Changing my tune

I have a history of being a Bruce Weber fan, and I could even be classified as an apologist, probably most evident here. But watching the Illini this season, I've decided that it's time to become realistic. Bruce Weber is not such a great coach.

I'll base this off of a few different things. First, recruiting. Facts is facts folks. This team sucks. And these are largely Bruce Weber's players. Aside from the Eric Gordon debacle, which I've also covered in depth, and largely inaccurately here, he has made a number of recruiting failures. Some of these can probably be due to being strung along by Gordon, or other players having tepid interest yet receiving the bulk of attention. I don't know, I don't know recruiting. What I do know is that this team is Bruce's team. And this team blows. I'll come back to this in a second. But, I refuse to give Tracy Webster a pass in this whole situation. As the lead recruiter, he did a shit job of getting any serious recruits. Derrick Rose was at least open to the idea of coming to Illinois, even attending Midnight Madness. Could we have gotten him? Perhaps, with someone who wasn't inept at recruiting as our lead recruiter.

Next: Bruce sucks at player rotations. Why is he so resistant to playing freshmen that HE recruited and that HE refused to red shirt. There are 15 active players on the roster, and only like 8 see regular court time. Of those, two are seniors, a couple are juniors, there is an occasional spotting of Alexander (though he's battling injuries I guess) and like 3 freshman get court time. This is just retarded. If the players can't play, then they should have been redshirted. If they can play, then why aren't they? Especially now that the season is a wash, it makes absolutely no sense for the Illini to not play the kids. Let Semrau in a game. Give Holdren some SHOTS. He lit us up, we can't get him an open fucking shot? Let's see what Bill Cole can do.

Now I have an entire point based around Chester Frazier. I have no ill wishes againts Chester outside the basketball world. I hope his education gets him a great job, or it's possible he'll be following in the Jerrance Howard footsteps. Whatever. But my god does he suck at basketball.

The thing we all learned with Dee, Deron and Luther was that with a lot of gym time, and a lot of effort, the sky was the limit. Potential was untapped, but Deron turned himself into a lottery pick. Just unheard of. Not even Frank Williams could do that (and I could have sworn Frank had more talent, probably just more unrealized potential. But damn was he smooth). But, now with Chester Frazier, we're seeing a limit reached. I love his defensive intensity. But it's not consistent, and I think his basketball IQ is terrible.

As a coach, you want to put your players into a position where they will succeed. Why would you put Chester, a player with limited ball-handling skills, as the primary dribbler, and the initiator of the offense? I would say the evidence during the Purdue game was rather damning. Demetri at the point has us up big. Chester relieves him, and we spent 25 seconds dribbling and passing the ball around 35 feet from the basket. It would have been nice to sniff the 3 pt. line before 10 seconds left in the shot clock. Also as a coach, you want to have a guy who wants the ball in his hands at the end of the game to ice it with free throws. Chester shoots, what, 60%? Pruitt shoots slightly less, and I have no idea why he's in at the end of games either (although lately he's shown that he can make a free throw or two in the clutch). And Chester can't dribble his way out of a wet paper bag that has giant holes for dribbling through in it.

Asking Chester to do too much is not helping anyone. The offense becomes stagnant, especially when he's at the point. He holds the ball too much, doesn't reverse it enough, his passing is average at best (and I'd say that's rather optimistic). His defense on the ball is pretty good, his intensity and desire are amazing. But too often he's out of position, or he'll have a lapse. And off the ball he's probably only average at help defense.

Also, Dee Brown's tenure saw the introduction of Hustle stats or something. I think these should be done away with, because I can see Chester having a high number of Hustle stats or points or whatever they're called (that's how withdrawn I am from Illini basketball right now; it's sickening). He's always chasing down loose balls, getting rebounds (which other Illini players are normally around him while doing so), and he's fairly solid, again, on the ball defending. But does this take into consideration turnovers? Lack of motion in the motion offense? Refusal to fast break??

And what of Demetri McCamey. The kid's got ball skills, he can drive to the basket, he can actually make a shot so you're not playing 4 against 5. He's in while the Illini rack up the score (his defense isn't that poor, regardless of what Weber may say), and then he's on the bench as they lose it. Yet Bruce rails into Demetri. While Chester gets a free pass. Consistently.

So now we come to the final point, in game coaching. Bruce has just been outcoached basically all season. How do you come into halftime with a lead, or open up a big lead, only to lose it? Failure to make adjustments. Refusal to make adjustments. All Bruce seems to do is stand on the sidelines and yell at the kids rather than actually do anything. I read recently on Blogabull that yelling doesn't make a good coach. It can be effective, but if it doesn't elicit a noticeable change, then you're just wasting your breath and voice, and we all know Bruce has no voice to spare. And that's all Bruce does. Hell, it was only like 3 or 4 games ago where I actually saw us run a play designed to get a shot on an inbounds play and it worked!

So it's a combination of adjustments, strategies, and players. If the players in aren't doing the job, why would yelling make them change it? And what the hell do they do when they're at practice exactly? Miss free throws? Son of a bitch this team is just awful to watch.

This team has no identity. Wait, I'll take that back. Lack of offense is this team's identity. That and going long stretches without getting field goals. At least if the kids were playing, there would be some experience for next year. Remember how awful this team was when Cory Bradford ran the point? He was the only offense the team had that year. But then, when those guys were seniors, the team produced. Who the hell would have thought that Damir Krupalija would do anything effective? Or Archibald for that matter?

This team is tanking, and in the worst way, because there's nothing to gain from any of the losses we've had except we know that we need to make free throws, which we've known for two years but still can't do. I know Bruce has some great recruits coming in in a few years, but I'm really starting to wonder if he'll be around when they matriculate.