt both teams, but probably impacted IU more. In the end, that inconsistency led to more foul calls than not since no one knew what would be called and what wouldn't be called (47 PF's were called in the game). In any case, IU dominated for a part of the first half, but played uneven and unspectacularly. Crawford, in particular, made a lot of bad decisions with the ball, forcing a lot of bad shots and playing into turnovers. Neither team shot well -- IU was 44.5% from the floor (outside of Gordon, IU shot 37.5% from the floor). I thought ISU played very solid defense, were well-coached, and played a decent game. IU was the better team, and didn't play particularly well. Had they played well, it was a blow-out. Finally, I'm tired of the IU/UI wars, which from my reading last year and this year. In my opinion, they are pretty much caused by UI fans virtually trolling pro-IU posts, but as an IU guy, I might be a bit biased. :) A little jawing here and there in a thread like this is fine, but the battles have really detracted from this thread in both years. From here on out, if you want to have an Indiana/Illinois battle, that's fine, but create a separate thread for it. Let's tamp things down a bit in this particular thread, however. Note: I'm not saying anyone's out of line or has broken the rules. I'm saying that if you want to have these battles, don't derail this particular thread to have them. I don't think most of us care anymore. I will again when we play, but besides that I could give two poops about IU. They are a good team coached by a joke of a man.

Yes. Let's get a good look here and go in down under ten.

He isn't near as bad as Meachem. If you are a slow white guy, you better make a jumper now and then.

Yeah the second on Pruitt was a joke as well.

Duke is better than us, but the referees have really put the screws to us. Agree on both accounts. I really thought Duke would have major issues with Pruitt and Randle, but fouls neutralize them. They were. Then the referees got involved.

Duke is better than us, but the referees have really put the screws to us.

Gah, stupid work. I could be watching the UCLA game if I didn't have to work tonight and tomorrow night.

No I get what you are saying. The sample size has gotten bigger. Much bigger. Thus the size of the league doesn't matter as much. That's fine. I guess I was replying to your post, but still trying to argue more with the general belief that Cobb's stats should be thrown out because of the era he played in.

That is very true, and significant. However, by far the biggest factor in the whole discussion is the talent pool. Can you even imagine today's game with only white players? Not only has baseball evolved to include all races, but the overall population has increased. Logic dictates that the level of talent has increased with the inclusion of all these new sources of great talent. You had guys like Ruth and Cobb who were head and shoulders above the vast majority of their peers. It seems to me that the gap between the superstar and the average joe has closed significantly. It's the talent. Cobb didn't have to compete against the same level as guys like Bonds or even Aaron. You can say that newer medical practices, training techniques and nutrition would make a difference, and they would. But think of it this way: If you are a player at a Single A high school and are very successful, would you expect to have the same level of success against AAAA competition? Even though you have access to all the same amenities? Of course not. You might still be successful, but logic dictates that your performance would suffer to some degree. You can also look at it reversed: Go back to 1920 and infuse the league with latin and black talent, and watch the outliers come back toward the pack as the fillers are replaced by talent. This is the factor that overshadows all others when comparing eras, though like the others it is difficult to quantify. I am not suggesting that guys like Cobb and Ruth would be terrible. What I am suggesting is that they wouldn't be as good. Perhaps not even nearly so. I think it is difficult to argue against this when you compare the different eras, since not all hardships are equal. And there are even personal factors, like with Ruth. The guy was obviously a hedonist, and even if he had access to modern conditioning, would he have even utilized it? Lots of things to consider, but none bigger than the issue of overall talent level. Can you imagine how much harder it would be to be a standout player with at least half of the teams cut off? You know when you actually had to be a decent pitcher to make the big leagues? Also Tony Gwynn had a pretty good career, he wasn't really utilizing all of the modern marvels of conditioning. To minimize what a person accomplished because of a perceived inferiority of his time is awfully brave. There may be twice as many teams now, but the talent pool to select from has grown at least 15 times. 1) there were around 76M people in the US in 1900 and there are over 300M today - a growth of close to 4X. This alone represents a talent pool growth of double that of the growth of teams. 2) Minorities were not allowed in baseball back then -- though this is a smaller impact than generally stated as minorities only accounted for around 12.5% of the US population at the turn of the century (1900). This means the talent pool at the time was more like 65M people compared to the 300M in the states today that can play baseball. (talent pool is now 4.6X bigger) 3) If you include the population of Latin America and Japan, the talent pool today consists of nearly 1B people (986M). That is over 15X the talent pool available in 1900. 4) The percentage of the population that had the free time to pursue athletics has changed dramatically over that time - a factor that is typically ignored. This is diluted in the case of Latin America today, but in the US and Japanese markets anyone who is athletically gifted will almost certainly play sports. I cannot come up with an accurate estimate for this factor, but I believe it is more than enough to compensate for the additional choices in sports to play other than baseball at this point. 5) This doesn't count other emerging baseball talent sources such as Korea, Australia, Europe or China. Overall, the argument that there were fewer teams and therefore a higher talent level just doesn't hold any water at all. Tell me then if we have gotten so much better within said talent pool. Why is it that no one is throwing 120mph or hitting the ball 700 feet? Also everyone wants to count what Ted Williams accomplished, yet disreguard what Cobb did because of the era he played in. Using a star that had a career that touches both Ted and Ty's careers I think you can disprove that the game, or the talent level changed all that much. Using Baseball Reference I see that Gehrig put up these numbers while Cobb was playing. 1923 20 NYY AL 13 26 6 11 4 1 1 9 0 0 2 5 .423 .464 .769 218 20 1 0 1924 21 NYY AL 10 12 2 6 1 0 0 5 0 0 1 3 .500 .538 .583 189 7 0 0 1925 22 NYY AL 126 437 73 129 23 10 20 68 6 3 46 49 .295 .365 .531 127 232 12 2 MVP-24 1926 23 NYY AL 155 572 135 179 47 20 16 112 6 5 105 73 .313 .420 .549 152 314 18 1 MVP-10 1927 24 NYY AL 155 584 149 218 52 18 47 175 10 8 109 84 .373 .474 .765 221 447 21 3 MVP-1 1928 25 NYY AL 154 562 139 210 47 13 27 142 4 11 95 69 .374 .467 .648 194 364 16 So he was a great player while Cobb was still a great player. Then in the year he played with Williams before he got sick. He posted these numbers as a 35 year old. 1938 35 NYY AL 157 576 115 170 32 6 29 114 6 1 107 75 .295 .410 .523 132 301 1 Still a pretty darn good player. One I would take at first base for our Cubs next year. So what gives? Why didn't Lou get so much worse once baseball emerged from its dark ages? In fact he maintained a level career that dipped with age according to what one would expect? So if Gehrig was able to do this, why is it so hard to believe that Cobb would not have been able to do the same?

