Using the portal to staff a bball team season to season is a risk, an unknown gel factor. The Illini bball 2022/2023 team was a chemistry disaster. The illini bball 2023/2024 team was a pleasant elite surprise. 2024/2025 ... will there be a Domask and Shannon or a Skky and Mayer mix?
Illinois Hoops Recruiting Thread
- Status
Unlikely he starts, especially to start the season, but I’d still expect him to get 15 minutes or so a game. Maybe more as season progresses
201154JC
- Rockford, IL
For me, he starts day one. Saw him play in person twice and he will be fine against older BIG players.
My guess is by mid-year he will be excelling.
201154JC
- Rockford, IL
I don't think you need to worry. Mayer was a goof and Skky is falling.......well, need I say more?
Yeah two very big ifs just Illinois still clearly has some money to throw around since they were courting Demin. I'd assume they could spend around a mil if not a mil+.
Obviously BYU supposedly came in with a bag for Demin but it seems like money is starting to dry up a bit for the top programs which might allow the Illini to make a splash since they have been spending in more of the middle for transfers.
We should be a in good spot with a competitive NIL deal, a ton of open minutes at guard, a competitive roster, great facilities, and a coaching staff with a ton of recent success.
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Exactly what I was saying. Some are over hyping this team as it sits. Some are below value. So many times you have seen where talent and production doesn't match up and they didn't get the guy yet. You get a guy like say Watkins and mood will change. Right now it's basically a bunch of unknowns as far as if they can produce or not
sacraig
- The desert
altgeld88
- Arlington, Virginia
This time of year I'm an observer here with nothing useful to add on the recruiting front regarding player talent. However, I take the long view on the current portal stich and what it will yield for us. One thing BU has shown is an ability to learn and adapt quickly. We're extremely fortunate, IMO, to have such a coach. After he arrived and his schemes weren't working he completely tore them apart after hiring someone from the NBA to consult on the topic. I have no doubt that he learned a great deal from the '22-'23 Skyy-MM-Epps debacle and will manage the newcomers during the offseason aggressively to avoid a repeat. Will he avoid a repeat? We don't know.
I'd certainly like to see player continuity between seasons. However, everyone who left did so because the staff was seeking to upgrade talent at those positions. I have no idea whether that will actually work better this coming season than the status quo. It's an active strategy to reload and maintain competitiveness. Is it superior to coaching up those who departed? We'll see. BU and his staff do this for a living so I generally shy away from criticizing their approach as I have neither the skin in the game nor the expertise to do so. It's barely mid-May and we won't know the roster composition until the end of the month. We'll see what late November and December look like. Actually, we'll see what late January looks like. That's when we'll know.
I, too, miss the days when we had outstanding frosh talent that we watched develop over 3-4 seasons. They had to be patient and we did, too. That's gone, probably forever. I'll live with it and cheer the guys wearing the O&B. I can accept the disappointment of this new world because I'm much more pleased that these young men are finally monetizing their talent while they can, and the NCAA, BT, universities aren't the ones skimming the rents at the expense of the labor producing it. Markets work well generally and redress artificially-created power imbalances that restraint-of-trade creates.
It will be interesting to see what equilibrium results in college sports. Will be several more seasons until that occurs, probably. It seems good for us on the basketball front and much less so on the football front currently. If we cultivate more to sell on Saturdays in Memorial Stadium it could be good for us there, too. We lost merely ten years in basketball. We lost 30 in football, 55 if you view the early '80s and '88-91 as a mirage and unsustainable.
Yeah, I know: TLDR. Think of it as ~25 one-sentence posts over the past two weeks.
Onward. The clock doesn't run backward.
ChiefGritty
- Chicago, IL
And Humdinger is the only player on the roster in his final year of eligibility.
"Be the NIL Gods and just pack together a new group of proven stars every year, if anyone isn't an immediate star we'll just dump them and go buy another one" was a theory that has been hyped to us relentlessly around here, and that has suffered a fairly jarring collision with reality.
But there are reasons to feel optimism about what's being constructed here, though that optimism depends upon both one more score in the portal and some modicum of player retention, both of which there are also plenty of reasons to feel nervous about.
The team as it stands MIGHT be very bad, and people are only rejecting that notion for their own emotional/ideological reasons about what being The Good Fan entails.
But people also shouldn't freak out and pout that all our Denzel dreams didn't come true the day the portal opened. We've made some pretty crafty moves befitting a staff that's been around the block and knows what it's doing.
How is Morez’s jumper? Can he be a reliable shooter from 15 feet out at all?
