Being positive is by definition speculating. Planet Earth is a cruel and dangerous place, especially for Illinois basketball.
You realize that if being positive is speculating, so is being negative, right?
Being positive is by definition speculating. Planet Earth is a cruel and dangerous place, especially for Illinois basketball.
You realize that if being positive is speculating, so is being negative, right?
What do you mean no coherent plan? The plan, as explained by CBU is to recruit players with long arms
Ayo is the best recruit since Dee Brown.
PG - Frazier
G - Ayo
G - Da'Monte
F - Tevian
F - Kipper
For some reason, and idk why, all these transfers and defections really do not bother me. Maybe it’s cause I’m a high school teacher and coach, and I’ve learned over the years, sometimes kids/young adults/players just do stuff. You don’t have to like it, you don’t have to love it, but you gotta live with it. Time to move on.
I’m not apathetic, I literally record and watch every game (not live because I’m usually working during game times), I come to loyalty like 5x a day, and if I lived close enough I’d buy season tickets much to the dismay of my wife, who already doesn’t see me during basketball season. My bias is that I’m way more bullish on BU than most due to my coaching experience in his system and seeing him teach it. I trust he’ll find a way, because honestly, it’s easier to take that approach and more likely than anyone else on here doing it; although there are definitely some good and interesting ideas.
I see some ways to play with this group as is, and that will be a later post. I think it can be fun, I think it can be done (don’t have a choice though right?), it’s just obviously not desirable.
It absolutely does, but there are signposts along the way. Someone earlier in the thread mentioned the Cubs rebuild, which obviously involved 3 years of real down-in-the-dumps losing at the major league level. To some, the lesson there is "trust your leadership, cheer through the bad times and have faith that everything will work out alright".
For the more educated (and honestly, I don't want that to sound like I'm somehow better, no one should be as much of a nerd about this stuff as I am, it's a sickness), it's a totally different story. Honestly, Theo Epstein's overhaul of the Cubs organization, exactly those losing seasons, not the winning that followed, was the most enjoyable time as a sports fan I have ever had. I've said many times that I'm a sucker for plans. Never has a plan been better conceived, better articulated and more doggedly and artfully executed than the creation of the current Cubs juggernaut. Every day, visibly, with hard data, the future just got brighter and brighter, until there was absolutely no doubt that a long-term contender was in the immediate future. The Addison Russell trade was a Moon Landing moment, I'll remember where I was forever (in a bathroom in New York in the pitch black because the power had gone out).
That is not what's going on right now with our Illini. I don't do blind faith unless Steve Winwood is involved.
We don't just wake up in three years and get rewarded with an NCAA bid under our pillow from the Fan Fairy for being good little boys and girls. If we're moving in the right direction, we're gonna see it going forward.
I'm a Red Sox fan, so I know all about Theo. I told every Cub fan relative and friend when they got Theo that the Cubs would win at a high level and sooner than later. However, you're missing sign posts, dude. Frazier, Da'Monte, Ayo, Tevian, Griff...young, long, athletic guards/wings. That's how you win at the college level. Did you get worried/upset when a young middle infielder like Castro was traded? Don't get worried/upset when we lose a project big like Ebo either.
Boy, passing through three signing periods and being left with a roster with only two players taller than 6'6" is a pretty avant-garde way of fulfilling that plan.
I'm just curious, for everyone expressing certainty that we're on the right track, how much would those beliefs be affected by a really disastrous season, worse than last year?
Because for me, if there is really visible evidence that UnderwoodBall is bedding in, and we're a sharper, better executing team than we were last year, especially if coupled with a quality, roster-balancing class signed in the fall, I am going to feel very very differently.
Knowing Loyalty as I do, this is the piece that is likely doing virtually all the optimism heavy lifting. And not that it matters, but this talking point is no longer accurate. Both Richmond and Leonard were rated slightly higher.
Ayo no longer has Fifth Star Pixie Dust. Don't downgrade your opinion of him, take this opportunity to stop believing in that fairy tale altogether.
And if this is doing the heavy lifting....hey man, I am not a professional basketball coach, maybe I'm wrong, but this looks like 0-20 in the B1G to me. And that's even being very high on most of those players.
A true freshman wing and a flaky turnstile as your frontcourt? Hold onto your butts.
People don't seem to be engaging with the idea that we have a few very good players but an AWFUL roster right now.
Brad Undertaker makes Tom Crean look like an amateur.
I'm a Red Sox fan, so I know all about Theo. I told every Cub fan relative and friend when they got Theo that the Cubs would win at a high level and sooner than later. However, you're missing sign posts, dude. Frazier, Da'Monte, Ayo, Tevian, Griff...young, long, athletic guards/wings. That's how you win at the college level. Did you get worried/upset when a young middle infielder like Castro was traded? Don't get worried/upset when we lose a project big like Ebo either.
I look at the 2018 class as Underwood’s first full class. While 3 high school players recruited by Underwood have transferred, only 1 of them was a guy he would have recruited were it not for the last minute need to add players due to the timing of his hire.
For 2018, we whiffed on most of our top targets last fall, which is a little concerning but somewhat expected given the state of the program. To me, THT is the only truly disappointing one due to the circumstances and my belief that he will be a very good four year player. But given our needs going into the spring, I think we did pretty well by adding Jones, Feliz, Griffin, Kane and Bez. For Underwood to turn this thing around, this needs to be a foundational class for him to build off of (plus TF and DW). If we see mass transfers from our 2018 class or TF or DW, if our 2019 class lacks difference makers or if we don’t see progress on the court this year with the 2018 guys executing Underwood’s system (looking at buy-in and identity as opposed to just wins), then I’ll seriously doubt that Underwood is the right guy for the job. But for now, I can still see this going either way.
