If you are a die hard Collins supporter you make excuses. That's what you do. Geico pun intended.
Here's a few, a collection from different posters (and our coach in several post game press conferences):
1) Berry's father - not to be insensitive. Not to discount it. But it applies to one game. Not to 9 out of the last 10. Or any of the previous seasons
2) COVID - wha? One of several where what applies to NU, applies to all or several other teams. Yet, somehow, it is hurting us and not others
3) No point guard - First it was because we lost Lathon, now it's because we can't rely on Buie. Several different avenues to fix: change style of play to not rely on a PG. Many teams keep winning without a great point guard, not every winning team is composed of a floor general in the style of MSU/Simpson. Go ahead, without looking it up, tell me who is Purdue's PG. Who is Rutger's? Chances are you don't know. Different avenue, get one in the portal. MI went ahead and found one in the Ivy League. If there's not one, it proves the first point, many many teams are playing and winning without a "true" tradition, floor general.
4) Only 10 scholarship players. Have we compared to other teams? Does it matter? Or what matters is how many players you trust to put into the rotation? CC says he has 9. How many players were on the rotation of IA last year? Or MN? Less than that, I assure you.
5) Injuries and illnesses - Not that we have not had our fair share. But last time I checked (at some point last season), surprisingly or not, we were not worse off than other teams. We had them, they had them
6) Multiple games in a short period of time - one of my favorites. Again, we have them, others have them. It fits the excuse for a given period, so let's use it. PSU just played like 6 games in 12 days. Got some wins, with a ehh roster.
7) Strength of the B1G - not totally convinced the league is harder than last year. Stronger in relation to other conferences, yes. But that could be explained by those conferences being weaker than last year. The B1G was really tough last year with more pro prospects than this year. But let's say it is indeed tougher this year. 10 in a row? No way. Every team with a not so impressive roster, outside Lincoln, finds a way to steal a few: PSU, Minny, Maryland. And... Purdue, doing it with freshmen and a lot more than just stealing a few. We don't.
8) Only (insert number) scholarship players - See injuries/illnesses. In this case, does not even apply to this year, as 10 is not exactly a low number. If you have 7 available reliable players for rotation, in a given night, you can steal games. MN played the entire last season like that. 7 players. Not great, does not prevent stealing some games
9) All state - down memory lane - in a weak B1G year, seasoned players that had made the tournament... it was an abomination for sure. Don't know if it was possible, but we could have tried the UIC arena, even LUC... might not have been possible or we might have thought we needed 10k seats because we were a tournament team. We were ranked and showed up from the summer in poor shape, that was more the reason.
11) Transfers - no player of major impact on the team has transferred. And I'm willing to risk stating our rate of transfers is lower than average
12) Bad luck/can't catch a break - wish I could find the post from last season where someone had compared the games we won vs the games we were expected to win. We are either the unluckiest team on the planet or there's more to it. I go with the latter
If you think we lost last night because we were unlucky, you probably want to convince yourself of that. Front end of one and one. Turnovers, bla, bla, bla. What can the coach do? Reality is we keep not being prepared. We were outscore 7-0 and 6-0 in closing of regulation and OT. This is not a one off. Every team botches games. We just botch a lot of them. Often in spectacular ways. Writing it off as bad luck or chance is naive.
CC is a good recruiter for our standards. He is empathetic and seems to be liked by the players. I believe that is a good thing.