Some fans are going to be salty about this, then after a few months won’t care.
All over a guy that will need a year or two to fill out.
All over a guy that will need a year or two to fill out.
Illinois Hoops Recruiting Thread (May-June 2018)
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If we are wasting scholarships for someone like Parker Braun to provide help 2 years from now, maybe we have bigger issues than I thought.
Question: May scholarships be accepted that aren't available? I.e. Before transfers are announced.
Are you serious?
I looked up fouling on the NCAA website and it's worse than I imagined. We were horrific. Fouls per game is listed over the course of 8 pages. Why 8? Because there are 351 D1 teams, and at 50 per page, all but one team fits on pages 1-7. The lone team at the bottom is listed on page 8.
It's Illinois.
22.5 per game! I don't think we've been remotely close to that in my lifetime. That's an average of putting teams in the bonus and double-bonus every game. To put it in a little more perspective, Milwaukee was 74th, and we still had 6 more PFs/game. That's giving teams a major advantage with so many extra trips to line, to say nothing of the issues that arise managing your roster as your guys get into foul trouble. On top of that, players are aware of their foul situation and it affects individual play. You can't possibly be successful with that much fouling.
That 22.5 fouls per game is a school record. Fouls are preventable. Bo Ryan and Wisconsin were the protype for playing great defense and not fouling. They were around the 12 per game range.
I’m well aware we fouled ton. That has been discussed ad naseum. But to say our defense was “reliant” on guys fouling and hoping opposing teams missed free throws isn’t an accurate statement. We didn’t just go out there intentionally foul and cross our fingers teams would miss at the line. We committed a ton fouls because of inexperience and certain personel. Our defense was reliant on speeding teams up, getting steals and forcing turnovers. We did that at a very high clip. If you want to examine stats, look at the steals and opponent turnover percentage. THAT is what the defense is reliant on. It’s the execution piece that needs work, and reducing the fouls are a major part of that.
I feel like that is pretty standard. Most freshman don't contribute a ton right out of the gate, especially big men, unless they are 5-star, future lottery picks. Even then, a lot of the time that is still based on the potential that they have for a few years down the road, not necessarily because of their immediate production.
Underclassmen play a huge role in college basketball. This is not 30 years ago, a lot of freshmen-sophomores have critical roles, including some of our own. Frazier was and still is an underclassman, so is Ayo, so is Jones, etc. Most of the expectations at UI right now are on underclassmen.
What is happening right now is not an elaborate recruiting strategy of developing long shot projects for their junior and senior years. We missed on many higher ranked prospects in the Fall, had empty scholarships in addition to some expected attrition, and things got worse having additional players leave. On top of that, we had our worst season in 20+ years, one of the worst seasons in modern history.
With a much smaller pool of available quality recruits in the Spring, we are taking some chances on projects in search of filling huge gaps, and in hope of some of them surprising. Call it whatever you want. but the ones that will not pan out, will likely leave, as it happened with Matic. They will not stay in the program to hold the scholarship for 3-4 years in hope that they may contribute 4-5 years into BU's tenure, simply because BU and staff will need scholarships to recruit some higher quality recruits.
This is not a steady-state situation where we have a strong 8-9 core that has made and is expected to make the tournament so we can use the 12th and 13th scholarship to develop a long shot prospect. We are still searching for answers in the main rotation of 8-9 players, with much uncertainty, and expectations (by pretty much all unbiased analysts) that we currently don't have enough.
Ok. The hoping for missed FTs was sarcasm. The fouling problem was not.
Indiana has a significantly better class than we do. Ohio State and Missouri have better "averages" on 247, we just outrank them because of volume. I like their classes better.
That's three peer programs that hired coaching staffs at the same time we did that are doing better at recruiting already.
I'll agree this coming fall is important.
It seems like you are trying to argue things that I didn't say. I didn't say that no freshman (or underclassmen, which I didn't mention at all) can play critical roles. Merely that many do not. I also didn't say that I'm happy that we missed out on a lot of our top targets. I would much prefer that we did.
All I said was that it is not unheard of to use a scholarship on a project big that might not contribute in 2 years. So I'm not sure offering a scholarship to Parker Braun is indicative of anything more than that we missed on a our top targets and Underwood doesn't like to have unused scholarships, and likely feels that our bigs are our biggest weakness (duh).
Those programs may have hired coaches at the same time, but the perception of each and the quality of each was/is not equal - plus, each staff is going to go about it differently anyhow. But objectively:
1) IU is IU, the red stripes are one of those schools that is always going to draw talent based on history, BANNERZ! Plus, Archie was a better known name than BU.
2) tosu had had more recent success than us. Thad was retiring, but it wasn't all performance based - his health was a factor, so they didn't have to sell a full rebuild.
3) Mizzou had the Porters already in pocket which kick started their momentum.
UI has had squat in 13 years save for a tourney appearance by Groce with 2 veteran guards in DJR and BP3. We are a dumpster fire and a long term rebuild. The bottom line is, we're not comparing apples to apples, and it's not fair to the UI staff right now to do so.
