Illini Player Ratings: @ Ohio State

Mike Davis: 3
Mike spent most of the game watching David Lighty drive right past him.  The Illini's lack of depth (we have one bench player) really hurt them in this game.  They were not able to go to the bench to match up with the smaller Buckeyes.
And Davis not being able to post-up a 6-5 player (because he is weak) and take advantage on the other end compounded things.

Demitri McCamey: 7
D-mac came back after the Minnesota debacle and shot the ball well.  Just in case you are wondering if he is important to his team, when he came out for 3 minutes after picking up his 2nd foul OSU went on a 10-0 run.

Had 7 assists and 0 turns, and did a pretty good job of running the team and getting people involved for the first 2/3 of the game.
D-mac did play worse defense than Soriano (it's almost that time of year) and was a main culprit in allowing Jon Diebler to go nutso.



Mike Tisdale: 5
Needs to get more shots.  Tisdale is easily the most talented big we have had since Brian Cook, and he has taken fewer shots this season than Paul, DJ, Dmac, and Davis. 

Tiszy has a lot of skills and can score in a lot of ways, but somehow he becomes the 4th or 5th option for the Illini.  It is ridiculous because the Illini are not really blessed with a lot of offensive firepower and he serves no other purpose on the floor when he is not scoring.
He can't rebound (because he is weak), and has improved defensively, but is still limited and has trouble with movement.
When he fouled out, the game ended for the Illini.  It is amazing how little depth the Illini have.

DJ Richardson: 3
DJ did a decent job hanging with Turner.  Other than that he had some real trouble with the Buckeye ball pressure.  4 turnovers and 0 assists is not a good ratio.

William Cole: 2
Followed up the best game of his career with a pretty innocuous performance. 

Brandon Paul: 6
Another classic Paul game, he took 12 shots in 18 minutes.  He always has moments in games where he looks like an amazing scorer, and he also has moments where he looks like a basketball ruh-tard.

Jeff Jordan: 0
Bad

Dom Keller: 0
Bad

The natural reaction when things go bad for a team is to blame the coach.  I could easily write a "fire Webber" post and talk about he has run a proud program that was a national contender into a team that is excited to just get into the NCAA tournament.
But I want something different, more peripheral, to be changed. 

Fire the Strength and Conditioning Coach. 

His name is Jimmy Price (I did a little research) and apparently he has been doing a horrible job.

Like there are Taco Bell employees who are better at their jobs than he is.

It is amazing to me that we can have players like Mike Davis and Bill Cole who have bodies like freakishly tall eighth graders.  These are guys who have been here for 3 years and look like they have never seen the inside of the weight room.

We have a front line that goes 6'9, 6'9, and 7'1 and we can't rebound the ball. 
We have problems against tough ball pressure because we are weak with the ball.
We don't play tough defense or force turnovers, because we have weak, timid defenders.

How many times did an Ohio State player take the ball into the chest an Illini defender and then have the strength to finish with the and 1?  Illini players can't make those plays.  How many and 1's does Mike Davis have this season?

I understand that we have guys with slender frames who have trouble putting on muscle mass.  But that has not been a problem in the past. 
I hate to be a guy who lives in the Bill Self/Lon Kruger era, but I remember Illini teams that bullied other teams. 
We had guys like Robert Archibald who came as a skinny Scottish freak, and graduated as a solid Big Ten brusier.  Or Brian Cook, who matured into a strong post player at the U of I.  More recently, James Augustine came to school as a gawky teenager and graduated as the school's all-time leading rebounder.

So either there was a steroids era of Illini basketball, or Jimmy Price is doing an awful job.