Weber left him the 3rd best talent in the Big 10. What a debacle!
Convergence of the gap to 7th place just points out a different problem.
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Weber left him the 3rd best talent in the Big 10. What a debacle!
Convergence of the gap to 7th place just points out a different problem.
Weber left him the 3rd best talent in the Big 10. What a debacle!
Convergence of the gap at 7th place just points out a different problem.
I don't see this. I see the chart fitting the narrative during Weber's tenure that he couldn't recruit at a high enough level to maintain success, but was a decent X/Os coach.
The chart shows his teams outperformed their talent level for 3 years until that last year when we went 1-9 during our final 10 games after defeating #9 ranked MSU. We also upset #5 ranked Ohio State. We were ranked for 4 weeks that year, and received votes for 10 weeks (over half the season). Heading into the infamous Nebraska game we were tied for 7th in conference AFTER losing 5 in a row.
I don't think that Weber's dumpster fire is any excuse for Groce. I would argue that Weber's disastrous final year was a better season than this year, or last year, and maybe even the 2 years before that. I am tempted to argue that the last 4 years of John Groce have all been worse than Weber's last year as a whole.
For the record,this is not a defense of Weber. IMO, he should've been fired in '08. Every year after that was wastefully delaying the inevitable.
He did not. It is actually a good effort, but in actuality further exemplifies the difference between actual talent on a team and using recruiting HS rankings (247 in this case) as a proxy without even augmentation based on talent evaluation in college. Specifically:
1) It does not consider at all positional gaps. So the lack of PG and post/C is completely masked.
2) HS recruiting rankings arbitrarily assign points to bigger classes independent of whether these players actually have the talent or even see the floor in college. A player could be terrible, not belong in the B1G, stay at the end of the bench, etc. yet is adds talent points to a class.
3) Huge problem, it does not consider players leaving, getting injured, transfer etc. What good is considering the 2010 class, for example, to say that Groce inherited some great talent as you do exactly in your post (wow!), which was a great HS rankings class (Richmond, Leonard, Head, etc.) when the entire class had left before Groce even arrived?
4) Another huge problem, college talent is evaluated arbitrarily by HS rankings, which as I explained is not the actual talent in college or even augmented by talent evaluation in college. Based on this metric, Mike Shaw (a player who by the time he got to college did not belong in B1G, or even in college as proven even after Groce) is more talented than Trey Burke.
Let me apologize in advance for the length of this post, but I've been wanting to do this analysis for a while. To put some numbers behind the argument that Groce is underachieving with the talent he has, I created a chart comparing the talent level and on-court success. Here are the two things measured:
- B1G Standing: Pretty straight forward, just the final B1G standing for each season (and current standing for this season)
- Talent: This one is a little more complicated. To create a proxy for talent, I created a four-year average of the team's recruiting class ranking in the B1G, from 247Sports' Composite Rankings. For example, the talent metric for 2016-17 is the average B1G recruiting class ranking of 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016.
Illinois
Based on this data, Groce has consistently underachieved given the talent available. Of course there are come caveats wth this data: the talent metric doesn't take into account players leaving early, transfers, injuries, etc. and suffers from the same bias as all recruit rankings services. But regardless, evidence points to Groce underachieving with very solid talent.
Let's compare this to some other programs and coaches over the same period:
Indiana
Indiana under Crean has been a roller-coaster, and this backs that up. Crean has gotten consistent talent since he got there, but results have fluctuated widly (just like his rosters).
Wisconsin
Wisconsin on the other hand (like we might expect) has wildly overachieved. You can definitely argue that they've found some gems recruiting (like Kaminsky) so the talent level here is artificially low. But regardless, Bo and not Gard have done a great job coaching up Wisc teams.
I have other examples I could add (like Purdue overachieving and MSU not) but for the sake of not making this any longer I'll stop here.
Very interesting - thanks for doing this.
The charts show Groce has NEVER coached up talent. If you added his Ohio teams you'd also see that they under-performed vs. the talent ranking. I believe Ohio ranked #1 in talent in the MAC in Groce's last year and he finished 3rd.
