I've posted a couple of articles before on Chester Frazier and the Illinois basketball team. Here is an excerpt from an article after a tough road loss at Big Ten power Michigan State:, where Frazier had an emotional talk with his team:
“Chester watched that tape and took it to heart,” Weber said. “This is his team this year. He wants to make sure everyone gives maximum effort and stays together, and it wasn’t that we didn’t play hard. We won the play-hard chart by double digits. But we still have problems with the defensive end down the stretch, rebounding, block outs and putbacks. … It comes down to fighting through it and giving your best effort the entire game. That’s all I think he was alluding to.”
Frazier certainly showed the toughness that he preaches to the rest of the team. After being undercut and landing hard on his tailbone and back, he went to the locker room. When he returned, he headed straight to the scorer’s table to check into the game, seemingly without asking the coaches first.
But there were signs that other players were lacking confidence as facial expressions and body movements reflected frustration with the disappointing turn of events.
“It’s baffling to me,” Weber said. “At Purdue we had great body language, great focus, great poise. I told them, ‘This is why we do all of those competitive drills at the end of practice.’ We still are young and fragile. When guys don’t play well offensively, we seem to have a tendency to hang our heads.”
Weber said he already has started thinking about who will bring Frazier’s toughness once the senior guard is gone.
“I hope somebody starts getting that toughness,” he said. “With the new guys it will be hard as freshmen but a couple have tenacity to them. Can they do it as a freshman and be a leader? I don’t know. Jeff Jordan (Michael Jordan's son) has made some strides to do that. He’s going to have to get where he becomes better conditioned to go harder like Chester does if he’s going to play that role.” …