That is very true, and significant. However, by far the biggest factor in the whole discussion is the talent pool. Can you even imagine today's game with only white players? Not only has baseball evolved to include all races, but the overall population has increased. Logic dictates that the level of talent has increased with the inclusion of all these new sources of great talent. You had guys like Ruth and Cobb who were head and shoulders above the vast majority of their peers. It seems to me that the gap between the superstar and the average joe has closed significantly. It's the talent. Cobb didn't have to compete against the same level as guys like Bonds or even Aaron. You can say that newer medical practices, training techniques and nutrition would make a difference, and they would. But think of it this way: If you are a player at a Single A high school and are very successful, would you expect to have the same level of success against AAAA competition? Even though you have access to all the same amenities? Of course not. You might still be successful, but logic dictates that your performance would suffer to some degree. You can also look at it reversed: Go back to 1920 and infuse the league with latin and black talent, and watch the outliers come back toward the pack as the fillers are replaced by talent. This is the factor that overshadows all others when comparing eras, though like the others it is difficult to quantify. I am not suggesting that guys like Cobb and Ruth would be terrible. What I am suggesting is that they wouldn't be as good. Perhaps not even nearly so. I think it is difficult to argue against this when you compare the different eras, since not all hardships are equal. And there are even personal factors, like with Ruth. The guy was obviously a hedonist, and even if he had access to modern conditioning, would he have even utilized it? Lots of things to consider, but none bigger than the issue of overall talent level. Can you imagine how much harder it would be to be a standout player with at least half of the teams cut off? You know when you actually had to be a decent pitcher to make the big leagues? Also Tony Gwynn had a pretty good career, he wasn't really utilizing all of the modern marvels of conditioning. To minimize what a person accomplished because of a perceived inferiority of his time is awfully brave.

Exactly. This game should be a concern for the Illini. This is the defintion of a trap game. Told you. Thankfully, they were able to come back from a 12 point deficit and pull it out. I think this game will really help them in the long run. I think it already showed Weber that DMac has to play the bulk of the minutes. Meachem is just not good enough to play at this level.

This is a great thread.

Bruce needs to play McCamey at the point more. McCamey runs the offense a lot better than Chester already.

I would say that the eric byrnes contract would be a bad move.

Davidson gave them all they wanted. I wonder why the Davidson coach pulled Stephen Curry when he did so late in the second half? I think once they got to that point they had to keep him in for the remainder. I would assume the Duke-Davidson game is at Duke later this year. No way is K going into their gym. You get tested like that, you get a better test for March. But, that doesn't seem as important to K anymore as his win-loss record in the regular season.