This has been a very odd season to be a sports fan. Investing oneself in your favorite team is something normal to do. But this time around it seemed so much more urgent. Everything else, especially Covid and our national politics, but then all those other activities that have been influenced by those two, has made people either want to crawl into a hole or work themselves into a furious rage. Watching sports and rooting for your favorite team then took on an added burden for many fans. It was more than just a source of entertainment. It was salvation from everything else that seemed so dismal. And it could be done safely, watching TV from your living room, then perhaps going on the Internet and gobbling up all the post game information and gossip.
You have to wonder whether those who promote pro and college sports understood this enough to deliberately hype things, as a way of intensifying the fans emotions about their favorite team. Since I'm an economist by training as well as a long time Illinois fan, it occurred to me during the shellacking that Loyola gave to Illinois yesterday, which followed Ohio State and Purdue each losing in the round of 64, other Big Ten teams that were favored in their respective games, that the moniker - best conference in the country - which the Big Ten claimed and repeated over and over again, was just like an overinflated asset, which happens when there is a bubble. Eventually the bubble bursts and the asset price falls dramatically thereafter. The NCAA Tournament games seemingly put the lie to the assertion that the Big Ten was the best conference. This was especially true for Illinois, which many who filled out brackets had reaching the Championship game, and quite a few of them thought Illinois would win it all. In retrospect, how could that be?
Ironically, in my previous post I wrote that once the conference season starts we no longer get performance comparisons of teams across conferences. Those teams that improve a lot may then go under the radar. But I was mistakenly arrogant in writing that post. I thought Illinois was such a team and I was making an argument for why it might be better than Gonzaga, the overall #1 seed. I didn't consider less hyped teams that might have improved in this way, or teams in a major conference that played their conference season like major league baseball teams play spring training, but then turn up the heat during the NCAA Tournament. That too is possible. Indeed, seeing the outcomes from yesterday, it appears more likely that is what happened. But I should caution about something I learned from Daniel Kahneman's book, Thinking, Fast and Slow. In small samples, outlier outcomes are not all that unlikely. Since the NCAA Tournament is one and done, we don't see the repeat experiment of the same teams matched up, the way they are in the NBA playoffs. I don't want to critique the one and done aspect. It adds to the excitement for everyone. But it does make for less confidence in the outcome as a determinant of the better team. Everyone can have a bad day, even the best of teams. Best out of five does a better job in reducing the role of luck. Best out of seven is even better that way.
My previous post also talked about the issue of match ups. Loyola plays Oregon State in the Sweet Sixteen. It might be that Illinois is more likely to beat Oregon State than Loyola is, yet Loyola is more likely to beat Illinois. I don't know this for a fact, but it is possible. I'll have more to say about this particular issue below.
For the rest of this post, I want to focus specifically on Illinois, partly because that's the team I've watched and so have a bunch of questions about them, and partly to illustrate how a bubble might form in evaluating a team (or a conference) well above its true ability.
1. Was Illinois exceedingly nervous before the game with Loyola began?
There was a camera shot of Kofi Cockburn during the warm up. He looked grim. He normally is smiling then and joking with his teammates. This time around that wasn't happening. I didn't see other players in the warmup regarding their facial expressions and/or I don't have a firm impression about how they normally would look. But I did take note of Kofi. Was it just him or the whole team? And, if it was the whole time, why was that? I read some newspaper pieces that suggested it was the whole team - Illinois had lost the game before it started and that was confirmed in the first 3 minutes.
It may be difficult to learn about this soon. I can imagine Brad Underwood and the rest of the coaching staff having a rule (for the entire season, not just this game) that what's said in the locker room stays in the locker room. Yet for having a long term relationship with the fans that doesn't turn sour, something about this needs true comments from the coaches and maybe also from the players. This doesn't have to happen immediately, but should not be too long in the offing after the Final Four.
2. Illinois is strictly a man to man team these days. Why is that?
In particular, why not a 1-3-1 zone, so Kofi can stay near the basket always, even with a big man who is a good passer (Krutwig of Loyola) and/or a big man who can shoot the three (Garza of Iowa, Hunter Dickinson of Michigan, and perhaps others in the Big Ten). Further, a zone makes it easier for there to be weak side help on a play in the paint. Loyola repeatedly ran a curl around Krutwig. The Illinois defender would be lagging on the play, giving an easy lane to the basket for what looked like a backdoor play. Then too, for teams that space the floor offensively, a zone allows more opportunity to trap and double team. There is the old idea that goes back to Vince Lombardi and maybe is even older than that, which is to have a basic mode of operation and then do that very very well through repeated practice. It's one approach. The team doesn't adjust to the situation. The team imposes their will on the other team. If you're the Green Bay Packers in the glory days, fine. But if you're good yet not truly great, why not make situational adjustments, which require more than one defensive approach in the arsenal?
I know there are some arguments against a zone. If the opponent has several good three-point shooters, the zone will likely give them better looks. And it may be that the type of man to man that Brad Underwood teaches his players makes them more aggressive defensively, yet without fouling (so much). But I felt in the Loyola game we should have played it, or at least have the weak side defenders help out on the curl so that the back door play wasn't there. We never did that and as a viewer I found that disappointing.
3. I'm a big fan of Ayo as all Illini fans are, yet he does have some weaknesses. Those are never talked about. Why is that?
