“Is it worse to be surprised by a let down loss, at the hands of one of the most exciting and murdersome players in Big Ten history, or is worse to have seen in coming from miles away, and been unable to stop it, screaming and flailing like a Cassandra in your living room. I think I can safely say it is worse to be the latter.
“Where to start? The poor shooting? We actually finished at a respectable 41% on the day, even with that awful first half. The turnovers? Yeah, we had sixteen of them. Sixteen. How about the rebounds? Even though Tisdale had a nice double-double, we got beat on the boards 33-27, and gave up an awful 10 offensive boards (one of which was particularly costly.) And just in general, on offense this team did not play like it had ripped Northwestern apart for sport just a week ago.Then we had six players in double figures, tonight, we had two.
“I think the most frustrating thing of all though, has to be what happened on defense. We knew Penn State begins and ends with Talor Battle, everything goes through him, and he still beat us by himself. Without Talor Battle, we still probably win this game by eight points, even with all aforementioned badness we demonstrated. I wanted the Illini to come out with energy and discipline on a level that would take the life out of what fanbase did manage to show up to watch the most under appreciated player in college basketball….”
via Illini fall to Penn State 57-55: Have You Ever Heard Of Talor Battle? – Hail to the Orange.