Unofficial versus official doesn’t matter IMO. He’s here and the last day for the spring singing period is tomorrow. Might as well be his last visit.
Illinois Hoops Recruiting Thread (May-June 2018)
- Status
Unofficial versus official doesn’t matter IMO. He’s here and the last day for the spring singing period is tomorrow. Might as well be his last visit.
Deleted member 631370
D
Guest
I respect you, S&C.
But that claim of yours still stands as one of the most bizarre posts I've read on a basketball message board. Tough to beat the claim on the old SIU board back in 2005 that Darren Brooks would prove to be a better pro than Deron Williams, but it's still memorable.
Yeah Schmidty lost his mind today. Okoro exposed him and he's having a hard time living with it because it killed his credibility. He specifically went after Illinois fans.
Would instantly become my favorite name of all time!
An exaggeration on my part, guilty as charged.
But an exaggeration reflective of an underlying reality, the big time imbalance of talent between our backcourt and frontcourt.
Next year's team would be better off with a lesser (but still solid) talent than Ayo that's a 6'8" PF with a jumper.
Gotta go get that guy in 2019 and make the best of it in the meantime.
He can commit to a school without signing an LOI so he can most certainly take additional visits.
skyIdub
Winged Warrior
Yikes S&C, while there's no way of knowing if this is true, I really hope Ayo makes you eat a lot of crow on this one!
We need quality bigs to balance the roster but guards win games. I look back at UCONN’s title behind Napier and Boatright. Two 6’ PG’s lead an 11 seed (as I remember? Not looking it up right now) to a title in a coach’s 1st year (fired this year? Again not looking it up).
We’d be a better team with Okoro. Or several other bigs that we have recruited. I don’t think there is any way around that. But Ayo should still be easily more impactful than an average big.
Tacomallini
- Washington State
I admire your commitment to this topic!
eMitch
- Quincy, IL
It's good. But, when TCU had Bingo Merriex and Nucleus Smith on the same team, they set a pretty high bar.
ivwilsoniv
- Aurora, IL
GortTheRobot
- North Bethesda, Maryland
Johnny Lawrence and I jumped on that earlier. Might be the best name ever given to a human being. Top that Johnny.
You are correct! Could be one of my favorites since Baskerville Holmes in the 80's.
Illini have picked up a CB for Braun - for those interested in click bait
Overall I think we’ve had a good first true recruiting class. Ayo was the only “MUST-GET”, Tevian was a huge get. Kane and Griffin I think will surprise a lot of people. Giorgi and Feliz will have important roles as well.
I think Whitney is our next MUST-GET. If we miss out on him that’s on the staff and pretty unforgivable. Okoro seems to be reclassifying so it’s just tough luck that we missed him. But I think there are clear must-get players down the road - Whitney in 2019, Miller in 2020. I regard “must-gets” as a combination of us being in early on them, having the perception of a pipeline, being program-redefining talents, etc.
I think Whitney is our next MUST-GET. If we miss out on him that’s on the staff and pretty unforgivable. Okoro seems to be reclassifying so it’s just tough luck that we missed him. But I think there are clear must-get players down the road - Whitney in 2019, Miller in 2020. I regard “must-gets” as a combination of us being in early on them, having the perception of a pipeline, being program-redefining talents, etc.
Yikes S&C, while there's no way of knowing if this is true, I really hope Ayo makes you eat a lot of crow on this one!
It would be Giorgi or Ebo or Kipper or Kane or some combination of all of them (or maybe Parker Braun?) who would make me eat crow. And I hope they do as well.
The key thing from the direction you're looking at this is that those schools became dominant in an ancient college basketball environment that doesn't resemble our own at all. There is nothing to be gleaned from a recruiting strategy at Illinois in 2018 perspective from the history of those programs.
That is about it, it has nothing to do with recruiting strategy. They just created consistent tradition and their biggest accomplishment is that they were able to maintain that tradition over the years.
Recruiting nationally is no big revelation for any school, of course you should get talent independent of where it comes from. The problem is the ability to get highly ranked players from other states, when you can't get them in your own state.
Good question, this is my best educated guess.
Kansas-History on its side, Naismith created game there. State is BB crazy. Wilt Chamberlain, dominates conference. Historical good program. Legendary Coaches
Kentucky-Historical good program, dominates conference, state is bb crazy. Legendary Coaches
Duke-Historical good program, dominates conference with UNC, state is bb crazy, legendary coaches. Has had some bad stretches, but landed good recruits and make friends with ESPN.
UNC- See above, double down on legendary players and coaches
Other legendary programs have gone down a notch due to IMHO
1. Continue with great coaching hires. 2. Conference took a step down
3. Inability to dominate conference. 4. Didn't successfully navigate the conference/tv arrangement. ACC probably did this the best with cozy relationship with ESPN and east coast media coverage. 5. Recruiting pipeline dropped several notches (Indiana, UCLA)
For Illinois to get to prominence
1. Need Great Coach
2. Needs to land top recruits (look nationally)
3. TV and Media Coverage
4. Win Conference Championships often
5. Get state fan support
t7nich
- Central IL
Huh. Kipper has nothing to do with your original argument because you were talking about replacing Ayo with a 2018 recruit, a phantom 6-8 PF shooter. And you won’t have the opportunity to eat crow, fortunately, because Ayo will be here.
The point is that perhaps our frontcourt play will come together enough to make Ayo's marginal value greater than the hypothetical marginal value of an additional solid big.
Johnny Lawrence and I jumped on that earlier. Might be the best name ever given to a human being. Top that Johnny.
Rocket Watts might be the best word or set of words by which a person, animal, place, or thing has ever been known, addressed, or referred to. :thumb:
On a side note is this kid any relation to Slick Watts who played a season with the Houston Rockets?
skyIdub
Winged Warrior
Perhaps I used poor examples. I was google lazy. My intention was not to compare us to these schools. My point was simply that hand wringing over losing in state talent is over stated.
After exhaustive research lasting nearly 4 minutes, I have discovered that the B1G average is 5 players from the schools home state per roster.
Please don't check my math. I'm using public school math!
I think it comes down to the coach and to boosters. Boosters will help you land a great coach, although it's still a crap shoot that you find the best candidate the year you go shopping for one. There are some pretty bad ADs out there, so that's worth a mention too. Winning is the chicken and egg argument.
I don't think history has much to do with it anymore, although you can argue recent history affects the current fanbase and booster support.
The coach's impact is obviously the single biggest factor. Underwood has what it takes IMHO, but the next couple seasons will tell if that's the case. I think fans are eager to see us win, and there are a lot of folks who will come back once we have a decent product on the floor. It's kind of amazing to me we averaged over 12,000 last season while we struggled so badly, but maybe we had a bump from Underwood being a new coach.
- Status