Dan
Admin
Illini have offered 5-star 2020 wing Jalen Johnson from Sun Prairie, Wis. Big-time player with length, skill and athleticism.
https://twitter.com/DPiper247/status/1002562781001011200
https://twitter.com/Jalen_J23/status/1002556100963520512
Honored to receive an offer from University of Illinois
https://twitter.com/DDainja/status/1002397870811762688
https://twitter.com/DPiper247/status/1002562781001011200
https://twitter.com/Jalen_J23/status/1002556100963520512
Honored to receive an offer from University of Illinois
https://twitter.com/DDainja/status/1002397870811762688
Illinois has to find good players that want to come here for that to work.
Peoria Illini
- Peoria, IL
Indiana snagged Langford late, which catapulted them ahead. They do have a better class.
Averages on 24/7 is misleading. Class rankings on 24/7 have a law of diminishing returns when you have a bigger class. Take our top 2, Ayo and Tevian, and they are better than Mizzou, 2 man recruiting class. OSU and us are neck and neck if you take off our lowest recruits.
Check out the class calculator. Feliz and Giorgi don't really add anything to our class ranking.
My post (that you responded to) was a direct response to a claim that BU is recruiting projects for contributing 2-3 years for now. BU recruiting projects is no mystery, and I actually agree, but it is not for the purpose of contributing in 2-3 years when they are Juniors-Seniors.
Again, this is not a steady-state situation where we have a strong 8-9 core that has made and is expected to make the tournament so we can use the 12th and 13th scholarship to develop a long shot prospect. We are still searching for answers in the main rotation of 8-9 players, with much uncertainty, and expectations (by pretty much all unbiased analysts) that we currently don't have enough.
BU is recruiting projects in hope that they are answers in big gaps we have in the main rotation (8-9 core). He is not recruiting projects for contributing in his 4-5 year as a coach. He has urgent needs, if those projects do not contribute as underclassmen (like what happened with Matic), they will likely be replaced, to make room for others in his search for a a core that can take UI to the next level.
This is a very important and correct point that I think is very well expressed here.
However, you also have to consider the implications of that.
If the proper expectations for future performance is set by past results, then the proper expectations for Illinois is that we ought to be a disastrous national laughingstock in both football and basketball until the end of time. That may be true! However, if we want to make an effort at changing that, the measurement cannot be just reasonably meeting rational expectations, it has to be exceeding them, breaking the wheel of failure, and out-competing rival schools who have a more rational basis on which their success is built. That's the nature of the beast, there's no draft or salary cap to hand you better resources, that's why I love college sports. Delicious cruelty.
One recruiting class isn't everything. But if we're going to get up off the canvas, there have to be areas in which it is visible that "we are out-competing our peer schools HERE".
I firmly believe football has a better coaching staff than our peer schools and that their ability to out-scheme and out-player develop will become telling as we move along. I would be hard-pressed to point to definite evidence of that two years in, but that is what I believe.
On the basketball side, I love Underwoodball at the conceptual level, and I think the program still has some natural talent acquisition advantages, but based on the totality of what I've seen it's a matter of hope more than belief at this point.
On the contrary, I think recruiting projects (low ranked recruits) is fine, we are desperate now to find answers so we have to take chances, hoping some of them pan out. But we are not currently recruiting prospects with the intent of them contributing in their 3rd or 4th year, we need to find answers in the main core rotation much sooner than that. If the projects we recruit do not pan out sooner, they will likely be replaced.
While I believe that UI has been irrelevant and talent level has been below what was needed to compete for top finishes in B1G (with the sole exception of 2010-11), I would not call our program a dumpster fire. We were pretty much an NCAA "bubble" team in Groce's entire career, making the NIT when he left.
When more than 75% of the fans here thought that we were going to make the NCAA (before season started), with more than 90% expecting at least NIT, and we end up with one of our worst seasons in modern history, it is not exactly true that most expected a disaster of a season and that UI was a dumpster fire. Now it seems that many would consider an NIT berth some big success, which is pretty much where we had been under Groce.
BU needs to pick it up, both in recruiting and on-court performance. I still believe he can, but let's not sugarcoat where we are right now.
I'd also rather see me win the lottery than go to work everyday, but that doesn't mean I'm gonna quit my job.
Illwinsagain
- Cary, IL
ThaKid????! That you?!
Wow, there are some memories!
If you find men that are tall, long and athletic it is always a reasonable gamble as you can teach skills but not the other. Probably more of an attitude judgement as they must be willing to put in the work. Ebo and Samba fit that mold not sure about Giorgio. They must think he has some skills.
Impact players will trump #players and overall ratings IMHO. We have Ayo and Tevian as our impact players. Tevian and Nolley two similar players could of been top 50 players, time will tell. Kane and Griffith may be better than their rankings. Think Feliz is a solid pick-up and upgrade from TJL. I'm not crying about Indiana picking up a one and done player. Not trading our class with Mizzou either.
RSCI has been the Gold Standard for the last 20 years. See attached #30, Ayo, and Illinois.
https://sites.google.com/site/rscihoops/home/2018-final
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