Hovadipo

Bottle this, chill it, and I’ll drink it by the truckload.

Maybe this is what you were saying two paragraphs below the current one, but… I don’t think basketball resources are capped because of football. Football is being funded well because we finally have people in charge that realize how necessary it is and because they found a guy that knows what to do with the funding. I think basketball funding is capped because people are tired of setting their money on fire for s***ty basketball, not because the money doesn’t exist. If DDV shows proof of concept over the course of a couple years, he’ll have no problem getting as much money as he needs. Hell, some of those money folks will be back in if he finds a way to do damage before Christmas this year.

I wonder if Nebraska would be in there with the semester not starting until the 12th.

When we Nebraska them, the “Illinois sucked anyway” excuses are starting to pile up. Stay strong folks.

It's Thursday of Illinois week, rational thinking/behavior has come and gone I'm afraid.

I think the squad all by itself in the top right of this chart spends its Saturday evening in Altmeyer's earhole. Maybe I'm confirmation biasing myself into a bad take, but the more metrics I look at the more this feels like we could Nebraska this thing. And we don't even need to go Full Nebraska. Even a half or quarter Nebraska would work.

Cal was 128th nationally in sack rate last season. Mendoza is very familiar with pressure and getting the ball out quickly. Altmeyer kinda sucks at it.

Bang.

Stu is too much of a city slicker to even comprehend this.

I can't quit thinking about the parallels between this team and last year's team. A lot of the same/similar pieces on both sides of the ball obviously, but also how the non-con has played out. A solid, but unimpressive win (against a MUCH better opponent this year), a pretty slow start that turns into a thorough thumping in non-con #2, and a complete undressing of an (again, much better) FCS squad. The thing that stands out the most in the comparison to last year, though, is how vanilla we have been. We did enough to get the looks we needed to get, but especially defensively up front, we haven't put 5% of what we'll unleash in conference on tape. The Illinois OL is weak, Altmeyer is not great against pressure, and that happens to be Bryant Haines' specialty. We are once again toward the top of the country in things like havoc rate without even playing the hits yet. I think this is the week we see Mikail Kamara come back into form. If they're able to create consistent pressure Saturday, it might be a long day for the boys in orange and blue. I'll be curious to see our OL go up against a really strong group in Illinois. This could easily turn into a low scoring slugfest if we aren't able to crack their code with the RPO and traditional run game. Definitely a clash of strengths there. I am so fired up for this game. The Rock will be absolutely rockin'.

We love efficient blowouts. And, for the record, SP+ is opponent-adjusted.

Ooooh spicy. Bullying works!

Not sure why this wasn’t announced with the Kirkwood event. Sounds like everyone wins. Good deal.

The selfish positive out of this is we likely have Beebe through the 2027 season now.

Believe we’re right at 105, but it will be very rare for a school to be able to take on any of these VT/UCLA guys this year. And even if they somehow made it work, they’d only be able to practice. It’s more of a problem to solve for next year’s roster numbers as these are more or less just the first guys to hit the 2026 portal.

Hope he comes back. He’s on the trajectory to not be back.

Those VT WRs are serious. One Greene is a grad student, but the younger Greene (don’t believe they’re related) is a junior and we’re about to have a Sarratt and Cooper sized hole to fill.

He just seems like a normal dude. Crean was a scatterbrained lunatic, Archie was a serial killer, Woody cans his own farts. DDV seems like a solid hang and about as regular as a bball coach can be.

Lol wow. We didn’t need the rat poison anyway!

This South Carolina curb stomping has us one step closer to getting Gameday again.

Believe both of those are true. ODU was a couple weird bounces from winning 8 or 9 last year and brought a bunch back. And VT sucks out loud.

Did you see the quality of that Tennessee loss? They’ll easily kick Illinois out of the top-10 regardless of how bad they beat WMU.

I understand/somewhat agree with not wanting to schedule FCS games, and this might be a homer take (both ways), but that ISU team isn’t awful by FCS standards. I’ve watched their first two games and they would beat the WIU team we slaughtered similarly in 2024 by 40 points. The FCS teams that most of the SEC schools will play in November will be miles worse than the ISU team we just destroyed too. Cig had the squad about as locked in last night as I’ve seen since he got here and if they come out like that next weekend they’ll handle Illinois.

Nevermind. You can definitely fire an alum after a season and change now.

I still can’t wrap my mind around IU not having a single nod to the 2024 team going to the CFP inside the stadium bowl. Am I crazy? It’s insane to not have that plastered everywhere you look during a game right? Edit: the equipment staff has the CFP logo on one of their sideline trunks. At least they’re doing their part.