Is Gates making these players better by coaching them up? Kobe looked possessed, DeGray getting minutes and playing some D, Honor playing steady and going to the rim, team is really jelling with each other and sharing the ball.

Got a feeling that Mosley and Shaw are learning and will get involved soon.

Tonight he played the hot hands, played who got the lead and kept extending it.

Good job coach!!!!

All I want for Christmas, True TE and HB. Wide body powerful blockers .

Enjoy!!!

Documenting an Ass Kicking

Did we win the Liberty pose? My daughters really want to know

I love MU, but with 4 kids, a business and a million other things I'll admit I haven't paid near as much attention to basketball in the last few years. But man this got my blood boiling again.

MIZ

Mizzou 11-0 going into Braggin Rights and beating kansas currently. Getting 19 wins overall.

Plane just landed snd wondering if we should head to the team hotel or kill time till the Alumni tailgate?

Kansas City isn't exactly a neutral site, even if Mizzou is the home team the one year.

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Love the tribute to The Pirate.

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Is back in the game

That would have happened under NIL/portal rules, or with similarly talented players. We would have never been ranked #1 or made the Cotton Bowl. That's now what's happened with Wingo and Lovett. Mizzou is not an elite enough school to withstand annual harvesting of its best players. It's ruined the college football fan experience.

It is great what has been happening on the court so far this year, excitement is up all around it seems. Cuonzo also had this excitement and made the NCAA tournament his first year. If Gates makes the tourney in year one does that do him a disservice in expectations for the program? I know we all want to win and be competetive but the hot start isn't always great in terms of expectations for the future. It does feel a bit different than the past 4 years as a whole but didn't know what y'all think

I take it there were no recruits at the game because of weather?
I don't remember if it is even or odd years for us to have them.

What will this game do for recruits going forward? Lots of scoring and players like that, Gates encourages shooting when your open and doesn't necessarily pull you after a bad shot. Any unsigned guys out there that might be swayed a little by this game? Is the 6'-8" guard the only high school recruit in 2023 still considering MU? To early for portal kids but if they watched this game it could be cemented in the back of their head for later.

A good year should help for cruting 2024, and a good year is starting to creep up in the minds of the fan base.

Just thinking of what positive could come out of this game on the recruiting side.

Go Tigers!!!

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We're on location in St. Louis.

Isiaih Mosley is warming up with the team - that's all we know. It could mean he's playing, it could mean nothing.

I'll let y'all know when starters are posted.

Waiting for the kids to wake up to watch the game, on TV this time. Found this extremely satisfying:

Pregame:
Own that trophy tonight, boys. It’s important.

Hope we can get him some garbage time minutes after running up a commanding lead.

Here's hoping for an injury free game of fantastic Illini wizardly potent skills showing mr gates who owns the braggin rights today and forever

The question of the night: will I be happy drunk or sad drunk in two hours?

1st Half:
Is it too early to say our body language absolutely sucks again?!?

Maybe start drinking now.

Do we even practice offense?

Didn’t Underwood teach them a motion offense during finals?

As long as Brad doesn’t start yelling at them we’ll be fine.

This does not seem like a very good Missouri team.

Man, our half court offense needs a lot of work

What exactly do we work on offensively during the week??? Frustrating stuff

Brown is basically owning us at the moment.

Wtf are we doing on offense

What am I watching right now?

Our offense is hot garbage

At least its hot.

Is there a plan to create good shots or nah?

This is gross. We're not flat, we're inverted.

How do the coaches coach the offense? Seriously. Is it street ball? No flow, no continuity, no discipline. How do you not coach like that?
Just chuck up 3’s? Utilize Dainja for goodness sakes.

Line change, Brad??????????

Getting absolutely punked. Wonder why Underwood is screaming at you guys yet Mayer?

Ok, i’m flipping to the air force vs baylor game. Good luck guys.

Missouri isn't even good. We're just completely inept at this offense.

Nice offense Brad.

What the hell happened? I saw it was 12-12 when I started bedtime with the kids and get back and it's 27-13?

I’m pretty upset. This is just bad offense? What is the offense?

There is far too much talent on this team to get beat in this fashion by a very mediocre Missouri team.

Who fed this team stupid pills. And would they please stop.

Best part of game so far is advertising for our bowl game occasionally in the ticker below

Brad, I have eligibility and a pulse.
Call me.

Relax everyone. Basketball is a game of runs. Let's see how it plays out.

But hey, at least our shorts don’t look like Charlie Brown t-shirts…

They do know this is the Bragging Rights game, right?

If some dude was throwing up air balls and balls that clanged off the board like those at the YMCA
people would glare at him and tell him to stop shooting.

on the bright side, the SECN mizzou-alum announcers have been on point, haven’t disagreeed with anything they’ve said

God awful! Getting our butt whooped by a mediocre team.

[Illini] playing like they all have the runs alright.

Something is very, very wrong.

Hodge.... Almost has as many points as our team in limited minutes.

Walked away for parental responsibilities and seems like we've done pretty much nothing?

[Illini] Walked away from basketball responsibilities.

Is NIL refundable?

MVP of the first fifteen minutes is Brown.
We look like butt.

Wish I could say these announcers were homers but I think they have us pegged. We’re just not good right now.

I haven't seen Elf or Christmas Story in the last 20 minutes, would be much better viewing than this

When does spring football start?

