1-0-9. Can we fire our two previous head coaches again?
1-0-9...Even worse than suspected
1-0-9 is an understatement, really. It's eight consecutive years in which we've finished AT LEAST four spots lower than the raw talent level on the roster would indicate.
We've recruited well enough, won battles for sufficiently highly ranked players, to make the tournament in every single one of those years, and be a genuine conference title contender in a bunch of them. That was the objectively reasonable expectation of our rosters over the past decade.
There have been glaring personnel gaps at certain positions in certain years (sadly that will be the case this year as well), there has also been the occasional injury crisis, and there's been, y'know, Jereme Richmond. But of course that's true of every other team in the conference to some extent, no one is immune from that stuff.
But it has been a constant refrain on this board over the years that "we have to recruit better to compete, we won't have the talent to win unless we can break through to a higher recruiting level". What I hope that narrative's advocates will do is sit with this data for a second and wrestle with how uniformly, categorically incorrect that has always been. It would be great to recruit better, but when you can take the single most talented team in the B1G and one of the four most talented in the entire conference over the last 11 years and end up a bubble team who lost to a 12-20 Indiana and a 7-24 UIC, that suggests that you ought to look at other issues.
Here are those four most talented teams btw:
2008-09 Michigan State: Big Ten Champions, NCAA Runner-Up
2009-10 Michigan State: Big Ten Champions, Final Four
2010-11 Illinois: 9-9 in Big Ten, Second Round
2011-12 Ohio State: Big Ten Champions, Final Four
When your car is burning a quart of oil a day, your first thought should not be "I just don't have enough oil, I'd better save up my money so I can buy as much oil as possible."
It would be cool know what the floor and ceiling is. Like what is the maximum amount you could vary both up and down from your recruiting ranking. Like we have finished 2-4 levels below our talent ranking on the regular. Is it just as possible to finish 2-4 levels above?
What is the maximum reasonable swing in each direction?
Sign me up for that.Really good stuff from Bartovik. He has us at 16-13 and 10-10 with a 11th place B1G finish.
http://barttorvik.com/team.php?team=Illinois&year=2019
Obelix,
While I agree that factoring playing time into the analysis of how a team performed is valid, it seems to me that this somewhat ruins the predictive power of the exercise. I say "somewhat" because some of the playing time analysis reflects the decisions that the coach makes about who to play and who to sit, but some of the analysis excuses the coaches' inability to develop that talent and therefore sidestep that deficiency.
Really good stuff from Bartovik. He has us at 16-13 and 10-10 with a 11th place B1G finish.
http://barttorvik.com/team.php?team=Illinois&year=2019
First of all, great work Soupy, good analysis and appreciate the time spent on this. A few comments and one suggestion for improvement.
1) It is not really "talent" but more accurately "HS ranking" (in this case as measure by 247). While there is indeed correlation between rankings and talent (correlation decreases as one moves towards the lower end, since now 247 even ranks players even in the 250+ range), rankings are really more about "potential" based on HS/AAU. The higher the ranking, the higher the probability of individual success (not team success) in college, and that relationship is stronger at the higher end and gets weaker as one progress lower in the rankings. But talent extends beyond rankings into individual performance in college; it does not stop at HS/AAU. Therefore, there are new "rankings" (indicative of potential) as players move into the next level (i.e., ranking players in the NBA draft, post college, etc.) and so on.
2) A critical element not captured is positional talent. A great part of our problem post-Dee has been our inability to have B1G talent level at PG. Since Dee left (2006), Illinois has had only one (1) true B1G level PG until Frazier arrived on campus (i.e., Demetri McCamey). That is the most critical position. A secondary positional gap has been inside presence. You can't have such positional gaps (no matter how much posters argue about positionless basketball) unless you have exceptional talent at the other positions to compensate for. Depth is a critical element as well. A low ranked player should not hurt a team’s talent ranking (Duke, UK, Kansas and others have even had walkons at the end of the bench) unless the team has no depth at particular positions and are forced to play those players significant minutes.
3) Furthermore, HS rankings alone do not account for whether that HS ranking/potential was used or not (multiple players had injuries, suspensions, off court problems, etc. etc.). I believe you also identified that as a limitation. If one counts Michael Porter Jr. on Mizzou (who never really played), we may come to the conclusion that Mizzou was way more talented than it actually was. Same with Tracy, Thorne, Mike Shaw, and even Richmond (who missed games and playing time due to off court issues/failed tests, etc.). By the same token, the ranking of the 12th, 13th, 14th player on a team (even walkons) is irrelevant as they usually have really no effect and rarely play. The average HS ranking unfairly treats every player the same, whether they play or not, or how much they play. That is a critical limitation as it treats the 1st player on the team exactly the same as the 13th player on a team.
A way of actually addressing some of those gaps is weighting 247 rankings by the minutes each player played in the B1G (to stay consistent) and creating an Effective Ranking for EACH player, then adding them together (not averaging them) to create a composite Effective Ranking score for each team. While not perfect, that would IMO be a much better surrogate measure.
For example, Trent Frazier's Effective Ranking during the 2017-2018 season would be:
0.9392 x 533 = 500.5936
whereas, Mark Smith's Effective Ranking during the 2017-2018 season would be:
0.9629 x 279 = 268.6491
Which would much more accurately capture talent (weighted by utilization) on the team last year as measured by rankings. It also correctly compensates for players not playing for whatever reason (injuries, RS, off and on-court problems, suspensions, skipping practice, not getting along with coaches, etc. etc.), despite their rankings.
