ChazzReinhold
Mom! The Meatloaf!
Ayo will bring front court depth.
Counting on those open growth plates?
Ayo will bring front court depth.
Iowa returns everybody. They are going to be picked in the top 9 or 10 in the conference, IMO.
A lot of the non-tournament teams return a lot of guys. The top of the conference is going to dip a bit with MSU losing Bridges and Jackson (presumably), Purdue losing all their seniors, and Ohio State losing KBD (presumably) and Tate. But the rest of the league will be much better.
And that doesn't bode well for us.
Northwestern loses McIntosh, Linsey, Skelly & Brown (transferring), Not sure how Minny will replace Mason.
Counting on those open growth plates?
my breakout Illini next year will be.... Da'Monte. Didn't play basketball the year before last because of injury.... I see a big step up this year with an off season to improve.
I see others improving... Trent in leadership, Kipper in consistency, Lucas in shooting, Ebo in finishing, Vesel in strength, AJ in quicker release, and Finke in confidence.
Ayo will bring front court depth, Kane will add a physical presence to the paint and Griffin will bring depth to the wings.
still more players to come...
the core of the team has played in the system a year now, which will also help the newcomers... also the staff will be together too for a year ( as far as we know now)... they were also novices to BU's system.
We still need another big. I believe Finke will improve offensively from working with OA. Hopefully he will also improve defensively. However if Ebo and Kane are sharing the center position we need a backup to Finke who can also score. It needs to be someone bigger than Kipper. None of the freshmen recruites being mentioned can fill that void. That means an experienced transfer. We are in for another tough year IMO if we don't find that big.
Finke has been on the team for 4 full years. He is not an inside player, neither on offense nor defense. I have had the argument with many posters in previous minutes, hours, days, months and years (i.e., he is the C of the future, he has post moves, etc.). So I am less optimistic that he will become that player in his 5th year, but beggars can't be choosers, we absolutely still need Finke on the team.
FIFY
At the 4 and 5 positions, we currently have 2 players who IMO could help in a backup role (Kane and Ebo). I have not seen Kane play, so I hope he can surprise and be an immediate star at B1G level, but it would be a big, big surprise if he is. So the problem is that we still need starter B1G level players at 4 and 5, and the only one we had who could fill that role (Black) is likely leaving.
So the key IMO is not so much this Spring/Summer (for 2018), but Fall recruiting for 2019. Much of BU's success depends on filling big recruiting gaps with players like Liddell and Okoro in the frontcourt. That is the level of players that we need. It is the most critical recruiting class, especially in the frontcourt. JMO.
Don't disagree with you but believe it may be even tougher to land Okoro and Liddell with another bottom of the conference finish
I think Okoro and Liddell will be fall recruits, so it is unlikely that next year's season will have any impact. It is tough indeed when we have missed the tournament in 5 straight years and we have been irrelevant in the last 12+ years, but we have to land big (pun intended) 2019 recruits this Fall.
Hope you are right.
Heck, if we finished about half of our missed layups each game, we probably would have made the tourney... LOL.
Our main focus in the offseason should be continued improvement and aggressiveness at the rim.
Trent broke the defense down so many times but didn't always finish with a bucket. His improvement in this area would definitely be worth a handful of games. Same goes with Lucas. And Frank. With all this, and improving outside shooting?? Pass me the cool-aid.
Who's Frank?
#SonHe means Frank's little brother, Damonte
#Son
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It was an attempt at humor.
Trent broke the defense down so many times but didn't always finish with a bucket. His improvement in this area would definitely be worth a handful of games. Same goes with Lucas. And Frank. With all this, and improving outside shooting?? Pass me the cool-aid.
Do we really know that Matic is a non factor next year? Not arguing the point just asking if any coaching input or just supposition from what we saw in games last year. We seem to discount existing improvement and see more talent in HS players who haven't any college experience. I'm just not seeing big recruits that look like factors next year (exception Kane).
I can appreciate the oversight of Frank vs DaMonte, but C'mon Man..."cool" vs Kool-Aid, that is unforgivable to say the least.:thumb: