That is every bit as preposterous as it has been for every single miserable pile of garbage season that has followed 2005.
The only team in that group that you could even make a colorable argument lacked the talent to compete at a high level was - ironically - by far the best of those teams, 2008-09.
The cavalry is not coming. Ayo Dosunmu isn't some unheard-of coup for post-05 Illini recruiting, and he's one guy at that.
If this is what Brad Underwood is going to produce out of this level of talent, then we're in for 3-4 years of humiliating catastrophe.
I don't believe that for a variety of reasons, mainly young guys who don't know what they're doing yet gaining experience. But lets be real, there's a healthy dose of vain, blind hope that this fanbase that has given more and received less over the past decade-plus than any other Power Five school by an order of magnitude could not possibly continue to be punished this cruelly, that the imminent non-viability of Big Ten revenue sports at U of I as a commercial entity can't possibly be real.
Forgive my wooden-ness, but your last clause of that last (long, run-on) sentence ends up leaving me wondering what exactly you're saying there. I savvy your heavy dose of negativity, though; that comes in loud and clear. Seems way, way early to get to that point, but to each his own. I'm not seeing humiliating catastrophe coming; maybe I'll be blind-sided.