Can Demetri McCamey Be A Leader? [And Other Notes on the Illini's Big Win Against MSU]
So this Illini team is for real. I mean don’t get me wrong, they are about as inconsistent as they come, but they can legitimately beat good teams. All “buts” aside (I know Kalin Lucas was out and the win came at home, but MSU is still is a top 5 team in the country, or was…), the win over Michigan State put the Illini on the map. It was one of those games that can be the turning point in a season, and the Illini rose to the challenge. With Wisconsin, OSU, and Purdue coming up back-to-back-to-back on the schedule, a loss here may have started a slide that would drop the Illini to 7-7 in the Big Ten and the schedule isn’t exactly a cakewalk after that either. Instead, they sit at 8-3 with a signature win against a top team in the country.
Now that is all great, but what will it really mean come tournament time? Can the Illini make noise? The inconsistencies have been a problem all season, and they are a result of the team’s soft and inconsistent front court as well as a green backcourt. So how could a team with two skinny forward/centers and diaper dandies on the perimeter go deep into the tourney? Demetri McCamey is how. Until this season, he has been a player who took terrible shots, had a bad assist/turnover ratio, and seemed more focused on his one-on-one moves than on helping the team win. While he still takes awful shots (and I mean awful), somehow the shots are going in. His ability is unquestionable, but can he lead? Can he make his teammates believe in him?
McCamey is frustrating to watch at times, and Bruce Weber knows it better than anyone. As Weber revealed in an interview early this season:
“If you study him over the course of time, he has very good games and a tendency not to be real consistent, this goes back way to high school and AAU and that’s where he’s got to mature. He has the big one and then average, average. He needs to be more consistent if we’re going to be a very good team because he can do things that other people can’t do.”
McCamey seems to have turned that corner though, eliminating the terrible games and minimizing his own mistakes. Will it be enough to carry a team with 3 freshman getting big minutes and a starting frontcourt that can’t seem to get a rebound for long stretches? It’s tough to tell at this point, but you can be damn sure that if he isn’t clicking, this team will be losing in the first round, no matter how high a seed they get.
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