Inside Ouch

Photo Credit: University of Illinois Sports Information

I hate that last exit out of the State Farm Center at the end of a basketball season. That slow walk around the concourse, taking in the sights and sounds, trying to savor each moment before that cold walk to the parking lot. Feeling wistful, but grateful at the same time for the opportunity to live and work in this town and see the Orange and Blue for 30ish games each year. It's a blessing, for sure, win or lose.

But I do hate losing that last game.

Reality set back in for the women's team this past week after they had blitzed the bottom of the conference in mid-February. Iowa and Minnesota were both red hot coming into these games, and in both cases, the savvy veteran team won. And now it's win-or-go-home.

Whether we have two games left in us or ten, I'm excited to see this team continue to grow. It's been fun.

at #9 Iowa (Illini loss 82-78)

I do great with "house money" games typically. "Just keep it close" is my hope in match-ups where the odds are stacked way against us. But when we're leading with a few minutes to go, then there's a SHIFT in my brain and I want the win like I want water in the desert. Alas.

The first few minutes notwithstanding, the ladies played really, really well in this one. Every player had contributions in this one. Everyone seemed ready for this moment. This Iowa team has hit its groove, and defensively, they're top-notch. They held a top ten Michigan team to 44 points last week. And we scored with ease through much of this game. Getting stops was the difficulty and that late six-point lead dwindled pretty quickly. But I was pretty encouraged after this one.

Remember our slow start trend? Well, Iowa was up 10-0 before you could blink. You could tell that this young team was a little too amped up in the moment. But we followed immediately with a 9-0 run and basically outplayed them for 35 minutes. We'll get there.
The only bad in this game: tough one for Destiny (6 points, five turnovers, five fouls, some ill-advised drives) and an inefficient Berry (7/19 from the field).
A lot that was good:
- Cearah was magnificent on the offensive end, yet again. 20 and 12 on 9/13 shooting. I wish we could have gotten her some more shots because she was on a heater.
- Jasmine game! JBH gets plenty of minutes mostly due to her defense...but she was on a roll on the other end for this one. 15 points on 6/9 shooting, 3/3 from behind the arc. If we could get this more consistently from her, the loss of Gretchen wouldn't be as impactful.
- My word, I think we hit TEN straight threes in this one! Cearah hit one to end the second half and then we hit ALL NINE in the second half. I don't expect that to ever be replicated, so we'll revel in it even in a loss.
Ava Heiden, my goodness. She. Could. Not. Miss. 28 points for her in 23 minutes. If I had a cap on, I would have tipped it.

vs. Minnesota (Illini loss 78-73)

This felt like the epitome of an Illini-vs-good-B10-team (Iowa notwithstanding):

Pounded in the paint early (22 points inside to zero in the first quarter, WUT)
No offensive rhythm early, double figures first half deficit (down 15 in the second quarter)
A couple big runs to close the gap and make it interesting
An upperclassmen-laden opponent takes advantage and puts us away down the stretch

I've seen this movie before and it just doesn't end well. This was a fairly frustrating loss on Senior Day (Thank you, Gisela!) in front of an electric crowd of 6000ish that was locked in. (But goodness, you should have heard the pins dropping when Cearah got hurt...the non-sound of thousands holding their breath was awful.)

We are at a HUGE disadvantage in the post. Cearah has a post move or two, but that's not really her game. Lety has improved offensively, but Shauna does not feel like we can just dump the ball down to her for an easy bucket at any part. Worse is on the other end: we can't get stops against good bigs EVER. Points in the paint vs. Iowa and Minnesota combined (prepare yourself): 96-60. And the rebounding discrepancy was brutal in this Minnesota game: 39-25. It's a miracle that we lost these two games by just a handful of points.

We've kept these games close by shooting absolute lights out behind the arc. In the last five games we've shot 52/93, an incredible 55.9 percent. Keep shooting like that (improbable, but...) and find a way to get some stops inside and we'd be a team to be feared in the postseason.

Few more things from this one:

I'm glad I got to highlight Lety in my previous post, but she's had a rough couple games since. In these two contests, she had zero points and three rebounds in 22 minutes and basically provided no resistance defensively at the rim. We GOTTA get more from her, but we're running out of time.
We got down 15 in the second quarter and a young boy behind, in a fit of exasperation, blurted out, "Come on, SCORE! It's easy!" We immediately went on an 8-0 run to close the half. Can we get that kid in the huddle during timeouts?
You can't get more clutch from the line than Minny was at the end. In the last minute of the game: 8-8 from the line, and I mean not a one even grazed the rim. A veteran team closing one on the road...respect.
Sophie Hart killed us inside in the first half, but I couldn't stop feeling bad about her name on the video board: S HART. Let's just keep moving.

With the regular season wrapped up, I'm kind of curious how I did in my predictions in the season preview post.

First off, Torvik had us preseason #65, but I said that was malarkey. We're sitting at #32 right now, pretty darn good.

My predicted record:
Non-con: 9-2
Conference: 9-9
Overall: 18-11

Actual record:
Non-con: 10-1
Conference: 9-9
Overall: 19-10

I was pretty close! And if I had to miss, I'm glad they did even better than I thought they would.

(I've updated this since I posted this on the Slack channel last week. Does everyone know about the Slack channel??)

We lost Gretchen for the season in mid-January. I wasn't expecting this...but when I went to Torvik to sort the data for a) the time when Gretchen was active and b) since she's been out, turns out that we moved UP in his rankings...

With Gretchen -

Record: 14-3
Offensive rank: 110.2 (30th)
Defensive rank: 83.3 (51st)
Overall: .9612 (35th)

Without Gretchen -

Record: 5-7
Offense: 119.8 (10th)
Defense: 88.9 (101st)
Overall: .9686 (25th)

Though the record doesn't reflect it, we've been playing like the number 25 team in the nation despite losing a key cog. Could we make some noise in the postseason? Let's see...

The regular season ended yesterday so no more speculation about the Big Ten tourney is needed. We're the ten seed and here's our path:

Game 1: vs. Wisconsin (Torvik #72)

We drubbed this team at home a couple of weeks ago, 92-60. Let's get this one and be assured of a 20 win season.

Game 2: vs. Michigan State (#21)

We played MSU back in early January and tell me if this sounds familiar: we got behind big early, made a furious comeback, but couldn't pull it out. (We lost 81-75) They're good, but we've been playing at the same level as them for the past month and a half. Hoping for a win and a game on Friday.

Game 3: vs. Iowa (#10)

Iowa had to come back and claw this game from us last week in front of their home crowd. We'll have a great crowd in Indy if we make it this far, so let's keep it rolling.

Game 4: vs. Michigan (probably) (#6)

We got waxed by these gals 85-69 in Ann Arbor back in mid-January. Playing our fourth game in four days, this would be a big ask...

Game 5: vs. UCLA (probably) (#2)

Heh.

So how are we looking for the NCAA tournament? Fine, I think? I'm not a bracketologist, so I leave it to the experts. As of this morning (Monday), we're firmly in as a number 8 seed in ESPN's bracket.

"We're in, great!"

"We're an 8 seed, crap!"

We don't want any part of those number one seeds in the second round. Let's win a couple games in the conference tourney and see if we can bump up to a seven. We'll see where we land on Selection Sunday.

Go Illini.