Hovadipo

Put these losers in the ohio valley conference

could 2024 western illinois beat 2025 illinois? COLUMN:

PAY ME MY MONEYYYYYYYYY

They’re getting Nebraska’ed lol. (this message has been sent from the 100 level trough pissers)

Yeah, I think at worst they’re 6-1. Should be able to beat at least one of Nebraska or Washington at home.

Not looking forward to that Maryland road trip the weekend before PSU. Maryland, despite being pretty poorly coached usually, always has a ton of talent and this freshman QB is impressive. That might leapfrog trap game status into straight scary territory.

God, that slate stinks out loud. I don’t think they’ll do that to Herbie if they can avoid it, as hilarious as it’d be. My money is on Vandy at Bama if Bama beats UGA. There’s a path to SMU/Cuse and Miss State/Texas A&M having buzz that week too.

Herbie once again dumped on IU…”they haven’t played NOBODY”, yet our best opponent is better than Illinois’ best opponent by every metric that matters lol. Listening to those guys “analyze” the game it was pretty obvious none of them have watched either team and just chose Illinois based on Bielema and Altmeyer having SEC ties.

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'.

Never too early to get this thread started. Line is currently hovering between IU -4.5/5.5, O/U 52.5.

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.