Saturday’s Box Score

‘First Word with Ron Zook’ on News Talk 1400 WDWS

Well, that was fun.  It looked like Illinois’ best chance to beat Missouri for the first time in a while and they fell flat.  It left all of us with a lot of questions and it also has a lot of us feeling differently about this team.  If the Illini play like that all year long, they will go 1-11 (beating Illinois State).  I don’t think Illinois will play like that again (offensively at least) and it starts next week with a thrashing of the Redbirds.

I think we’re all in agreement when I say the offense was the most disappointing.  How do you score nine points with all of that talent?  They just kept shooting themselves in the foot.  They had a fair amount of yardage (325) so moving the ball wasn’t a big problem.  You just can’t make silly mistakes when you have it, especially against a team like Missouri.  You got to catch it and you got to hold on to it.  Sure, Not having Arrelious Benn, Daniel Dufrene and Jason Ford probably affected some things, but Juice was still in there, and he wasn’t all that bad. 

One thing I was disappointed with was the play calling.  I’ve been as excited as anyone to get a guy like Mike Schultz in there to get that offense going, but I didn’t like the way we came up.  I wanted to run more.  No Dufrene or Ford might have changed things here, but both Troy Pollard and Mikel Leshoure did fine and deserved to carry a bigger load in that game.  Our touchdown drive had some good running plays that got us down the field.  With Juice, who I still think is one of the best deception quarterbacks out there, you got to take advantage of his strengths.  Running the ball well will bring in the secondary, and then Juice can show off the cannon with a bomb down the field.

As for the defense……it was what I expected.  It looked exactly the same as last year, and we as fans might as well get use to it.  Our secondary will continue to play that “hope they make a mistake” defense and they will never have a chance to be any good unless they challenge receivers.  I’m sick of sounding like a broken record, but I have a feeling that I can just copy and past this paragraph after each game.  It’s a shame because we did a pretty darn good job on the run.  Derrick Washington didn’t do jack, but that was almost a blessing in disguise for Missouri.  It might that Blaine Gabbert had to pass to move the ball, and he made it look effortless.  Last year, the Illini had six measly interceptions all season long.  It wouldn’t surprise me one bit if we have even less than that this year.

There were a number of momentum plays as well.  The one that sticks out to me is the personal foul on Donsay Hardeman.  It happened on an incomplete pass that would have led to a 4th down and a punt when this game was still early and close.  Not only was it a bogus call, but it also gave Missouri an automatic first down and they were able to march down the field and score, keeping momentum on their side.  There were others as well, but I felt that this was the biggest one, and the terrible thing is it wasn’t a mistake on any of our players. 

Illinois State comes to town this weekend.  I will do a sim on NCAA 10 tonight and post the results of that tomorrow.  I’ll also keep track of the standings of all of our predictions and have those for you tomorrow morning. 

Don’t know what else there is to say about this thing, so let’s end it right here.

I-L-L…