Illinois 2023

[bucky415]

The Illini also got a crucial 5th year recruit, in Terry, and Illinois Volleyball and grad school programs could be a potent draw for the COVID-19 freshmen!

I grew up in Central Illinois by Springfield, and I was never a U of I fan, and their undergrad, "come here or not, we don't care, different from IU, was a turn off!" Still I was impressed as heck by the U of I grad program, and a year of fellowship, combined with Madison over C/U, got me to Madison. Illinois grad programs are flipping elite!

[exit237a]

Nov 24, 2023 23:39:53 GMT -5 ilalum92 said:

Nov 24, 2023 23:10:24 GMT -5 exit237a said:

I wouldn’t say usual selves or anything dramatic like that.  Minnesota started to play well the past few weeks and had a real chance to secure a tournament berth with a win against Illinois.  They played like it and got contributions from all their attackers.  Passing tonight for Illinois wasn’t great.  We didn’t get much output at all from opposite and one of our OH hit negative.  Had we played a little better we could’ve won a set and possibly the match riding that momentum.

Even if Illinois had won both matches this weekend, the RPI math wasn’t going to add up to a tournament berth, no matter how much we wanted to wish it into existence.  However, none of that takes away from what turned out to be a positive conclusion to the season.  Looking forward to one more match tomorrow and we’ll savor our last match getting to watch Kennedy, Jess, and Vanessa.  Hope the team has a nice effort in Evanston.

Passing wasn’t good, a OH hitting negative and no production from an OPP. Yeah, that sounds like our usual selves. Sad to hear after a great run of great play. MINN played like their tourney hopes were based on this match. Whether or not our hopes were out of the question, we should have played like it too. We have been a huge run of playing great, sad to to see it fall off in this match.

I don’t know, man. I wasn’t that upset with the result. I hope they play well tomorrow to send off our graduates in style but even if Northwestern beats us that’ll be fine too. Going to be tough to bid farewell to our great graduates, though.

[volleynattys]

also keep in mind.. minnesota is a tough place to play, especially on their senior night. if memory serves, a tamas team has never left minneapolis with a W, even in 2018. heck, shondell just got his first win in minneapolis a year or two ago, didn't he?

the turnaround the staff and team have made this season was very impressive, 2 wins this weekend or not. the development of terry/collins over their tenure has been great and bohm/barry/nunge look like completely different players from the beginning of the season. kudos to this team.

all that said, i'm not saying this is where we should be happy with a season finish. i think every single person in the illinois program will be disappointed when their name isn't called on sunday. however, there has been some serious development in this team which i have not seen from other teams in the b1g.

let's hope the newcomers next year step up and we can continue the development into 2024!

[oldmanvb]

In each set Minnesota brought back balls that should have been down. Each time it seemed to kill any momentum we might have been building. We gave up a number of overpasses at critical times which were also momentum killers. I didn’t think we played as bad as some of the comments, but we have played better. Of course, just as we pulled even in the first set the Minnesota sound person started playing music just as the ball hit the floor for an Illinois point, causing the ref to call a play over, and Minnesota then scored a number of points to re-take control of the match. Let’s get the Illini sound system to work on that. At times we played well enough. This match at Minnesota was always a long shot, I wouldn’t want it to detract from the remarkable progress we made in the second half of the year. If we had taken care of business against two mediocre teams early in the season, Oklahoma and ND, and beaten Wichita State like we should have, this match wouldn’t have been make or break. I still want to know what happened that weekend against OK and ND. Was there a birthday party the night before?

Looking forward to a couple of key defensive transfers, a healthy Taylor, and Smith and Philpot living up to expectations. Oh, and handling Northwestern today.

[gurnee50]

Why is it that Tamas' biggest supporters on this board are the fans from Wisconsin and Nebraska? Hmmmmmm. Wonder is these same fans felt the same way after Poulter and Co beat Bucky Badger in the Elite Eight? I seem to remember a bunch of whiny fans talking about the Badgers scoring more points than Illinois in that match....whatever that means.

[notpriddy (COIF)]

It's unfortunate perhaps for Illinois that this match was at Minnesota and not at Huff. I want to believe that our home crowd would have made some significant difference in this match. We do seem to be snake-bit with injuries over the last few years that seems to be uncanny! Congratulations to Minny, I hope they get a bid. However, I do wander how Landfair (from Plainfield Illinois) and Raina would have complimented each other this season. I believe Minnesota probably recruits on the promise to athletes that the staff has coaching connections to U.S. Volleyball. Well, Illinois does as well. Let's finish out the season in winning fashion.

[oldmanvb]

Eastern Illinois just won OVC conference tourney, and receives automatic bid to the tournament.

