Underwood keeps fueling that phrase, he just said it again yesterday. It is sort of a rejection response.
Illinois Hoops Recruiting Thread (October 2018)
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Underwood keeps fueling that phrase, he just said it again yesterday. It is sort of a rejection response.
Less so than people think. Excellent recruiting classes follow dreadful seasons all the time, especially for new coaches.
The situation that Holtmann inherited at OSU is radically different than what Underwood walked into at Illinois. Holtmann might be a better coach, but comparing the two jobs isn't just apples and oranges, it's road apples and oranges.And isn’t Holtmann a new hire
Is BU a right guy, but not the right hire? Plenty of examples of new hires who are trending higher and faster that it’s not an egregious question.
You failed to list MCDAA players Frankie, Griff and Cookie, so you're on to a third hand, lol. Note, Ayo wasn't MCDAA, but probably should've been and had a big impact on the US U19 team this year. BTW, the idea that we'll ever get all the top Illnois players is laughable.
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sacraig
- The desert
Probably because it makes him feel better and placates fans who don't think too hard about what it is that he just said. Literally no players would ever play here that don't want to be here. It flat out makes no sense. So yes, we want players that want to be here, but that is a truism. It is true by default, given that the alternative amounts to holding someone against their will.
I Bomb
Stylin' and Profilin'
We finished above them both in wins, and in B1G standings in 2016-2017. I'm still on board with our current coach and team, though. Just interesting to see other coaches come in and light it up on the recruiting trail right away. We haven't had that since Self. That's a long time ago.
sacraig
- The desert
Self came into a program that was already in good shape, had an established winning culture and the swagger and exposure that comes along with that, and what were at the time state of the art facilities. None of those things describe what Underwood inherited.
Ohio State may have finished behind us last year, but over the last decade, they've easily been the better program and they certainly have better facilities (for now) than we do.
Underwood came into a full rebuild. Holtmann did not. I, for one, am willing to give him some time.
Illwinsagain
- Cary, IL
I believe they were referring to Chicagoland talent.
It's interesting that Ryan Pedon, who was on Groce's staff at Illinois, is getting a lot of credit for both the Carton and Liddell recruitments. This year's OSU recruiting class is currently top 10 in the country.
And that's the only season since 2009 where that was the case. OSU had the BTPOY last year, and we had nothing close to that. They won 11 more games than we did in the conference. You'd either cry or laugh your butt off if you had the chance to compare facilities at the two schools.
I'd hoped and expected Underwood to recruit a little better than he has and am surprised to see Holtmann do this well, but expecting that sort of recruiting to come out of this type of mess isn't particularly reasonable.
Groce signed Nunn, Hill, Colbert and Mav before he'd ever coached a game here. An impressive haul. Hill had been committed to Weber of course, but he kinda-sorta reopened right?
Yes, and Hill had not signed an LOI as it is often a misconception (as compared to Frazier). The change happened during the spring of his junior year, he went through a full recruiting main summer season but still ended up at UI.
sacraig
- The desert
Ah, the fabled "player who wants to be here" recruit. Now, if we only filled our team with a bunch of Malcolm Hills, we'd be in business.
I have mentioned the same thing many times, Groce overachieved his first year, but other than that we were a steady NIT team pretty much his entire era, which was not enough. Asking, and expecting, to take a steady NIT team and make it a steady NCAA team is not the impossibility that some present it to be. This has nothing to do with Holtmann. And please let's not start again with the "we all knew" we were going to be terrible last year and end up 4-14 because the facts do not support such assertion, neither is it a valid excuse for not doing better right now in recruiting, independent of Holtmann.
Holtmann has nothing to do with some of our deficiencies right now. BU needs a recruiting turnaround asap, gain some momentum. It is also imperative IMO that we drastically improve this season and challenge for an NCAA bid, even if we fall short and just make NIT.
I think the only spot I really feel like I feel differently than you (potentially) is that I am of the mind that Underwood could follow a slower growth path that includes winning with some lower ranked recruits. I wish he was setting the world on fire but I am okay with waiting for a coach to build a great program if that is indeed what he is doing. I was impressed with aspects of the team and his coaching last year. Need to see more consistency and growth overall from the team this year. I think BU's biggest weakness is he is a no-BS, hardass that doesn't have the winning reputation in the big time yet (and also experienced a mass exodus of players, including his own recruits). Within that idea, if he's going to win with lower ranked guys, we need to see substantial development from guys that stuck around and from this years class in the coming years. We also need to find out if he really has an eye for talent if we are relying on out-evaluating other programs on lower recruits. I thought Ebo was a nice surprise while Matic was very bad. This year should tell us a lot.
sacraig
- The desert
Luckily, the facts do support the idea that our 4-14 record represents underachieving versus on-court performance. Most of the metric and comments by other B1G coaches suggested we were better than our record. Don't get me wrong, I don't think we should have been a tournament team except for one or two unlucky bounces or anything Beckman-esque like that, but I do think we realistically left at least a half dozen wins on the table. Hopefully another off-season worth of cultural shift will lead to more of a killer instinct and fewer of those games slipping away.
Being a realist doesn’t mean we’re not fans and supportive of the team.
For my part, I'll be happy if we just land a couple of bigs in the fall who we've scouted thoroughly and who fit the system, and then go out and win just more games than last year.
But the non-negotiable pieces of that are that we show increased sharpness and fluidity in the system we're running, and that we don't suffer any more damaging defections. That stuff is the most critical.
And, at this point, Walker ought to be gone for someone new, preferably an Underwood vet and/or a spread offense guru.
foby
- Bonnaroo Land
Who said that Holtmann had anything to do with it? I was responding to someone who appears to have been comparing the success Holtmann is having with what Underwood has accomplished, and I stand by what I said. Recruiting to OSU is far easier right now than recruiting to Illinois, and if you're expectation is that we can do what OSU is doing right now, you're going to be disappointed.
As for last year's performance, who cares what we thought would happen? Preseason predictions are notoriously and grossly unreliable, and yet it seems like some folks are making the argument that since we performed worse than expected that we underachieved. Underachieved against those expectations, yes, but that's it, and that's not super meaningful when trying to evaluate whether a team performed better than its true talent level.
I am unhappy with how things have unfolded. I'm also unwilling to ignore the structural issues that were in place when Underwood arrived on campus, and largely remain in place to this day.
If so, why did he talk about Acie Earl, who is from Moline?
I find it interesting that pessimists always call themselves realists. Not saying that applies to you, just in general.
Alonzo Verge.
There's a recent throwback of a name.
There's a recent throwback of a name.
Completely disagree. Practice facilities help a ton. That's where they spend most of their time. I'd argue that it matters more than the actual playing facility, which sometimes isn't as nice due to tradition. Also, I also think that social media is a big reason why these "shiny toys" are important because it is so easy to compare schools.
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