psychology Archives - Illini Report

Ben Verdonk personifies the Good Guy. Da’Monte Williams epitomizes coachable selflessness. You want to root for them.

When ‘Monte drove from wing to paint during that 40 Year Desert of Illini scoring on Tuesday, you and I cringed. His forte has never been finishing in the lane.

Ben was the only guy available for a dump-off. Illinois really needed a bucket.

You & I don’t want Da’Monte driving to the low-post, and we don’t want Ben taking passes in the low-post. We want Andre Curbelo dribbling, and Kofi waiting for the lob.

We can’t have nice things. We’re Illinois.

Or that’s the meme, anyhow. In fact, Illinois remains in great position to win the B1G. Wisconsin and Michigan State jumped from middling pre-season expectations to the top of the standings, almost as if they were Wisconsin and Michigan State. (When will people learn?) But Illinois is right there, like 2007-2019 hadn’t happened.

Olds remember conversations including the Illini, right up there with Badgers and Spartans.

***Trent drew the defense out of bounds while passing to Ben. Ben converted.***

Purdue, the all-time leader in Big Ten Conference titles, is in good shape to capture a 25th.

But between COVID rescheduling, inevitable injuries and off nights; there’s plenty of opportunity for Illinois to scrape & claw its way to a title. And even though Da’Monte’s penetration produced no points on Tuesday, I’m glad Brad Underwood allowed it to happen.

***No baskets, one loose ball & one poke in the eye***

After complaining about Bruce Weber’s micromanaging for all of 2010-12, I feel ashamed for questioning Brad Underwood’s patience.

Illinois did not, as history won’t remember, get that bucket. As it happens, they didn’t need it. By the slimmest of margins, and possibly because Williams and Verdonk were on the floor, the Illini held off a vastly overrated but still defensively sound Michigan State team.

I was reminded once again that between you, me and Brad Underwood; one of us gets paid three million dollars to run the Illini basketball program. When that final two-tenths of a second had finally ticked, that guy had beaten yet another Top 10 team.

***Malik Hall’s first of two free-throws bounced out***

History will probably also forget that no one expected Illinois to beat MSU on Thursday, with the notable exception of Las Vegas. Illini fans watched the previous game, at Maryland, and decided that the dream had died. Illinois basketball was a mirage, a fantasy. They’d just woken up with a hangover and regretted ever investing emotional capital in this squad.

How did Brad Underwood turn the hive mind of his team, the same team that lacked urgency in College Park, into a ramshackle collection of scrappers that beat a ranked team while BOTH of its most heralded players sat out?

This is why I was disappointed, in hindsight, that Matt Stevens didn’t cover the Maryland game for IlliniGuys.

Larry Smith was the IlliniGuy covering the game at Maryland, accompanied by his beautiful wife Rita. It was great seeing them, and Larry is both the consummate professional and a gregarious colleague.

But Matt Stevens would have been useful to have there. Among the regular Illini media pool, he’s the best at probing sports psychology issues. He’s subtle about it. He knows how to ask meaningful questions without making people uncomfortable.

Whatever happens going forward this season, the Maryland game was some kind of turning point. And I’d like to figure out how Underwood managed it. The path to a championship veered off course there. How did he get it back?

We learned later, of course, that Belo was sick and Trent injured. That’s part of the problem. But another reason for the “lack of urgency” was that guys were playing unfamiliar roles. Ben isn’t accustomed to starting Big Ten games. Da’Monte hasn’t been a “scorer” since his high school days.

If Underwood cultivated hesitancy in these guys, at this point, he’d be shooting himself in the foot. So whether he cringed along with you and me, he didn’t show it. That’s the important thing.

NOT ABOUT BASKETBALL

This afternoon in Champaign, the mortal remains of Associate Vice Chancellor Emeritus, former Dean of Students and noted martini quaffer Clarence Shelley will lie in repose at the Pilgrim Missionary Baptist Church.

If you ever set foot in Champaign, you were probably friends with Shelley. If you were a black UIUC student trying to acclimate to campus life in the latter half of the 20th century, he counseled you, supported you, and kept you on the straight & narrow.

**The author & Clarence Shelley, *circa* 1996**

You can read about Shelley at WCIA, at Smile Politely, in the News-Gazette and its offshoot publication about homes. His obituary is here.

My mother had a friendship with Shelley in the 1970s. He steered black students toward her literature classes when she was a TA before earning her PhD. in 1974. I learned about that in the 1990s, when I befriended Shelley in a reviving downtown Champaign. We were both martini traditionalists.

To the extent that Illinois Basketball needs urban black people to spend their college years among the soybeans & hogs, Dean Shelley was the man who paved a path through the corn. But you didn’t have to play basketball for Shelley to be important. You didn’t even have to be a student, or black.

