1: Wake finally got the whacking I’ve been waiting for. And the beatdown Illinois laid on them wasn’t a fluke, either. The Illini outplayed our guards badly, and we didn’t do a very good job at the one thing that seemed to offer some promise – pounding it to Williams. He got the ball, but not nearly enough – the ball needed to go through the post every single trip, and it didn’t.

2: Can JG cover? As good an offensive player as Justin Gray is, I didn’t see any signs in the Illinois game that he could cover me. His defense alternated between inept and lazy, and that’s a bad sign. With a guy who was your third option as a scorer you could afford to sit him down in favor of a stopper, but Gray is clearly option 1 for the Deac offense, so that means he’s going to have to step it up. If Gray plays against Duke the way he played against Illinois Redick is going to hang 50 on him.

3: Team D. But let’s not lay it all on Gray – there was plenty of bad defense on display. At one point I caught myself thinking, well hell, Illinois is hitting everything they throw up, and when a team is in the zone like that there’s only so much you can do. But then I realized that nothing puts a team in the zone quite like being unguarded. When was the last time you saw a top-ranked team give up that many wide-open looks from 3ville? Right. We’ve known Skip has a problem with perimeter D, and last week we saw what that’s going to lead to come March. And I’m not entirely sure I know what the answer is. He may need to start scheming a little confusion for the other guys. Game plan four or five different defenses – man, 2-3, 3-2, 1-3-1 halfcourt trap, etc. – and switch every couple trips down the floor to keep the other team off-balance. It’s not how you’d like to do things – ideally you have your way of defending and you by god impose your will on the offense – but in light of what I saw in the ACC-Big 10 Challenge it’s worth a shot.

4: Bonnie notes. Went to see St. Bonaventure play Cornell Saturday night. Previously I had suggested that SBU might be the worst D1 team I’d ever seen, but it’s now clear that I need to rethink my use of the term “might be.” Cornell beat us by 4 on our floor, and in case you were wondering, that’s Cornell of the Ivy League, a team that doesn’t offer athletic scholarships. Right – we got poleaxed by a bunch of short, white, non-leaping brainiacs. It’s like we lost to the chess club. And by the way, Cornell isn’t even one of the better teams in the Ivy. They came in sporting losses to Colgate and Quinnipiac, ferchrissakes.

5: I just don’t see any hope here. The Bonnies do things wrong so routinely that you figure it must be an accident when they actually get it right. They have no clue about ball movement, and even when the scheme puts guys in the right place at the right time the pass doesn’t get made, which makes you wonder about their preparation and readiness to play. These aren’t pickup games – they have rehearsed their sets, which means that when you flash the high post, you should know that your 2-guard (your only legit outside threat, BTW) has dropped down into the off-side corner for a wide-open 3, right? But when the ball gets to the post, he doesn’t act like he’s aware that the other side of the court is there. I’m looking over the remainder of the 2k4-5 schedule, and if we can’t handle Marist and Cornell, I’m sorry, I don’t see a win. This could very well be an 0fer, folks….