Illinois forward Matthew Mayer, a graduate transfer who played on Baylor’s 2021 national championship team, believes the key to going far in the NCAA Tournament is not to “overthink” things.
“We kind of made that mistake a little bit when we made our national championship run,” he said Wednesday before the Illini’s workout at Wells Fargo Arena. “We were putting a little too much pressure on the games. We ended up winning, but I think that would’ve made it a lot easier for us if we took it game by game.”
Illinois would gladly make the same mistake if it meant winning it all, but Mayer’s point is well taken. The last two Illini teams had the weight of the world on them but didn’t make it out of the second round.
There are almost no expectations on this year’s ninth-seeded team, which begins play Thursday against No. 8 seed Arkansas (3:30 p.m., TBS).
Illinois has plenty of talent, including Terrence Shannon Jr., Coleman Hawkins and Mayer, along with veteran coach Brad Underwood, who is leading his eighth team into the NCAA Tournament.
With virtually no one outside their campus expecting them to make any noise, the Illini should be able to play loose and relaxed and let their talent take over.
Which brings us back to Mayer, the mullet-haired forward who transferred in to provide scoring, rebounding and experience to a revamped roster.
In the Big Ten Tournament, Mayer scored seven points in the first 31/2 minutes and was shut out the rest of the night, going 0-for-5 from 3-point range and 3-for-11 from the field in a loss to Penn State.
As a third-team All-Big Ten selection and the team’s second-leading scorer with 12.8 points per game, more was expected from Mayer. He has proved he can play in the spotlight, having scored 22 points for Baylor on 8-for-12 shooting in last year’s first-round NCAA Tournament game.
How did he shake off his Big Ten Tournament performance?
“I don’t really care about stuff like that,” he replied. “Because if you don’t probably know by now, I’m not a numbers guy. So me going 0-for-5 from (3-point range) or 1-for-10 the game before, it doesn’t really faze me at all.
“If it’s a good shot, I’m going to shoot it, so it doesn’t matter at all.”
Still, if the Illini hope to make a run, Mayer has to contribute more offensively, right?
“Yeah, and I’m going to do my best,” he said. “But at the end of the day, March Madness is a single-elimination tournament. You’ve just got to give it your all, and if you lose, as long as you give it a shot, it’s all good.”
Underwood said Wednesday he told players to “let your hair down,” a foreign concept to most of them. The coach’s intensity level during games doesn’t exactly suggest he’d be OK with losing as long as the team had fun while doing it.
Maybe it was the introduction of the new, lemon-scented Underwood, who’s trying to keep his players immune from pressure put on them by media and alumni. After last year’s team bowed out in the second round against Houston, Trent Frazier complained about Twitter trolls criticizing the Illini all season.
“First I want to say, I read Twitter,” Frazier said in the postgame news conference. “Coach tells us to stay off Twitter, but I read the stories, what everyone says about us.”
Perhaps “Let your hair down” is the obvious solution after “Stay off Twitter” didn’t work.
“You don’t let your hair down in the middle of conference play, I mean in January,” Underwood said. “It’s hard. It’s a grind. You have a different energy sometimes when you play at UCLA in (Las) Vegas in a non-league game, or Texas at Madison Square Garden, than you do playing a (Big Ten) game on the road in January. It’s just a different vibe.
“Now it’s kind of loose. You know, it’s win or go home. This team has a great personality to handle that, and I really believe that.”
This is not your older brother’s Illini but a mostly new group that includes holdovers Hawkins and RJ Melendez.
“Right now we’ve got nothing to lose,” Melendez said. “I really like this team and think we’ve really got a chance to make a deep run. There’s nothing to stress about. We’re not under a big spotlight in the tournament. No worries. No one is really looking at us.”
Mayer, who seemed as relaxed as an FM disc jockey on the overnight shift, said Underwood’s advice makes perfect sense.
“Just ignore the pressure that people try to put on you because there is none,” he said. “It’s basketball at the end of the day. You can’t try to win it any more than you already do want to win it. Just forget all that stupid BS and just go play basketball.
“March Madness is such a heralded term — it’s on TV and everybody is watching. There are so few things to focus on on the basketball court, so just focus on those things.”
For those just tuning in, Mayer went viral on Twitter last month when he insisted he had “caffeine poisoning” from drinking too many Monster Energy drinks. He brought a couple of cans to the postgame news conference after the Illini’s win over Michigan and took a few sips while answering questions from the media.
Mayer said he was hoping to score an NIL deal with the company.
“They sent me some product,” he said. “But I need some bread, you know what I’m saying?”
I knew exactly what he was saying, having once been a college student in need of some bread. So what’s the latest?
“We’re still working it out,” he said. “So hopefully if we make it past this first weekend …”
Mayer said with a grin that he really wasn’t expecting much from Monster.
“They’re a huge company,” he said. “I barely made a splash.”
Can Mayer and his teammates make a splash this weekend in Des Moines?
That’s the plan.
“I think we’re going to shock some people,” Hawkins said.