Illini Basketball 2018-2019

Status
Not open for further replies.
#1,052      
For my money it was November 28, 2014 when we beat Baylor in Vegas where we were just too tough and pugnacious for an extremely big and physical team. A great Ray Rice performance. That night was probably the peak of my Groce optimism. And was followed by our most recent appearance in the Top 25.

I was actually at that game (took my son). Being there and watching it, it felt like we were over-achieving the whole time, plus nobody realized how good Baylor was that year so early in the season.

IMO opinion it was a better win in retrospect than it was as it happened although I felt pretty damn happy/excited when we won.
 
#1,053      
To sum it up I think the fact that the wholesale destruction of Illinois Basketball was so narratively tied into our high-profile failures with individual big time recruits that what's left of the fanbase has developed a savior complex by which the only path back to our former prominence is essentially to redeem those specific failures, to have highly recruited in-state guys step into the void left by the Shaun Livingston's and the Jon Scheyer's. Almost a religious narrative, that our faith during our time in the wilderness will be repaid by this specific sort of salvation.

And I just think it's total nonsense. The correlation between recruiting rankings and wins is so much looser than the narrative here suggests, especially within the part of the talent curve Illinois shops in, and we've underperformed our talent level every single season since 2009.

I believe that you become a consistently good program, in both football and basketball, by defining a style of play and a long-range plan to achieve it through recruiting to fit and coaching for skill development and execution and just building it brick-by-brick, practice-by-practice, game-by-game.

I think the rush to demolish the inherited rosters in both programs was horribly misguided and should be consciously avoided in the future, but I see one side of Kirby methodically reconstructing out of those ashes and I see the other side flailing around blindly.

But regardless, if we're ever getting back to respectability, it is going to happen in games, or really with games revealing what has actually happened in practice, with our players just developing and executing better and being better deployed and better schemed and just lifting themselves out of the fog of suckitude. It's not going to be the Basketball Gods taking pity on our plight and allocating us a better ration of Talent Units.

Want to move this program in the right direction? Go out and play better! Unfortunately, our roster as it stands is so horribly imbalanced it just doesn't look like it's gonna give us much of a chance.

I think this is a very good summary, and I appreciate the time you took to articulate it. Re recruiting failures though, don't you think that if we had succeeded with some of them, the narrative would've changed? For example, what if Snider hadn't reneged on signing day? What is we got either Brunson or Evans? While a bust at KU, I think Cliff could've been a different player at Illinois.

But I do agree that BU has to recruit to his system. Do you think he's forgoing this, in favor of pursuing high recruits that may not fit his system?

I also agree that winning cures everything. But don't you think we need the talent (typically via highly rated recruits) to achieve this?
 
#1,055      

Peoria Illini

Peoria, IL
I think this is a very good summary, and I appreciate the time you took to articulate it. Re recruiting failures though, don't you think that if we had succeeded with some of them, the narrative would've changed? For example, what if Snider hadn't reneged on signing day? What is we got either Brunson or Evans? While a bust at KU, I think Cliff could've been a different player at Illinois.

But I do agree that BU has to recruit to his system. Do you think he's forgoing this, in favor of pursuing high recruits that may not fit his system?

I also agree that winning cures everything. But don't you think we need the talent (typically via highly rated recruits) to achieve this?

I know this isn't directed at me, but I think the only guy that he's recruited that was highly rated that didn't fit his system is Mark Smith. The other guys, Matic and Greg, he grabbed to fill some gaps.

Ayo and Tevian I think will both fit his system. Those would be the only high ranked guys coming in this year.

I think that was our problem over the last couple of coaches. Although I'm not quite sure what Groce's system was. Bruce I think fell victim to recruiting based on ranking instead of his system. Especailly with Shaun Pruitt. That poor kid was the antithesis to "motion offense", LOL!!!

Add in Carlwell and Legion, as guys decently ranked that didn't fit the quicker, motion offense of Weber's and the few seasons after the title game were wasted recruiting years, IMO.
 