The whole theory in hiring Groce was that he was an ace recruiter. Thus far he's been a complete failure at building a talented roster.
We know he's not going to out-coach the guys at the top of the B1G, so keeping him is relying on him creating one of the most talented rosters. I have a real hard time believing he can do that.
You'd have a huge problem making that argument. Weber's last year was a better season than this year? If you exclude last year's injury season, ALL of Groce's other seasons have been a lot better than Weber's disastrous final year. No doubt about that. C'mon now...
The only conclusion I am willing to draw from this limited sample is that there is no necessary correlation between talent, as defined by the combined HS rankings of a team, and results.Let me apologize in advance for the length of this post, but I've been wanting to do this analysis for a while. To put some numbers behind the argument that Groce is underachieving with the talent he has, I created a chart comparing the talent level and on-court success. Here are the two things measured:
- B1G Standing: Pretty straight forward, just the final B1G standing for each season (and current standing for this season)
- Talent: This one is a little more complicated. To create a proxy for talent, I created a four-year average of the team's recruiting class ranking in the B1G, from 247Sports' Composite Rankings. For example, the talent metric for 2016-17 is the average B1G recruiting class ranking of 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016.
Illinois
Based on this data, Groce has consistently underachieved given the talent available. Of course there are come caveats wth this data: the talent metric doesn't take into account players leaving early, transfers, injuries, etc. and suffers from the same bias as all recruit rankings services. But regardless, evidence points to Groce underachieving with very solid talent.
But I have at least a couple questions:
1) Obelix has said on numerous occasions that Groce basically had to replace 3.5 out of 4 classes due to one class graduating, two classes having no players, and one class having three players leave the team. I've always assumed Obelix was right about this. But your graph seems to say Groce had the very best talent to work with in the first two years on the job. How can this be true in light of the Obelix analysis? That very best talent went 6-12 in the B1G in the previous year and lost its best player to the NBA draft.
2) Last year's team lost three players to season ending injury. The skill level of a player that cannot play a tic strikes me as being pretty meaningless. What happens when you delete those three players from your talent ranking pool? My gut tells me last year's result was completely appropriate for a team that lost three of five starters to season ending injuries and had more than its share of lesser injuries as well. Your chart says the complete opposite.
I don't know that any of my questions really amount to a defense of Groce. But I am unsure that your graphs amount to a clear indictment of him, either.
Oh, another question: How does your talent metric account for experience? I suspect that a senior laden group of players ranked in the 100-150 range is gonna beat a lot of freshman laden teams with players in the 40-75 range. IOW, a large bunch of highly ranked freshmen may not be worth all that much. Does your metric account for the experience of the class?
There may be some correlation, but HS rankings are used as proxy to "project" into the future, in college. But AFTER a player is already in college, or has even completed college, as in the case of the analysis, you can't just still use HS rankings.
You have already seen the player! You know the talent in college, you just can't use what someone evaluated among thousands of players in HS. You can't just use Burke's HS ranking vs. Shaw HS rankings as a true indication of their talent in college. You have seen them in college! If HS recruiting services could go back and re-evaluate talent based on observations in college, there would obviously be changes.
Is your point that Groce didn't recruit talented enough players at Illinois?
As I said in previous posts, I do not believe Groce is a bad recruiter. But he swung and missed on too many top level players, ending with too many positional gaps at key positions for a long time. I like his current class, a very good foundation class IMO.
But overall talent level, including positional talent? The level of talent at Illinois the last 12 years (independent of just rankings) has not been what it should be, with the exception of the 2010-11 roster. Weber and Groce, last 12 years. If you see the historical stretches when Illinois was actually consistently good (not just in a specific season), i.e., late 90s-early 2000s and 80s, the level of talent was much higher than what it has been the last 12 years.
Whoever the coach moving forward, has to return Illinois to that level of talent, IF the goal is to compete for upper echelon finishes in B1G. We can wait for great X's and O's to transform average talent or similar talent we've had the last 12 years into consistently very good teams, but in that case, better grab a snickers!