While I would have preferred that some of the guys transferring out would have stayed, this was likely to be a 3 to 5 year turnaround regardless (if eventually successful). That’s the nature of hiring a system guy instead of a recruiter (see Beilein and Huggins). These transfers merely push back the timeframe by a year for us being an NCAA tournament team again. They are not make or break transfers. If Underwood is the right guy, we should get there by year 4 at the latest with clear evidence of a continuing upward trajectory. If he’s not the right guy, we weren’t going to get there with or without Smith, Ebo, Vessel or Lucas.
I remember after the 87-88 season, we thought we were really going to be good with a 7 foot center and all the other players coming back. Jens Kujawa decided to go pro though and that made our front line thin. 6-7 Lowell Hamilton became our starting center and Ervin Small would be his backup at times. Lou decided later that it was the best thing that ever happened.
http://www.news-gazette.com/sports/illini-sports/mens-basketball/2011-03-19/ode-jens-kujawa.html
:frustrated:
Boy, passing through three signing periods and being left with a roster with only two players taller than 6'6" is a pretty avant-garde way of fulfilling that plan.
I'm just curious, for everyone expressing certainty that we're on the right track, how much would those beliefs be affected by a really disastrous season, worse than last year?
Because for me, if there is really visible evidence that UnderwoodBall is bedding in, and we're a sharper, better executing team than we were last year, especially if coupled with a quality, roster-balancing class signed in the fall, I am going to feel very very differently.
Knowing Loyalty as I do, this is the piece that is likely doing virtually all the optimism heavy lifting. And not that it matters, but this talking point is no longer accurate. Both Richmond and Leonard were rated slightly higher.
Ayo no longer has Fifth Star Pixie Dust. Don't downgrade your opinion of him, take this opportunity to stop believing in that fairy tale altogether.
And if this is doing the heavy lifting....hey man, I am not a professional basketball coach, maybe I'm wrong, but this looks like 0-20 in the B1G to me. And that's even being very high on most of those players.
A true freshman wing and a flaky turnstile as your frontcourt? Hold onto your butts.
People don't seem to be engaging with the idea that we have a few very good players but an AWFUL roster right now.
So are you frustrated at the poster, the article, or yourself?
Would you rather have 4 players like Ebo, or 1? The frontcourt is thin but it's not like we automatically have more value by having bodies that don't contribute much. Our roster isn't ideal right now but we have a ton of potential talent at the 1-4 on a small ball team. We are one or two proven front court players away from having a pretty good roster IMO. I always believed that it's a guard's game so as long as we have good guards, we'll always have a chance. I don't expect us too make that much noise this next year but if Kane shows his potential, I think we're in good shape heading into the next season.
A bit harsh, but it certainly screams bottom of the B1G. It's going to be a bit of a repeat of this year - some excitement, some scoring, but an even more porous foul-prone defense that can't stop anybody in the paint.
I see a lot of people underselling Ebo. It doesn't change the fact that he's transferring, but let's not kid ourselves here just to feel better about the situation. His play last season was stellar given the fact that he was a freshman big and he had been playing basketball for such a short period of time. I would have loved to see a sophomore Ebo with a firm grasp of the system and a summer to hit the weights.
Let's look at his per 40 numbers in conference, and compare them to Egwu's per 40 in conference, as a lot of posters (myself included) have stated how much they'd love to have an Egwu on this team:
Ebo Frosh: FG% .551 TRB 9.2 Asst 1.0 STL 1.4 BLK 1.4 Pts 8.2
Egwu Frosh: FG% .500 TRB 5.6 Asst .2 STL 0.0 BLK 1.9 Pts 6.8
Egwu Soph: FG% .478 TRB 7.7 Asst .7 STL 1.0 BLK 2.2 Pts 10.6
Egwu JR: FG% .391 TRB 8.6 Asst .7 STL 0.4 BLK 2.8 Pts 8.7
Egwu SR: FG% .382 TRB 8.0 Asst 1.3 STL 1.6 BLK 2.3 Pts 7.1
In conference play, Ebo had an ORtg of 116.6 and DRtg of 111.2, which is better than any combined rating that Egwu had. Would Ebo's per 40 numbers go down if given more minutes, perhaps. But Ebo played more minutes than Egwu did his freshman year and put up better numbers.
https://www.sports-reference.com/cbb/players/greg-eboigbodin-1.html
https://www.sports-reference.com/cbb/players/nnanna-egwu-1.html
Heh, heh.
The comparison is just ridiculous. He's trying to compare the FLYIN' ILLINI with where we are now.
I remember after the 87-88 season, we thought we were really going to be good with a 7 foot center and all the other players coming back. Jens Kujawa decided to go pro though and that made our front line thin. 6-7 Lowell Hamilton became our starting center and Ervin Small would be his backup at times. Lou decided later that it was the best thing that ever happened.
http://www.news-gazette.com/sports/illini-sports/mens-basketball/2011-03-19/ode-jens-kujawa.html
Just showing an example of small ball that worked. Not comparing this team to the flying Illini, but who knows? Just trying to be positive at this point.
Good stuff. I agree - Ebo was supposed to be the blueprint for bigs. Get developmental guys with physical tools and they become solid B1G players as upperclassmen. He showed flashes last year and looked to be on track.
The Flyin' Illini didn't work because the guys were small. It worked because the roster was stacked with the greatest collection of basketball talent we've had in the last 50 years. So much talent that the no. 1 high school recruit couldn't even crack the lineup.