#1,058      
Re recruiting failures though, don't you think that if we had succeeded with some of them, the narrative would've changed? For example, what if Snider hadn't reneged on signing day? What is we got either Brunson or Evans? While a bust at KU, I think Cliff could've been a different player at Illinois.

Tough to see us not winning a few more games if we had had Snider or Evans or Brunson, but based on how little we won with the talent we did have, I think it's also hard to see one of those guys totally changing the trajectory of the program. Look what Oakland was able to do with Kendrick Nunn, look what Underwood and Antigua were able to do with Leron Black. That Groce staff didn't come anywhere near maximizing what they had.

As for Cliff, I think he's probably an underwhelming one and done no matter where he goes. Tough to fix complacency.

But I do agree that BU has to recruit to his system. Do you think he's forgoing this, in favor of pursuing high recruits that may not fit his system?

You could argue that with Mark Smith and Ayo, but reaching for the stars is definitely forgivable if you actually land those guys. What disturbs me is what seems like the lack of long-range stability and planning at all. Mark Smith was the future and now he's gone, tons of guys are fleeing the program, we're late, late in the process just scrounging for random bodies for the second year in a row and our roster for next season is so imbalanced that we're going to have a super limited ability to even play the system Underwood is trying to set up. Which we tried to do last year, sloppily and awfully.

When a coach is really building something, you go into year 3 with a ton of player-years of that building block experience working within a defined system, having honed their craft to a mastery. We're not going to have much of that, and if there's more roster churn it may be next to none. This is not what rebuilding looks like.
 
Last edited:
#1,059      

Tacomallini

Washington State
I think the rush to demolish the inherited rosters in both programs was horribly misguided and should be consciously avoided in the future, but I see one side of Kirby methodically reconstructing out of those ashes and I see the other side flailing around blindly.

Which side of Kirby does the basketball program fall...reconstructing or flailing blindly? Honest question. I don't follow UI football at all, or any other UI sports teams other than men's hoops. Sacrilege, perhaps...
 
Last edited:
#1,060      
Tough to see us not winning a few more games if we had had Snider or Evans or Brunson, but based on how little we won with the talent we did have, I think it's also hard to see one of those guys totally changing the trajectory of the program. Look what Oakland was able to do with Kendrick Nunn, look what Underwood and Antigua were able to do with Leron Black. That Groce staff didn't come anywhere near maximizing what they had.

As for Cliff, I think he's probably an underwhelming one and done no matter where he goes. Tough to fix complacency.



You could argue that with Mark Smith and Ayo, but reaching for the stars is definitely forgivable if you actually land those guys. What disturbs me is what seems like the lack of long-range stability and planning at all. Mark Smith was the future and now he's gone, tons of guys are fleeing the program, we're late, late in the process just scrounging for random bodies for the second year in a row and our roster for next season is so imbalanced that we're going to have a super limited ability to even play the system Underwood is trying to set up. Which we tried to do last year, sloppily and awfully.

When a coach is really building something, you go into year 3 with a ton of player-years of that building block experience working within a defined system, having honed their craft to a mastery. We're not going to have much of that, and if there's more roster churn it may be next to none. This is not what rebuilding looks like.

The way I see it next year, we'll have seniors Kipper and Feliz, juniors Frazier and Da'Monte and sophomores Ayo, Tevian, Griff, Kane and Giorgi all with significant PT from this year, hoping to land at least one significant freshman to those 9 core players to help them get somewhere in the Dance. Looks like rebuilding to me.
 
#1,061      
Which side of Kirby does the basketball program fall...reconstructing or flailing blindly? Honest question. I don't follow UI football at all, or any other UI sports teams other than men's hoops. Sacrilege, perhaps...

That is sacrilege! It's football that I'm far more confident in the rebuilding process. Of course, Lovie created a situation at QB last year that was not entirely unlike our current big man black hole, but that has been corrected in a big way going forward.
 
