All right.

All right.

Apologies for not having the post game podcast, but it was a late night at United

Center.

And I knew we'd

chat with Michael Toop today, about a 90 to 86 loss for Illinois to number 11, Alabama.

I return to the United Center. I want to chat about that here a little bit, but Mike, a

disappointing loss because you were in this game the entire time despite what I didn't feel like

was even close to Illinois's best games. We got a lot to talk about with Petrovich returning,

I guess Petrovich's debuting with Illinois and some good performances, some issues, a lot

to chat about from this one. It's why you schedule this way. I think being able to

sit here on November 20th and have this Texas Tech game and Alabama game that you can really

sink into because I think both presented challenges, one for the interior defense without Tommy

with J.T. Toppin, but in this Alabama game, just how are you going to

manage when teams want to really hunt your bigs and want to go after your front court and try

to get downhill and get into the pain? I mean, this is an Illinois team that was so good at

limiting shots at the rim and had a good percentage defending at the rim. And I think Albaan was 71%

at the rim last night. They're 15 for 21 and then look pretty comfortable getting down,

getting in there, especially in the second half. I mean, first half, I actually thought both sides,

despite it being 42, 41, guarded pretty well, all things considered with that, those types of

offenses. So we'll get into all of it, but I think being able to assess the film and look at

it and say, well, we still got young players. We still got guys that Tommy wasn't Tommy last night. You're still trying to work in Petrovich.

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