Underwood going off on his team in the huddle. This is became an every game occurrence.

This is the first time I'm glad I don't live in the area anymore and therefore didn't pay to go to this game.

This is either going to be a legendary 180 comeback or one of the more embarrassing losses of the last few years.

Get this thing to 12 at half and I’ll feel better.

We have 0 assists.

They have 16 points off 8 turnovers.

This team has major issues. Major, major, major issues. Did I mention major issues?

If they keep this to 20 points down I'll feel better.
Edit: should have said 30.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
I’m done.

Can Brad get two quick T's and get thrown out to give one of the other coaches a chance?

We're gonna lose by 60, aren't we?

Holy F.
Are we division iii?

Hard to say what is more entertaining and enjoyable. Watching this team partially try to play basketball, or taking out my own appendix with a warm spoon. Probably a coin flip at this point.

One of the most disappointing halves in the history of Illinois basketball

I got to say... this is a bit surprising.

8 possession game. Time to turn it on

/1st half

Tonight was a great win. The standards for this season have absolutely changed. We should one hundred percent be a tournament team. If we aren’t, this is a bad season. That being said. I don’t think Illinois is the number 16 team in the country. I think we have a good team, but I don’t think our team is as good as this win might indicate.

Sorry if I missed this, but is there no chamber this week?

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I don't fault the kid for getting the biggest bag possible, but let's just start calling it what it is. He is acting like he had some noble epiphany about what is best for his future and that OU was the best destination. Nah man, you are a ****ing free agent and going to the highest bidder. And then after next season (or the season after) if you are still a top talent you will be a free agent again; again going to the highest bidder. These guys are 100% professional athletes now.

CFB has never really been equitable, but this new layer of NIL and the transfer portal is trending toward whoever has the most money will win a championship. You can already see how Dabo's reluctance to the new system is hurting his team.
I don't know what the solution is, but I can recognize that it is here to stay. I think we may start seeing ADs start to employee Chief Innovation Officers in their departments to come up with ways to land kids by creating lucrative NIL opportunities. It's no longer about tradition or excellence or development--it's about getting the biggest mf bag possible out of HS.
I love CFB, but at this point the product is going to be such shit in the next 10 years due to the disparity that I'd rather just have an NFL minor league system where kids get drafted out of HS and are assigned to 32 minor league clubs that play in the spring. Kids would get paid, have endorsement deals and they don't have to worry about school or grades and they get first class athletic development.

Man, he has not played up to my least expectations. Good against weak teams and weak against good teams. He seems to play because of his size, and then he stays outside and dribble.

Hodge, the kid can get up and slam the ball quickly!! The one he missed was because the defender pushed him back and stopped his forward progress. Slams like that pump me up and the bench aways goes wild.

Mosley, want to see more from him obviously, what is a realistic line for him this year?

Gohlston, the only one with a mid range jumper, we know why Gates likes him.

Shaw, I like the kid alot, not many minutes yesterday, he at least stays inside, can block and dunk. His time will come and Gates will play him when he makes a difference.

This team has a lot of pieces and Gates has shown he will play the hot hands. A prediction contest of who would be high scorer on this team each game would have plenty of names in the pot.

The student section is full, both teams are warming up and it's almost time to play ball

I'll let y'all know when starting lineups are posted

Local Schnucks displays Luther's Red Hot Riplets next to the regularly packaged Old Vienna RHRs. LB3 sold out consistently or just a bag or two (which I buy)...regulary packaged RHRs are barely touched.

Guy is a warrior out there and something this program has lacked. A battle tested PG that’s tough and can consistently hit 3’s. I’m not sure what his plans are for next year but he still has the Covid year left and selfishly would love to have him back next year. Hopefully, NIL can get him paid to stay in Boone county.

Yes I am typing this after a great win. So there's definitely some recency bias/euphoria. But I've been really impressed with HCDG thus far, even in the early season cupcake walk. In no particular order, here's what I like:

Rotation/Hot Hand: He's not set in his rotations/lineups. He tries to give everyone a chance in the first half and early second. And then he goes with who he feels is playing the best. Kobe has been in and out at crunch time. Sometimes Carter/Gholston has been the show. But today he rode with Kobe obviously and went to the two-point guard look when their pressure bothered us a bit in the second half. He's not afraid to deviate from his plan, which I really like.

Switching Defenses: He didn't really have to adjust defenses much the first 9 games, but the last couple games he's mixed it up enough to throw the other team out of rhythm. And tonight he instructed his guys to not take chances in passing lanes or trapping because of how kU sliced and diced us. Great adjustment IMO.

Building Culture: It's obvious the guys like each other (winning helps of course), but he has taken a group of strangers basically and molded them into a pretty tight-knit group from what I can observe. Heck, even the star newcomer seems pretty engaged considering he's not playing very much. Getting buy-in from the new guys is so important in today's college basketball landscape.

Set Plays: We actually have some. The timeout/OTO play where Hodge got the and-1 was a thing of beauty. It wasn't some long complicated ornate inbounds play, but the subtlety of it was it's effectiveness. And then the fake elevator screen to Hodge/backdoor to Gholston play they ran early in the second half off was the red nose on the clown suit he stitched for Underwood tonight.

I know there are probably going to be as many or more defeats as there are victories the rest of the way (but heck, if we won just as many as we lost we might be on the right side of the bubble). But I just wanted to express my appreciation for his coaching so far. #LetDennisCook