Illinois State: So much for your perfect season

It's the dog days of the college basketball season and no team is immune to the crazy crap that happens this month.

Bracket busting upsets. Big time blowouts. Nail biters and so forth.

Well, you can add player defections to that list.

SIU had two players leave the team earlier in the season and has really come together since. Now, Illinois State point guard Lloyd Phillips is leaving the team.

That's a tough blow for a team once considered to be invisible. Oops.

Phillips is an interesting case, though. It's got to be tough when the team's starting point guard just up and leaves in the heat of the conference season.

But allow me to read between the lines of a post-game presser in which LP talks about how ISU (Red) would be able to overcome its inefficiencies.

Phillips said the team encountered trouble when individual players went their own separate ways and attempted to carry the team on their respective backs.

Like I said in a recent blog, the Redbirds have a bunch of individual talent, but it ain't worth squat if it can't work as a cohesive unit.