As a fan, I’ve moved on from last night’s loss. Blowouts happen. Fine. To be honest, I was actually concerned after the Illinois win because everyone started talking Big Ten title. We can win. We’re in first. We control our fate. Here’s our path. Big Ten Big Ten Big Ten.
To me, that is the wrong mentality for this team. Sure, play the games and then see how we stack up at the end. But this is not a Big Ten champion team. This is a Final Four team. The focus should not be on winning the Big Ten. Don’t misunderstand me, winning the Big Ten is great and if at the end of the year wr look back and say hey look, we won the Big Ten, fantastic. But this team is too good to have the focus be at all on the Big Ten and not solely on something bigger.
Hopefully, last night knocks that from focus. I like that we’re taking every team’s best shot. They’re all trying to figure out how to poke holes in us, how to scheme us - different screen actions, different full court presses, quick ball movement to move our defense, doubling our bigs, doubling Ivey, run a zone, play a trapping man, stretch the 5 man. Awesome. Let them all try to poke as many holes as they can. Poke away. Find and exposure more holes. And maybe teams will use it to beat us in games, like Michigan did. In the long run, that makes this team better and more prepared for the tournament. There will be no punch a team can throw at us come March that we will not be prepared for. Maybe that ends in too many losses to win a Big Ten title, maybe it doesn’t, but it prepares this team for the long run. The difference here is we can play our game, Purdue-style, and get all these looks teams have to throw at us to stop Purdue, as opposed to us changing our style to try to expose other teams’ weaknesses and get a game advantage. That will win you a lot of individual conference games, like we have done in the past, but that maybe doesn’t always prepare you best for a tournament run, where it’s a little harder to fully prepare for teams.
So let’s improve from this. How will the defense respond when teams try to zip skip passes across the court to an open 3 point shooter? How will we adjust to teams extending a 5 man to the free throw line extended for jumpers? How will we adjust when teams pack in around the rim for offensive rebounds? Michigan did all these things and we couldn’t stop any of it. Times of trouble force innovation and now we know that weakness. We have seen what those weaknesses can manifest into.
So let teams take their best shot. Let them expose weaknesses. How many teams have said in post game that they felt they had a real shot to beat us, they really felt they could win the game? Michigan said it. Illinois said it. Rutgers said it. That’s a sign these teams are throwing everything they have at these games, and win or lose, especially lose, we are forced to learn from it and it’ll make us more prepared in the long run and, hopefully, for a deep run in March.
To me, that is the wrong mentality for this team. Sure, play the games and then see how we stack up at the end. But this is not a Big Ten champion team. This is a Final Four team. The focus should not be on winning the Big Ten. Don’t misunderstand me, winning the Big Ten is great and if at the end of the year wr look back and say hey look, we won the Big Ten, fantastic. But this team is too good to have the focus be at all on the Big Ten and not solely on something bigger.
Hopefully, last night knocks that from focus. I like that we’re taking every team’s best shot. They’re all trying to figure out how to poke holes in us, how to scheme us - different screen actions, different full court presses, quick ball movement to move our defense, doubling our bigs, doubling Ivey, run a zone, play a trapping man, stretch the 5 man. Awesome. Let them all try to poke as many holes as they can. Poke away. Find and exposure more holes. And maybe teams will use it to beat us in games, like Michigan did. In the long run, that makes this team better and more prepared for the tournament. There will be no punch a team can throw at us come March that we will not be prepared for. Maybe that ends in too many losses to win a Big Ten title, maybe it doesn’t, but it prepares this team for the long run. The difference here is we can play our game, Purdue-style, and get all these looks teams have to throw at us to stop Purdue, as opposed to us changing our style to try to expose other teams’ weaknesses and get a game advantage. That will win you a lot of individual conference games, like we have done in the past, but that maybe doesn’t always prepare you best for a tournament run, where it’s a little harder to fully prepare for teams.
So let’s improve from this. How will the defense respond when teams try to zip skip passes across the court to an open 3 point shooter? How will we adjust to teams extending a 5 man to the free throw line extended for jumpers? How will we adjust when teams pack in around the rim for offensive rebounds? Michigan did all these things and we couldn’t stop any of it. Times of trouble force innovation and now we know that weakness. We have seen what those weaknesses can manifest into.
So let teams take their best shot. Let them expose weaknesses. How many teams have said in post game that they felt they had a real shot to beat us, they really felt they could win the game? Michigan said it. Illinois said it. Rutgers said it. That’s a sign these teams are throwing everything they have at these games, and win or lose, especially lose, we are forced to learn from it and it’ll make us more prepared in the long run and, hopefully, for a deep run in March.
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