Hands Malone
- Quad-Cities, IL
Bottom line is this team is better than their record and the reason for that is Groce's stubbornness to play the players he should have ten or fifteen games ago. His game planning and substitution pattern left a whole lot to be desired. I love to see this team win out but they shouldn't be in thus position. And that is all on Groce and his ladder.
I think the point was that in Groce's first recruiting class he had to come up with 10 players - Egwu, Abrams and Bertrand remained in year 2 from Weber, who had no recruits coming in as freshman in Groce's first year (2012 was a blank). Groce was forced to bootstrap through transfers. This team was not loaded with talent in any class or positional balance kind of way.
I do not think any experts predicted Illinois to easily make the NCAA. They viewed Illini as a bubble team going into the season, and unfortunately, that is what we currently are. Personally, think it would be difficult to make the tournament, but certainly hope we make it.
But I do not think anyone is making the point that Groce has actually helped his own case with his coaching and decisions, so not sure what you are arguing. He did overachieve his first year and showed a lot of promise, but the rest of his body of work has been questionable.
Gotcha and I agree that Groce had trouble with misses and then filling in plan B recruits (especially the glaring positional gaps at PG/C). I really believe the transfer situation was a flawed approach because we needed to fill in gaps with high school talent for better team cohesion and stability down the road.
Correct, it was a daunting task, but that the same time, 5 years into Groce's tenure I would have hoped we were further ahead on talent. I like his current class, but as I have said multiple times, I was hoping that would be the kind of class Groce would have gotten by year 3 into his tenure.
I'm sorry, but psst... That's something a bad recruiter would do, waste their time on someone they couldn't get no matter the circumstances. Trust me I was there for Djax, Snyder, KFC, Brunson, all of it. Bad luck, maybe, but that many guys strung together says "I have no idea what I'm doing or what these kids are really thinking." And, true, once Snyder gave his verbal he may have let up on Brunson and Evans, thus contributing to us not getting either of them, and maybe he had no idea about Patrick Ewing getting hired to steal Brunson away. Maybe someone with a more connected network tips him off to this beforehand and we don't get left holding the bag, I don't know. But THIS MANY F Ups in a row do not happen to a "good recruiter"
Just because Groce is not a "bad" recruiter, it does not make him a "good" recruiter at Illinois so far in his tenure either. That is not really a binary decision/evaluation.
Personally, I think Groce is probably a better recruiter than what he has shown so far, but he became overconfident with his early success on the court (first year) and on the recruiting trail (e.g., Nunn) and got carried away. Failure has brought him back to reality.
I have been saying point guard play is why we have been so bad, this problem is actually becoming a strength by next year, can anybody name me 1 team that is any good with below average point guard play? I heard Jay Bilas a few weeks ago say Duke was suffering because of point guard play and they have a Mcdonalds All American at the position
I don't know how anyone can say he is a bad recruiter when everyone knew he was on the hot seat and he pulled in the top class in the league with that hanging over his head
I'm in the minority who hope Groce stays at least 1 more year. PG has always been an issue for almost his entire stay at IL. Obviously that falls on him but we had some really bad "we're at the hat ceremony" luck. His biggest issue as a coach for me was probably how long it took to get TJL more time this year, his rotations, he's too loyal to some of the kids (which I understand but it hurt us this year). Unless we get a hyugge hire I don't want him to go.
I agree and I think he has it turned around. I do understand the argument to fire him but I think there is also a valid argument that with the young players and the recruiting class he has it turned around
This may be true, but I don't see how that is applicable to multiple cycles. Taking 5th year PGs instead of HS PGs IMO was a really really bad call for this program, especially when it's a guy like Khalid Lewis. Obviously he was more specifically a need case, but between him, starks, and cosby, we should've used one of those spots for a HS PG to get this built properly.
Would you go ahead and read the last two pages?
I would.
I agree with all of this.
My point was that within the context of this analysis, subject to all of its implicit limitations, it is pretty silly to argue that closing the gap to 7th place indicates progress. Nor does the plot show that Groce inherited a terrible situation.
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