#1,062      

skyIdub

Winged Warrior
So, a top 25ish recruiting class is "flailing blindly"? Really?
 
#1,063      
The way I see it next year, we'll have seniors Kipper and Feliz, juniors Frazier and Da'Monte and sophomores Ayo, Tevian, Griff, Kane and Giorgi all with significant PT from this year, hoping to land at least one significant freshman to those 9 core players to help them get somewhere in the Dance. Looks like rebuilding to me.

So, you are assuming that these guys will return next year? Wouldn't that be refreshing.
 
#1,064      
What Ayo has done by making USA is an unbelievable accomplishment. To have that type of player coming in next year will make up for a lot of gaps.
 
#1,065      
So, a top 25ish recruiting class is "flailing blindly"? Really?

No, not at all. I think the problems are, in no particular order:

* Lotta roster turnover with the coaching change. Forgivable, and expected.
* 4-14 BIG record in year 1 and missing the dance by a country mile. Forgivable for sure.
* Did not see Underwood's system put in place
* Insane turnover after year 1. Finke, Black, and Ebo were our bigs. All gone. Looks like the dance will be a very tall order in year 2.
* Of the 5 guys in his first class, 3 are out, including the highest rated guy. That's rough.

If you judge him on results, you're disappointed, but it's early. The chicken littles have a lot of ammunition with which to complain, and I think even the most patient fans are not happy with our prospects for the dance next year.

I predict there will be a ton of negative posts between now and the opener. :p
 
#1,066      
I look at the 2018 class as Underwood’s first full class. While 3 high school players recruited by Underwood have transferred, only 1 of them was a guy he would have recruited were it not for the last minute need to add players due to the timing of his hire.

For 2018, we whiffed on most of our top targets last fall, which is a little concerning but somewhat expected given the state of the program. To me, THT is the only truly disappointing one due to the circumstances and my belief that he will be a very good four year player. But given our needs going into the spring, I think we did pretty well by adding Jones, Feliz, Griffin, Kane and Bez. For Underwood to turn this thing around, this needs to be a foundational class for him to build off of (plus TF and DW). If we see mass transfers from our 2018 class or TF or DW, if our 2019 class lacks difference makers or if we don’t see progress on the court this year with the 2018 guys executing Underwood’s system (looking at buy-in and identity as opposed to just wins), then I’ll seriously doubt that Underwood is the right guy for the job. But for now, I can still see this going either way.

While I would have preferred that some of the guys transferring out would have stayed, this was likely to be a 3 to 5 year turnaround regardless (if eventually successful). That’s the nature of hiring a system guy instead of a recruiter (see Beilein and Huggins). These transfers merely push back the timeframe by a year for us being an NCAA tournament team again. They are not make or break transfers. If Underwood is the right guy, we should get there by year 4 at the latest with clear evidence of a continuing upward trajectory. If he’s not the right guy, we weren’t going to get there with or without Smith, Ebo, Vessel or Lucas.

I am completely in agreement with this post. We had a dumpster fire for a roster. Those who left are not the guys who are going to bring us a championship. None. However, this new incoming class is going to be the start of something big. I have absolutely no idea why this concept is hard to understand .
 
#1,069      

Illwinsagain

Cary, IL
To sum it up I think the fact that the wholesale destruction of Illinois Basketball was so narratively tied into our high-profile failures with individual big time recruits that what's left of the fanbase has developed a savior complex by which the only path back to our former prominence is essentially to redeem those specific failures, to have highly recruited in-state guys step into the void left by the Shaun Livingston's and the Jon Scheyer's. Almost a religious narrative, that our faith during our time in the wilderness will be repaid by this specific sort of salvation.

And I just think it's total nonsense. The correlation between recruiting rankings and wins is so much looser than the narrative here suggests, especially within the part of the talent curve Illinois shops in, and we've underperformed our talent level every single season since 2009.

I believe that you become a consistently good program, in both football and basketball, by defining a style of play and a long-range plan to achieve it through recruiting to fit and coaching for skill development and execution and just building it brick-by-brick, practice-by-practice, game-by-game.