Mr. Tibbs
- southeast DuPage
I just simply do not like the current way things are being done in college basketball. We all know its not sustainable in its current form (its not in football either but at least its not a 65%-80% roster turnover) . We used to be able to count on players being around 2-4 years. Now its year to year.
It different, and for most of the fan base its a bad different
It different, and for most of the fan base its a bad different
Mr. Tibbs
- southeast DuPage
who even shoots from 15 feet out anymore ? its either less than 5 feet or 21ft
skyIdub
Winged Warrior
This time of year I'm an observer here with nothing useful to add on the recruiting front regarding player talent. However, I take the long view on the current portal stich and what it will yield for us. One thing BU has shown is an ability to learn and adapt quickly. We're extremely fortunate, IMO, to have such a coach. After he arrived and his schemes weren't working he completely tore them apart after hiring someone from the NBA to consult on the topic. I have no doubt that he learned a great deal from the '22-'23 Skyy-MM-Epps debacle and will manage the newcomers during the offseason aggressively to avoid a repeat. Will he avoid a repeat? We don't know.
I'd certainly like to see player continuity between seasons. However, everyone who left did so because the staff was seeking to upgrade talent at those positions. I have no idea whether that will actually work better this coming season than the status quo. It's an active strategy to reload and maintain competitiveness. Is it superior to coaching up those who departed? We'll see. BU and his staff do this for a living so I generally shy away from criticizing their approach as I have neither the skin in the game nor the expertise to do so. It's barely mid-May and we won't know the roster composition until the end of the month. We'll see what late November and December look like. Actually, we'll see what late January looks like. That's when we'll know.
I, too, miss the days when we had outstanding frosh talent that we watched develop over 3-4 seasons. They had to be patient and we did, too. That's gone, probably forever. I'll live with it and cheer the guys wearing the O&B. I can accept the disappointment of this new world because I'm much more pleased that these young men are finally monetizing their talent while they can, and the NCAA, BT, universities aren't the ones skimming the rents at the expense of the labor producing it. Markets work well generally and redress artificially-created power imbalances that restraint-of-trade creates.
It will be interesting to see what equilibrium results in college sports. Will be several more seasons until that occurs, probably. It seems good for us on the basketball front and much less so on the football front currently. If we cultivate more to sell on Saturdays in Memorial Stadium it could be good for us there, too. We lost merely ten years in basketball. We lost 30 in football, 55 if you view the early '80s and '88-91 as a mirage and unsustainable.
Yeah, I know: TLDR. Think of it as ~25 one-sentence posts over the past two weeks.
Onward. The clock doesn't run backward.
I'm sorry, I'm limited to 2 paragraphs of logic on Sunday before noon.
Who knows. I’ve seen him knock down a jumper/3 in highlights but I can say the same about Ty’s high school highlights
Maybe not a starter, but should play plenty of minutes. His minutes will be mostly at the 5 and some at the 4.
No coach in his right mind would play him at the 3.
201154JC
- Rockford, IL
Yes.
Ranking teams at this point was always pretty weak but with the advent of the portal transfers it is totally useless in my opinion. Torvik’s ranking uses amount of scoring, rebounds etc. returning. When you had graduates replaced by frosh this made a lot of sense. Now the ranking of transfers doesn’t have much predictive value as the fit of the pieces becomes much more important. Talking positional fit here as much as chemistry. I believe the offense will be very good with the pieces we already have but have no idea about the defense. TJ and Hawk were terrific team defensive players tough to tell anything about that by individual play as that is the combination rather than the individual. However, will be very surprised if we are not in the championship hunt.
Meanwhile, Brad was relaxing. He was taking a leisurely stroll past my house yesterday afternoon. I managed to say Hi, Brad! and he aknowledged but he was talking on the phone, so I was not able to have any kind of conversation. Maybe next time. Have to say he did not look like he was stressing out about the roster. He may have been working as he walked but there was no sign of desperation.
Well said, and I think the optimistic posters are baking these player leaps into their projections, and upset everyone else isn‘t doing the same.
I think the gloom and doomers are assuming no one gets better this summer, and their performance won’t improve with better coaching, better teammates, and more opportunity.
Merely my opinion, but I find it much more logical to assume players will improve during their most prime developmental years, rather than to assume we are just getting last years version of every player.
Boswell is mocked as a 1st round pick in many places and it seems like most of the gloom doomers are pretending he doesn't exist.
altgeld88
- Arlington, Virginia
I'm sure he would have felt much worse if he weren't under such heavy sedation.
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