[brucks]

We swept this team three weeks ago.

[mosser]

Pathetic. People pounding their chests that Tamas is such a great coach after going on a decent run beating mediocre teams. This program is dead after Raina leaves unless they make a change and get a coach that can recruit better. Hambly finished top 4 in big ten 5/8 years andTamas is 1/7. Raina saving this dudes career. I have no hope in the future with him getting any good transfer.

[liberovb10]

late post - but i was at the match tonight.

we reverted back to our start of season play. everyone, with maybe the exception of Nunge, played flat and uninterested tonight which is a shame. Sure they had nothing to play for, but to have the seniors go out with a pretty disappointing L sucks to see.

a lot to address this offseason and big changes need to be made.

onto 2024.

[gogophers]

Against Minnesota, Terry had 56 swings in a three set match, none of which sets went past 21 for Illinois. That is a heck of a lot of attack attempts. She had more attempts than the next 3 players combined. It's a tribute to her that her team relies on her so, so much, and that she can get kills even when everyone in the building knows she's going to be set; but a weakness of Illinois that it seemingly has to ride the Reign O' Terr-or to the end. Didn't look like anyone else was capable of carrying an offense load. Illinois is simply too one-dimensional to make much of a splash.

[gurnee50]

Let this sink in. Nancy Fahey went 7-77 in Big Ten games as our women's basketball coach. She lasted five years at Illinois. What kind of message does that send to the other coaches in Champaign? Wisconsin fired football coach Paul Chryst after going 67-26 in 8 seasons at the helm. And he was fired the day after losing to Illinois in Madison. He went 6-2 against the Illini in his career, but those two losses were enough to get him fired. Coaches at Illinois are under absolutely no pressure to win, especially if you're a Whitman hire.

[liberovb10]

Nov 26, 2023 7:10:17 GMT -5 gurnee50 said:

Let this sink in. Nancy Fahey went 7-77 in Big Ten games as our women's basketball coach. She lasted five years at Illinois. What kind of message does that send to the other coaches in Champaign? Wisconsin fired football coach Paul Chryst after going 67-26 in 8 seasons at the helm. And he was fired the day after losing to Illinois in Madison. He went 6-2 against the Illini in his career, but those two losses were enough to get him fired. Coaches at Illinois are under absolutely no pressure to win, especially if you're a Whitman hire.

i don’t fully disagree, but i think the difference between Illinois and some of the other B1G schools is that we essentially have had to rebuild a number of our programs in which other schools have had a winning culture/tradition. Football, Men’s Basketball, Women’s Basketball, Softball, and now seemingly Volleyball.

Whittman’s coaches have a longer leash because they need to prove out that “their players” can win at illinois. Shauna Green has done an incredible job to turn the program around in ONE year. and i can’t beat a dead horse here, but with Tamas coming from the Cook coaching umbrella (and McCutchoen) we expected the drop off to be minimal, if at all. We make our final four run with JP and Co and we’re riding high. The next year Quade and Co barely take us to the tournament and we lose to Utah in a match we should have won…and then beat a weaker Kentucky team to go to the sweet 16. in those runs - we couldn’t capitalize or attract multiple top level recruits?

Since then, we haven’t had the splashy recruiting class(es), and have prioritized the Kumbaya USAV culture without really caring if it results in wins. We bring on a walk-on who was a manager last year because she was nice and well liked by the team - which is a really nice gesture from the staff - but that affects our in-practice competitiveness and weekly match prep. We had a really impressive run to win 9 of the last 12 (?? i think that’s right?). but the teams we went on to beat - were all winnable. I won’t remove the Purdue match from that, because Tamas knows how to beat Purdue and year-in, year-out we split with them…all in the name of a rivalries haha.

Our coaching staff did a great job in the back half to get us competitive, but that doesn’t change how badly we need a better passing/defense minded coach. I’m sure Coach Sharping is a great guy, but with him on board our defense is erratic, our passing is unpredictable and we haven’t improved. Jen and Krista have done the best they can to bring our Middles and Pins up to speed. Bohm was certainly Most Improved and i’m excited to watch her growth.

Rant. Over.

[ilalum92]

Didn’t watch the NW match, but sounded like they had nothing to play for and gave up. That’s sad. That’s something about the coaching. Last match of the year you got out with a win no matter what.

[rogero1]

Nov 26, 2023 12:38:53 GMT -5 ilalum92 said:

Didn’t watch the NW match, but sounded like they had nothing to play for and gave up. That’s sad. That’s something about the coaching. Last match of the year you got out with a win no matter what.

Very boring & uninspiring match by the Illini.