Very few of us will have an impact on so many lives. So if you can’t make it to the visitation, pour one out for Shelley tonight.

Psychological Warfare: Purdue’s mastery of Illini basketball

The Purdue Boilermakers are still the winningest program in B1G basketball history. Their most recent conference championship came five years ago.

Illinois hasn’t won a championship in ten years. And in that time, Purdue holds a 12-5 advantage over the Illini. Two of those wins came the Big Ten Tournament. Two came in the 2009 regular season. Since then, Purdue has won 9-of-10.

During that onslaught, Matt Painter drove his mentor Bruce Weber out of a job. Weber’s most notorious player-trashing came after losing to Purdue. That’s when Weber said he’d failed to build a culture at Illinois, and instead coached “not to lose.”

It was hard to decipher the substance of that distinction, but that’s Weber all over. His meaning was never clear, but you could generally infer that he was insulting someone. (FWIW, I’ve always preferred the subtler player-trashing Weber performed after the Northwestern loss in 2010.)

Weber was never good at explaining things, which is — whatever he believes — the actual reason he failed at Illinois.

Matt Painter is very good at explaining things. Among conference coaches, he’s a top communicator. (Thad Matta is right there, as is Fran McCaffery.) Listening to Painter speak, one gleans the modus operandi, the Keady Tree philosophy. It’s what Weber could never express through vagueries and colloquy, or outright dodges. (Seriously, who was it that invented the “Weber is too honest” narrative? That’s nonsense.)

Right now, January 2015, is a fascinating time to analyze Matt Painter’s coaching style, from an Illini perspective. He hasn’t been successful recently, but he’s been more successful than John Groce when the two go head-to-head. Their philosophies on player development may be exactly the same, or totally different. It’s harder to tell why Groce doles out PT the way he does, or rewards individual players for performance based on one set of metrics (e.g. rebounds) while not penalizing for another set (e.g. field goal percentage).

Painter talked about yanking his young guys during both Monday’s B1G teleconference and his own pre-Illinois teleconference on Tuesday. You can infer that Weber shares this philosophy, if not the ability to express it.

This year at Kansas State, Weber stanched a slide that could easily have seen him canned in March, and he did it by sticking to his principles. He’s “building a culture of toughness” rather than “coaching not to lose.” That’s bad news for fans of entertaining basketball, because it suggests 58-57 grudge matches might ugly the game for years to come.

As for his mastery over Illinois, Painter spoke Tuesday about the psychological weapons he’s deployed over the years. The most obvious one, it turns out, was unintentional. Painter said his staff did not intentionally not guard Chester Frazier.

Painter acknowledged (and perhaps wistfully pined for) Lewis Jackson’s mental ownership of Illini guards, a key factor in establishing the 9-outta-10 streak.

Painter also acknowledged the key factor for beating Illinois this year, but did not say whether it’s something an Illini opponent can effect or control. For Illini fans, it’s obvious: Make sure Ahmad Starks and Aaron Cosby have one of their 1-for-9 shooting nights, rather than one of their 5-for-7 shooting nights.

You can bet that Purdue’s staff is crunching video right now, trying to determine whether any defensive actions prompt these offensive reactions, one way or the other.

But as of Tuesday morning, Painter did not have an immediate response to the question of how to beat Illinois psychologically. And it’s not because he isn’t a straight-shooter.

(For context, understand the format of Boiler teleconferences: Painter calls out the names of all the people on the line, in order, and then answers all of each individual’s questions in a row before moving on to the next person.)

Cosby is more typical, from a sports psychology perspective, than Starks. Cosby said after the Northwestern game that he tried to keep his head up during his shooting slump. He credited the Illini coaching staff for insisting that he keep firing away.

Starks is an unusual character, from a sports psychology standpoint. He’s a little guy, and a loner. He’s quiet and introspective. Although probably kind to small, defenseless animals; Starks will ruthlessly attack you on a basketball court. And despite a number of statistically terrible games this year; he doesn’t need a coaching staff to buck him up. He’ll keep attacking as long as he’s on the court.

It’s for this reason that Starks is much more dangerous to the Boilermakers. They’re an unusually tall team. Starks is the mouse to their elephant. And worse for Painter, Starks seems invulnerable to mental antagonism.

Whether you prefer John Groce’s demanding without demeaning, or Painter’s short leash for underclassmen who haven’t earned the right to make mistakes, both philosophies are more comprehensible than anything Bruce Weber ever expressed.

What’s odd is that Painter will tell you what he’s doing. He shows his cards. But he still finds a way to outmaneuver Illinois, psychologically.

As Bobby Knight once said, “I’m fuckin’ tired of losing to Purdue.”