The Matt Mayer energy drink story added some context to Brad Underwood being flustered about the inconsistent effort of the team and not having answers. How do you gameplan for something like that?
I was going to advocate for starting Rodgers at PG over Epps (except not wanting to upset his fragile psyche by benching him) so I think in some ways the Epps situation won't hurt us much on the court this week. We do have guard depth issues but at least we won't take as many 3's.
There is a certain "snakebit" vibe we have vis-a-vis NCAA Tournament runs. So many lesser teams have caught fire and made surprise runs in March and it's never Illinois. Winning a 5/4 game or a 9/8 game is our idea of an "upset win."
Our fanbase is still not over the Loyola upset and won't be until we're in the Sweet 16. We were thinking Final Four in 2021 and we can be happy racking up regular season Big Ten wins but once the NCAA Tournament gets close the fanbase gets way too uptight.
I have no idea what to expect for the rest of the month. There's actually a scenario where we lose out and get the 11 seed in the BTT. If we lose to Minnesota in the BTT we could actually still miss the NCAA Tournament altogether. At this point, I'll be happy with anything better than that.