I want to begin by giving Illinois credit. I thought they were extremely quick to the basketball. They were aggressive. We knew they were going to send five to the glass. They do it every game. And because of that, they were able to get it and then toss it back out. Paint touch threes and they got the rhythm, their confidence. So there's a chain reaction where they felt good with their shooting, where they've been struggling to shoot the ball lately. They felt great about their shots, in my opinion, because the ball was coming from the paint and they knew, 'If I miss it again, we're going to get it again and get it again.' So we've got to bounce back. We've got a quick turn with Maryland, an extremely good basketball team coming in Wednesday. And so we're going to have to figure some things out here in the next couple of days to keep this from happening again.

I think it's a little bit of everything. We were on our heels. Our communication wasn't great. And so we were broken down because we were late on our switches. And they did a nice job of confusing the switches. But because we weren't able to keep bodies on bodies early and then we had to go to the zone. So they have a running start. We're trying to meet them closer to the basket. And at the end of the day, when you look at their lineup, Will Riley, Ivisic, Boswell plays much bigger than his height. Tre White's a big kid. Jakucionis is big. They're big, strong, physical guys. And in a jump ball contest, 15 feet to 18 feet, they won, it seemed like all of them. So even the ones we did block out, they were able to get them back. We just don't have the margin for the ones that we missed or we weren't aggressive to fly in and tip it or help our teammates out. We just weren't able to overcome those. But once again, I'm giving Illinois a lot of the credit too. Those guys played really, really connected basketball tonight.

If you're asking me if I'm going to look in the mirror, absolutely. That's the first thing that I do — we do as a staff and try to figure out what we could have done differently to learn from it. And then what can we do immediately to fix it? Because it's not as if you're going to make roster acquisitions or anything like that this time of year. So this is our team. How do we fix these issues? And sometimes the matchups, they present some challenges from what their strengths are to what our built-in weaknesses are. And so you have to be more determined. You have to be more connected. You have to play better offense to still be able to find a way to win. And we didn't do that tonight.

I think everyone in the country is emotionally and mentally fatigued right now. Our season is long. With the exception of the one or two percent of guys that are obsessed with it — that love it. This is it. Other than that, yes. And we're not using it as an excuse. We had time off earlier in the year. Whether we used it wisely enough, I'm not sure. But our tough stretch with the number of games is now. And we're not the deepest team when you get past our top five or top six. And Rubin hasn't played in a couple games and all that. But that's what everyone's going through. That's what Illinois went through this year. And now it looks like they're healthy at the right time. But as we talked about as a group, we still have an opportunity to compete for three more championships. We're in contention to compete for three more championships. So if nothing else will motivate you or inspire you or to get over that emotional or physical fatigue, then you're not built for it anyway.

The thing that I was most disappointed in is when they did get a rebound, we dropped our heads. We didn't dig in and fight harder. And guys, sometimes the ball just goes. Air balls are hard to rebound from a defensive standpoint. You're trying to get a hit. You're trying to find the ball. And it lands. So there were a couple bad bounces. Like I said, it's a 6'9 guy versus a 6'1 guy. But there were others where we just didn't get in the fight enough. It's a cumulation of all that stuff. But they have a good team. That's something that's not lost on our staff or players. To overcome some of those things, we have to be on our front foot a lot more and just bouncy and energetic and anticipate what's about to happen at a higher level.

That was as touching as any win that I've ever had or been a part of as a coach. Just to see these guys. We all do. We chase opportunities. We make sacrifices. You guys are all here because you've made sacrifices. The coaches have made sacrifices. And so Vlad, for five years, hasn't seen his family. I don't know of a bigger sacrifice you could have as a great human being like he is. To see them, how proud they are of him. It was a touching moment. There's a lot of work from a lot of people. Our administration, our staff put in a lot of man hours to figure out a way to help Vlad get his family here. We're very grateful for all that. That was a special moment. Just to see a mother's pride in her son was a really cool moment.

That's something that we're trying to comb through now. He's got it going, but coming down and just trying to force feed it into the post. Everyone else gets stagnant and static. You lose your rhythm of the game. That's something, as we look at the film, we've got to figure out the balance of it. Probably the answer is when we do get stopped, we've got to make more of a conscious effort to give him a look and hopefully play off of that overreaction. I thought we did in the second half. We got it into him. Maybe the second or third media timeout, we had an overreaction. Danny got a layup out of it. But at the end of the day, we're not finishing well around the rim. We're not converting on our free throws. We're still not shooting the ball well from 3. 4-of-18 again. With that being the case, you've got to figure out some things. For us to shoot the ball as well as we did for the majority of the year and in the last month, really just not make shots is a little bit mystifying. Our guys are in the gym. They're working. We'll have to find that balance.

I don't really want to reflect on the foundation they've laid because this thing is still being poured today. I'd love to answer that hopefully in four, five, six weeks, whatever it is when the season's over. I'll get back with you on that one.

I'll just start with the rebounding. If you're going to be an elite transition offensive team, it begins with getting stops and guards rebounding. They're not rebounding to level that we need them to be a championship level team. I think everyone on our roster has more in the tank, including them. I think I can coach better and perform better. I think everyone on our roster can play and perform better. I don't really want to single those guys out individually. I think everyone on our roster knows that we can play better than we're playing right now. Just like Illinois did today, you never know when that moment is going to be there for you just to find your niche and get healthy and find that rhythm again.

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