This has been something I've been thinking about with so many guards being recruited and people responding by believing Underwood will just play more guards, but how would this come to fruition? The current roster, with a very thin frontcourt that everyone has questioned the whole season, seems to suggest that you are already maxing out the available minutes for the backcourt. Black is playing great, but it seems like an easy argument that putting a four-guard lineup around him would be untenable from a rebounding perspective.
Right now, your minute breakdown is the following for your true guards:
2018 Minutes
Frazier: 26.1
Lucas: 20.9
Smith: 19.1
Ramey is going to have to eat into minutes from predominantly either Frazier or Lucas due to height concerns (can't forsee how you could play Frazier, Lucas, and Ramey all at the same time). Let's do a walk through for minutes in 2019. Seems easy to expect Frazier's minutes to go up next year, and we're all hoping that Smith will make a leap forward and demand more minutes, plus he can play a little at the 3 in the right lineups. This is ignoring the comments from a couple posters about Lucas and whether he's caused problems and/or not bought into the team culture, because it can't be substantiated.
2019 Predicted Minutes
Frazier: 32
Lucas: 21
Smith: 25
That would leave 42 minutes for the backcourt to be split among Williams, Ayo, Nichols (partially), and Jordan (partially). As of now, Williams, Nichols, and Jordan are already playing 55 minutes/game. Maybe the answer is whoever in this group takes the next step forward will be eat away at the minutes for the other. Also, for those that might clamor for Ayo (and possibly Ramey) to eat into Tejon's playing time, his stats have shown a leap forward (FG% went from 40% to 47%, FT% improvement, rebounding rate improvement, TO's and assists are roughly the same). If I'm Tejon and I'm expected to take a cut in playing time, I'm looking to transfer.
The only answer for me would be if Illinois was able to bring in a 5th year front court player that is a monster on the boards, Trice commits and is a revelation, or Spicy G takes another step forward (my pick) that eases the pressure of playing a larger player at the 3.
tl;dr: you only have so many minutes to play guards, plus you need to rebound the basketball to be competitive.
Think you have a good analysis, however, I think you may be lumping the wrong players together...I believe you pull Smith minutes from guard pool and add him to Jordan and Williams, thus Ayo/Ramey slide into those minutes and then some if we get both of course.
Williams/Jordan/Smith are all rebounders/defensive with some offensive numbers albeit rather low as of now, they fill into a traditional 3/4 spot and Kipper goes into that or the 4/5 slot as well, with a smaller lineup with Black/Kipper/Ebo/Finke playing the 5th spot.