The Day After: What Is There To Say At This Point?

Since the end of yesterday's game I've wondered what exactly it was that I was going to write about. What was there to take away from this game?

Well, I've thought, and I've though, and then I thought some more. And I got nothing. I just don't know what else there is to say at this point.

The Illini have now lost 19 straight Big Ten games, but while that is terrible enough in and of itself, it's not like they're all that amazing outside of the Big Ten. The fact is that since our last Big Ten win in 2011, in Bloomington against the team that just put up 52 points on us, the Illini have gone 6-22 in 28 games.

We've lost 79% of our games since that last Big Ten win, and since we created The Champaign Room on October 22 last year, the Illini have gone 3-11. Again, losing 79% of the time.

In that time I've written about 11 losses. Losses of all kinds. Close losses, painful losses, blowout losses, FIRE EVERYBODY losses, every loss there is. We've talked about every silver lining there is, every dark cloud that hovers above, and argued for and against people keeping their jobs.

So I sit here now, and I don't know what the hell else there is to say that isn't just me repeating the same shit I've written before.

Yesterday sucked. Once again the Illini were done in by their inability to stop an opponent on defense. Indiana finished with only 36 more yards than the Illini in yesterday's game, as the Hoosiers had 650 yards to our 614. However, Indiana ran 21 less plays.

Had Indiana ran as many plays on offense as the Illini did, they'd have finished with 846 yards. They averaged 9.2 yards per play. That's damn near a first down every single snap.

The Hoosiers had touchdowns of 64, 41, 50 and 75 yards on Saturday.

The Hoosiers ran nine plays in which they gained 20 yards or more.

But we've already gone over the defense plenty of times.

How about the playcalling on offense? Hey, let's punt on fourth and three from the Indiana 33, but run a fake punt on fourth and ten from midfield with our punter throwing a pass (and we wouldn't have gotten the first down if the pass had been completed).

Oh, I know, let's run Aaron Bailey on the same play two plays in a row when Indiana knows it's coming.

This is all the same crap we've been talking about for the last two months. There's nothing new here. Either the players are screwing something up, or the coaches are screwing something up. It's tiring. It's painful. It's boring.

And it won't get any better next week with Ohio State coming to town. But at least when we lose next week we'll have a new excuse, even if it is just "well we were playing Ohio State."

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