Illinois Hoops Recruiting Thread

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#226      
Everyone said this same thing last year. Doom/gloom crowd didn't think we'd be any good at all. We didn't have RayJ so cancel the season.

You just proved my point, so thank you.
If we get Boswell that will be great but without a prolific scoring wing and a solid big man our roster would be incomplete. Got to get these guys we are talking to locked down and committed to make us more comfortable going into next year.
 
#227      
I have seen so much hate towards the idea of adding Storr. Most people saying he’s a shot chucker and not good. I just don’t know how you can turn down that type of talent. With the right staff and culture, he could be a monster. Wisconsin doesn’t exactly have a great team or staff lol. He had no help besides Chucky for the most part. I think that’s partially why he took a lot of shots because he had no help.
In what games I saw Storr he was not a chucker. He took some ill advised shots at time but so did half of our team. I think he would fit in nicely here and it would benefit him and the Illini.
 
#229      
I don’t see losing TSJ, Domask, Hawkins, Guerrier and replacing them with Boswell, Maddox, Morez, and White as very comparable.

If you don’t land Storr, this team is nowhere near last year’s #6 AP team. I think it should still be a fringe tourney team depending on how good Boswell is tho even without Storr
Boswell > than any PG we had this year
Whomever < TSJ Clearly
Hawkins = Morez/Amani and whomever we bring in at the 5. I know this will be a controversial take but Coleman was an absolute liability in the pain defensively.
Guerrier < White Another controversial take but I believe White's upside is much higher. Quincy was very pedestrian especially in the second half of the year.
Domask = AJ Storr

We land these guys and we could be top 10.
Even if we don't land AJ we're a top 25 team easily. Maddox is a damn good player too.

I don't think we land Storr, FYI. It feels very RayJ Dennis too me. AJ will go to the highest bidder and I don't know if that's going to be us.
 
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#230      
Where is the airing it out in the media? Have not seen anyone link to anything. I get it, but Brad's job is to win. These guys are paid athletes now. If you want to play, earn it on the court.
Luke Goode was on Illini Inquirer and asked why Amani could not play stretch 4 instead of bringing in a portal player. Logical question since Amani can hit the 3 pointer. I suspect Brad feels with Dain and Coleman gone we need more size. Right now our roster as Amani 6'8" and Morez 6'9". One more big would be nice. Does not have to be a star - just serviceable defender rebounder + 6'8". George Montgomery where are you?

Our current roster is losing TSJ, Coleman, Marcus, and Quincy to graduation, Dain to portal so we have to replace 5. We have 2 incoming Morez and Jason. Makes sense we would add at least 3 portal players. This year showed you can't compete with 18 years old HS kids against 22 year olds with 3 years experience. Even Kentucky who gets 4 all americans per year could not do it in March.
 
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#232      
If we get Boswell that will be great but without a prolific scoring wing and a solid big man our roster would be incomplete. Got to get these guys we are talking to locked down and committed to make us more comfortable going into next year.

I'm certainly okay with 'more comfortable', that's a perfectly reasonable level of concern. My initial comment was aimed at the 'cancel the season, we're cooked' type of comments (which there haven't been many yet, but wait and see what happens if he goes elsewhere).

EDIT: Also, as someone mentioned above, given this staff's track record with player development (Ayo 4* -> 1st Team AA, Kofi 4* -> 1st Team AA, TSJ 10ppg scorer at TT -> 22 ppg scorer, Hawkins 3* -> dynamic frontcourt player), well... I'd expect multiple guys to make big jumps.
 
#233      
mostly-princess-bride.gif
Speaking for vampires everywhere, it's always an "undead" period. We always think about what's at stake! Sorry.
 
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#234      
I have seen so much hate towards the idea of adding Storr. Most people saying he’s a shot chucker and not good. I just don’t know how you can turn down that type of talent. With the right staff and culture, he could be a monster. Wisconsin doesn’t exactly have a great team or staff lol. He had no help besides Chucky for the most part. I think that’s partially why he took a lot of shots because he had no help.
"Most people"?? It's a definite minority on the board--me included. My problem is that it's not like he was getting the ball with 5 seconds on the shot clock and forced to create something. The offensive set stopped with him on many occasions. Was the offense bad, or was it bad because he chose to go one on one rather than run it?