If we add (not average) the effective rankings of each player on the team, we would get an Effective Ranking composite for each team in the B1G, which will be a much better surrogate of the actual talent on B1G teams each year. And as with rankings, I believe that measure, and other similar measures, will show that the impact is more pronounced between high and low end, as it is within groups, especially at low end. That means that effective ranking would be more meaningful on its correlation of competing for B1G or making NCAA, e.g., between the 1st, or 2nd projected team and teams at the lower end, rather than projecting whether the 11th ranked team actually finished 9th or 13th which IMO is less important (similarly, rankings on the average show greater differences between the 15th ranked player and the 130th ranked player, rather than differences between players ranked 170th and 250th).
This method would help with the youth issues as they would normally play less minutes. It wouldn't help with the positional deficits, however, as the minutes would be taken by players playing out of position
Really good stuff from Bartovik. He has us at 16-13 and 10-10 with a 11th place B1G finish.
http://barttorvik.com/team.php?team=Illinois&year=2019
Really good stuff from Bartovik. He has us at 16-13 and 10-10 with a 11th place B1G finish.
http://barttorvik.com/team.php?team=Illinois&year=2019
First of all, great work Soupy, good analysis and appreciate the time spent on this. A few comments and one suggestion for improvement.
1) It is not really "talent" but more accurately "HS ranking" (in this case as measure by 247). While there is indeed correlation between rankings and talent (correlation decreases as one moves towards the lower end, since now 247 even ranks players even in the 250+ range), rankings are really more about "potential" based on HS/AAU. The higher the ranking, the higher the probability of individual success (not team success) in college, and that relationship is stronger at the higher end and gets weaker as one progress lower in the rankings. But talent extends beyond rankings into individual performance in college; it does not stop at HS/AAU. Therefore, there are new "rankings" (indicative of potential) as players move into the next level (i.e., ranking players in the NBA draft, post college, etc.) and so on.
2) A critical element not captured is positional talent. A great part of our problem post-Dee has been our inability to have B1G talent level at PG. Since Dee left (2006), Illinois has had only one (1) true B1G level PG until Frazier arrived on campus (i.e., Demetri McCamey). That is the most critical position. A secondary positional gap has been inside presence. You can't have such positional gaps (no matter how much posters argue about positionless basketball) unless you have exceptional talent at the other positions to compensate for. Depth is a critical element as well. A low ranked player should not hurt a team’s talent ranking (Duke, UK, Kansas and others have even had walkons at the end of the bench) unless the team has no depth at particular positions and are forced to play those players significant minutes.
3) Furthermore, HS rankings alone do not account for whether that HS ranking/potential was used or not (multiple players had injuries, suspensions, off court problems, etc. etc.). I believe you also identified that as a limitation. If one counts Michael Porter Jr. on Mizzou (who never really played), we may come to the conclusion that Mizzou was way more talented than it actually was. Same with Tracy, Thorne, Mike Shaw, and even Richmond (who missed games and playing time due to off court issues/failed tests, etc.). By the same token, the ranking of the 12th, 13th, 14th player on a team (even walkons) is irrelevant as they usually have really no effect and rarely play. The average HS ranking unfairly treats every player the same, whether they play or not, or how much they play. That is a critical limitation as it treats the 1st player on the team exactly the same as the 13th player on a team.
A way of actually addressing some of those gaps is weighting 247 rankings by the minutes each player played in the B1G (to stay consistent) and creating an Effective Ranking for EACH player, then adding them together (not averaging them) to create a composite Effective Ranking score for each team. While not perfect, that would IMO be a much better surrogate measure.
For example, Trent Frazier's Effective Ranking during the 2017-2018 season would be:
0.9392 x 533 = 500.5936
whereas, Mark Smith's Effective Ranking during the 2017-2018 season would be:
0.9629 x 279 = 268.6491
Which would much more accurately capture talent (weighted by utilization) on the team last year as measured by rankings. It also correctly compensates for players not playing for whatever reason (injuries, RS, off and on-court problems, suspensions, skipping practice, not getting along with coaches, etc. etc.), despite their rankings.
If we add (not average) the effective rankings of each player on the team, we would get an Effective Ranking composite for each team in the B1G, which will be a much better surrogate of the actual talent on B1G teams each year. And as with rankings, I believe that measure, and other similar measures, will show that the impact is more pronounced between high and low end, as it is within groups, especially at low end. That means that effective ranking would be more meaningful on its correlation of competing for B1G or making NCAA, e.g., between the 1st, or 2nd projected team and teams at the lower end, rather than projecting whether the 11th ranked team actually finished 9th or 13th which IMO is less important (similarly, rankings on the average show greater differences between the 15th ranked player and the 130th ranked player, rather than differences between players ranked 170th and 250th).
Really good stuff from Bartovik. He has us at 16-13 and 10-10 with a 11th place B1G finish.
http://barttorvik.com/team.php?team=Illinois&year=2019
A way of actually addressing some of those gaps is weighting 247 rankings by the minutes each player played in the B1G (to stay consistent) and creating an Effective Ranking for EACH player, then adding them together (not averaging them) to create a composite Effective Ranking score for each team. While not perfect, that would IMO be a much better surrogate measure.
For example, Trent Frazier's Effective Ranking during the 2017-2018 season would be:
0.9392 x 533 = 500.5936
whereas, Mark Smith's Effective Ranking during the 2017-2018 season would be:
0.9629 x 279 = 268.6491
It would be cool know what the floor and ceiling is. Like what is the maximum amount you could vary both up and down from your recruiting ranking. Like we have finished 2-4 levels below our talent ranking on the regular. Is it just as possible to finish 2-4 levels above?
What is the maximum reasonable swing in each direction?
You want a new graph? It sounds like you want a new graph.
View attachment 3512
The bottom half of that graph has a lot of orange and a lot of crimson.
Next table is the average difference between conference rank and "talent" rank over the ten seasons.
View attachment 3514
Next table is the average difference between conference rank and "talent" rank over the ten seasons.
View attachment 3514