I think the rush to demolish the inherited rosters in both programs was horribly misguided and should be consciously avoided in the future, but I see one side of Kirby methodically reconstructing out of those ashes and I see the other side flailing around blindly.

But regardless, if we're ever getting back to respectability, it is going to happen in games, or really with games revealing what has actually happened in practice, with our players just developing and executing better and being better deployed and better schemed and just lifting themselves out of the fog of suckitude. It's not going to be the Basketball Gods taking pity on our plight and allocating us a better ration of Talent Units.

Want to move this program in the right direction? Go out and play better! Unfortunately, our roster as it stands is so horribly imbalanced it just doesn't look like it's gonna give us much of a chance.

Best post I have read from you, at least that I remember. I usually don't like your posts, but this, I agree with.
 
#1,070      
So, a top 25ish recruiting class is "flailing blindly"? Really?

Not sure which way this cuts in terms of your argument, but this led me down a thought path that I wonder where everyone else is at on:

If we still had Black and Ebo, where would your expectations be versus where we are now?

What I realized was, warts and all, if we still had those two I would be looking at us as a clear tournament team for next year with upside to be one of the best teams in the conference. That's looking at Leron as a bang-on impact player and Ebo as a guy who can hold down the fort and give us solidity at the 5 and cover to bring Kane along at whatever rate he can handle.

I would then of course be extremely alarmed if we were bad again, because I'd view last year as a "taking our lumps learning a new system" situation and another year of underperformance would be much more alarming.

Our roster as it stands however, honestly, I see us struggling to win 10 games. I just see no way this bigs situation works at all. That's where my expectation level is right now.

The flipside of that though is that we could really beat those expectations, and in my mind be in radically better shape by doing three things:

1. Recruit a 2019 class that balances the roster with good prospects who fit
2. Either through more 2018 additions or miracle performances from Kane and Giorgi, improve on last year's team in a way that shows UnderwoodBall is bedding in
3. Retain all the key parts for 2019-20

Then all of a sudden you're thinking Year 3 could be a real breakout. I don't think #2 or #3 is likely (surely we'll do #1 right? Please? Bueller?), and I think they correlate with each other in that the worse we are this year the more likely some players abandon ship. But the possibility is there.

Let's just hope Underwood has the chops to get us down that path. His resume screams yes, his first 15 months on the job murmurs no.
 
#1,071      
I am completely in agreement with this post. We had a dumpster fire for a roster. Those who left are not the guys who are going to bring us a championship. None. However, this new incoming class is going to be the start of something big. I have absolutely no idea why this concept is hard to understand .

Because we lost guys that would 100% assist us in our rebuild. Sure we got some talented freshman but in the end they are just that, freshman. It isn’t easy to recruit when you miss the tournament every year. Odds are we miss it again and will have to recruit through it. Not many championship rosters were built from where we are in 4 years. If you don’t think Ebo, Black, Smith or even Finke wouldn’t have been a benefit to our team this year and the following year then you just aren’t seeing clearly. Rome wasn’t built in a day.
 
#1,073      

skyIdub

Winged Warrior
Not sure which way this cuts in terms of your argument,..... .


I'm really asking, not arguing. The majority of your posts since Ebo's transfer have been quite high on negative hyperbole. I agree with a lot of your candid assessments, but some of it seems over cooked for your own amusement. That's all! :thumb:
 
#1,074      

Illwinsagain

Cary, IL
So an open-faced sandwich is not a sandwich? Now that is sacrilege.

I'll let the google internet do my defense....

sand·wich
ˈsanˌ(d)wiCH/Submit
noun
1.
an item of food consisting of two pieces of bread with meat, cheese, or other filling between them, eaten as a light meal.
"a ham sandwich"

An "open face sandwich" only works when there is another one put on top. :D
 
#1,075      
Figured it out. Ebo left because he was going to have to give up his no. to Ayo.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.