Ayo is loosey-goosey on the dribble and sometimes turns it over as a consequence. He has a well known predilection for going right. When he's double teamed and one of the defenders block his path to the right, he is more vulnerable to turnovers. We saw this earlier in the season when we lost to Ohio State. Ayo made some adjustments after that, to dribble left before going right or to dribble left down the lane. It seemed that Loyola modified the defensive approach by having the double team start closer to mid court. This gets to the next point.
Ayo is sometimes loosey-goosey on the pass as well. When he passes to the wing so a teammate can shoot a three-pointer, the passes are strong and hard. But when he is setting up an alley-oop play, he floats the ball very softly and is sometimes off the mark. I didn't chart this precisely, but when Loyola trapped Ayo, he tried to get out of it with the dribble, not with a pass. That Loyola trapped Ayo meant that some other Illinois player was open. But Ayo didn't find the open man. I conjecture that he is very good at passing to wing players when he is driving the lane, familiar territory for him, but he is much less comfortable making such a long pass from elsewhere on the court, or so it seemed.
Ayo has taken the team on his back and won ballgames for Illinois by doing that. His level of play would rise near the end of the game. Then he'd go into superhero mode. In the Loyola game, it seemed he was trying to take the team on his back after only a few minutes, when Illinois had fallen behind by a score of 9 to 2. It may have been better for him to share this burden with some of his teammates rather than assume it all himself. Did he understand that himself?
I thought Adam Miller seemed comfortable and relaxed, especially after he made a couple of three pointers. He was the only Illinois guard who seemed that way. Maybe he should have gotten more responsibility with the ball, rather than always setting up on the wing. As it was, Ayo would walk the ball up the court - Illinois couldn't fast break - and that looked grim. Sometimes grim determination is needed to get beyond an obstacle. In this case, however, I'd have liked Illinois to try something else. Punching Adam Miller's ticket in this game made sense to me, either by him bringing up the ball or by Ayo passing to him after Ayo could see the trap coming. I believe this even if in previous games in the Big Ten Tournament Adam Miller seemed somewhat out of control at times.
Let me speculate a moment about Ayo's future. There has been a lot of hype about him being ready for the NBA. Does a player's stock in the draft drop based on one poor performance? If it turned out that the injury he suffered was still bothering him more than anyone outside of the team knew, that all the hype about the mask would have been a useful diversion, and that given some rest Ayo can return to full health, then I think Ayo's performance against Loyola can be disregarded. But if Ayo was in near full health in that game, the mask notwithstanding, then the NBA teams might be wary of drafting him, for fear that his weaknesses would get even more exploited in the NBA.
On the other hand, since I'm a big adherent of learning via deliberate practice, can Ayo get the right sort of practice that he needs to improve on these weaknesses by staying in college? I doubt it. There aren't enough other teams that can trap effectively and/or pick up the Illini at mid court. There is something called the NBA G League, which is the NBA's minor league for player development. I would think that might be where Ayo ends up next. An alternative is to play overseas. But he'd be away from his family then and with Covid, that might seem too much of discontinuity now. I'll add one last thing here. ESPN had a column where several commentators wrote about the Big Ten's poor performance in the Tournament, after the fact. One of them explained that the talent level overall is really not that high. Big Ten schools don't recruit players for just one year of play and then off to the NBA. Many of the very top players want to go that route. If the conference overall has been overrated, that factor may be missed. It's something to consider.
4. The role of the media. Do they simply report the sports news or are they "experts" whose opinion tends to be spot on? If they are experts, how did they miss this one?
Before getting to TV, let me make a quick mention about the News-Gazette, the local newspaper in Champaign-Urbana. Simply measured by number of pages devoted to the Illini basketball team and featuring individual player pages with huge photos of them, the News-Gazette has really hyped the team, well beyond their normal coverage. And, since the team itself set its goal to win the NCAA Championship, the paper plugged that as well.
As to TV, last week before the tournament started, MSNBC had a segment of their Morning Joe show where the guest was Jay Bilas, the college basketball guru. He appeared along with their regular news commentators. In talking about Illinois, while there had already been a lot of hype about Ayo's mask, and what it should be called, Bilas pulled a new one (at least for me). He referred to Ayo as Batman (DC Comics), others had also done that, and to Kofi as the Incredible Hulk (Marvel Comics), I hadn't heard that one before. With both Batman and the Incredible Hulk, how could Illinois lose?
Ditto all the commentators who along with the play by play guy call the games. Everyone I've listened to all season long (please retire Dick Vitale, you too Dan Dakich, since both of you give more parenthetic remarks than provide insights into what is happening in the game) have been extremely high on Illinois. There has not been an inkling from them about weaknesses the Illini have, until yesterday. Does this sort of thing expose them as mouth pieces only, not real experts?
A more cynical view would take account of sports betting, which has been in the news a lot recently in regard to college basketball. Do those who bet seriously listen to the commentators? Do the commentators themselves bet on games, including games they call. The ultimate cynicism would be about the possibility where the commentator bets one way and yet on TV influences the fans to take the opposite position, so the commentator can get better odds. I hope that's not happening. I prefer them being somewhat clueless to being very savvy while highly manipulative.
Wrap Up
Was Illinois a really good team that just had a bad day yesterday? Or did all the Illini fans get caught up in the confirmation bias about how great the team was, so simply weren't prepared that they were good but not great and might lose to other teams aside from the #1 seeds? I don't know. I hope at some point in the not too distant future we learn which of those is right.
In the meantime, I've now got to decide whether I'll watch more of the Tournament. There are still 3 Big Ten teams left. Let's see if any of them can stick around for a while longer.
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