I'm assuming IL coaches have made that determination and are OK with it.
 
#241      
Boswell > than any PG we had this year
Whomever < TSJ Clearly
Hawkins = Morez/Amani and whomever we bring in at the 5. I know this will be a controversial take but Coleman was an absolute liability in the pain defensively.
Guerrier < White Another controversial take but I believe White's upside is much higher. Quincy was very pedestrian especially in the second half of the year.
Domask = AJ Storr

We land these guys and we could be top 10.
Even if we don't land AJ we're a top 25 team easily. Maddox is a damn good player too.

I don't think we land Storr, FYI. It feels very RayJ Dennis too me. AJ will go to the highest bidder and I don't know if that's going to be us.
I’ll never understand why Coleman gets no respect
 
#242      
Yes IRT Hansberry, but also about guys who play the same position as Ty Rodgers and Sencire Harris.
If that's an internal argument, I think not only does that make sense, but it is an intense argument the staff should be having. In fact, it's a conversation all staffs who aggressively pursue the portal should be having. More than a few members on here are having the same discussions. That said, I was more concerned about this a few days ago based on what insiders were saying we might do vs. the past 48hours now that we picked up Tre and know Sencire is coming back. I think there's still a solid path available for Ty, Sencire, and Amani now vs. What would have been if we just filled up entirely with primarily 5th year seniors.
 
#245      
"Most people"?? It's a definite minority on the board--me included. My problem is that it's not like he was getting the ball with 5 seconds on the shot clock and forced to create something. The offensive set stopped with him on many occasions. Was the offense bad, or was it bad because he chose to go one on one rather than run it?

I'm assuming IL coaches have made that determination and are OK with it.
Check Twitter.
 
#248      
Just for the sake of conversation, who’s plan B if storr goes NBA or elsewhere?
If we don't happen to land Storr, I do expect the exact same backlash from fans a la RayJ.

Then we will get to hear about it all next year despite being ranked in the top 5-15 teams in the nation and going to the E8.
Everyone said this same thing last year. Doom/gloom crowd didn't think we'd be any good at all. We didn't have RayJ so cancel the season.
To kinda synthesize these two together

If a whiff on Storr just becomes an un-replaced empty chair a la RayJ, we have a few internal backup options unlike that situation, but the most prominent one as a bucket-getting wing is now Tre White.

And as I said earlier, relying on Tre White to be a leading scorer-type star would be an undue risk, it COULD work, but it's not a high percentage bet.

However, it is a higher percentage bet than Marcus Domask being a straight-up point guard in the Big Ten, something that neither Domask nor Underwood themselves intended or thought was something that would work. It's not the way we started the season even after crafting the team without RayJ.

You need a point guard to succeed in basketball, and Underwood and staff colossally failed in constructing last year's roster with that in mind, and had they been forced to shoehorn Ty Rodgers or others in that role all year we would have been much, much worse.

Insane amounts of luck, both on and off court, blessed us this season. Illinois Basketball deserved all that luck and more after what we've been through the past two decades, but the reality is that we got it. Credit Domask's flexibility and basketball IQ, but it shouldn't have worked and it's a dang miracle it did.

Luck is when preparedness meets opportunity though, and one thing that's true about Underwood come what may is that he's one of the best and most willing tinkerers in college basketball. Whatever goes wrong next year, and something always goes wrong in competitive sports, we will keep trying solutions until something works.

I guess what I'm saying is, on some level it does a disservice to how good Underwood is as a coach and how good a job he did last year to retroactively deny how completely screwed we were without RayJ. The doomsayers were right, and BU MacGuyver'ed his way out of it anyway.
 
#249      
Goode said on Tay & Piper yesterday that Domask's car died during the season and he had to buy a new one already
Did it die on March 29th? If so, we have confirmation that last year's team was the Bonneville.
 
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