Illinois Hoops Recruiting Thread

[jacekpardol]

Again, 3 of the 4 you're talking about are extremely close to top 100. So if Jakstys is ranked 11 spots higher, then there's no trend. If DGL is ranked 34 spots higher, then there's no trend. Butler hasn't even chosen a school yet.

The only trend happening is that we're supplementing our roster with developmental players. Your 'trend' also ignores/overlaps the transfers we brought in this season, which again, are all 4 stars. Every single one of them.

How am I the one seeing numbers when you've blatantly stated that your criteria is that they be top 100?

To you, the guy ranked 100 is good but Jakstys is 111 so he sucks and is part of the downward spiral of IL basketball. Same with DGL. He's ranked 134, not 100, so he's also part of the downfall of IL hoops. I think its an extremely wild overreaction and is a lot of hair-splitting and other types of mental gymnastics to arrive at the conclusion you have, which is that the program is doomed because we have 3 or 4 players on the roster that just barely didn't make the top 100.

The ranking system for transfers is completely different. To be honest with you I have no idea where the cut-off is.

Illinois was ranked 41st in team rankings for the transfer portal this year. That's very unremarkable. Combine this with our most recent commits, this is where my concern is regarding the trend.

2023 Transfer Basketball Team Rankings

In order to create the most comprehensive Team Recruiting Ranking without any notion of bias, 247Sports Team Recruiting Ranking is solely based on the 247Sports Composite Rating.

247sports.com

I hope you're right and eat my words, I really do brother.

 

[GrayGhost77]

Do you have a single example of an Illinois starting lineup of primarily kids ranked outside the top 100 that has had any kind of success in the past 40 years?

2008-09

 

[NarrowJ]

The ranking system for transfers is completely different. To be honest with you I have no idea where the cut-off is.

Illinois was ranked 41st in team rankings for the transfer portal this year.

2023 Transfer Basketball Team Rankings

In order to create the most comprehensive Team Recruiting Ranking without any notion of bias, 247Sports Team Recruiting Ranking is solely based on the 247Sports Composite Rating.

247sports.com

I hope you're right and eat my words, I really do brother.

Yes, however, they're using # of transfers as a strong part of that ranking formula. We had three 4 star transfers, lots of teams above us in those rankings have like two 4 stars and then like three 3 stars. For instance, Missouri is ranked right above us but they had three 3 stars and one 4 star. Is that better? More 3 stars is better? Thought that was what we were arguing against...

 

[Old Farm Illini]

The ranking system for transfers is completely different. To be honest with you I have no idea where the cut-off is.

Illinois was ranked 41st in team rankings for the transfer portal this year.

2023 Transfer Basketball Team Rankings

In order to create the most comprehensive Team Recruiting Ranking without any notion of bias, 247Sports Team Recruiting Ranking is solely based on the 247Sports Composite Rating.

247sports.com

I hope you're right and eat my words, I really do brother.

23rd if you're looking at it by quality of player versus quantity.

 

[jacekpardol]

23rd if you're looking at it by quality of player versus quantity.

Good to know

 

[BackThatPassUp]

The ranking system for transfers is completely different. To be honest with you I have no idea where the cut-off is.

Illinois was ranked 41st in team rankings for the transfer portal this year. That's very unremarkable. Combine this with our most recent commits, this is where my concern is regarding the trend.

2023 Transfer Basketball Team Rankings

In order to create the most comprehensive Team Recruiting Ranking without any notion of bias, 247Sports Team Recruiting Ranking is solely based on the 247Sports Composite Rating.

247sports.com

I hope you're right and eat my words, I really do brother.

Kansas State was around 35 last year going by the same metric and that appeared to work out well. It's most important for transfers to immediately fill deficiencies to elevate a team than for preps who will still need some player development and adjusting before they can be meaningful contributors.

 

[CoachHooleyHoo]

You must’ve missed the Jerome Tang/K-State love fest awhile back.

I did miss that apparently. LOL!

 

[Emerson Bigguns]

All I'm speaking about is the trend. Jase will be the 4th, non-top 100 kid in a row. Something we probably haven't seen since the Weber or Groce years. So I'm not necessarily sounding alarm bells but I am saying it may be a cause for concern based on historical precedent. Hopefully, you are right and these kids will blow away expectations.

You see a number. I see that national talent evaluations believe that the kid is 10% better relative to the field. Why is that garbage?

I feel like you are getting too tied up in the order of the commitments. Butler (assuming he picks the Illini next week), will be coming in with one of the best PF prospects in the country. I'll get worried the next time we have a class that's exclusively 3-star or lower players.

Believing one 3-star player is better than his ranking is much different than believing you are ALWAYS smarter than the scouting industry and can build a good program recruiting only under-rated guys. If you have conviction that a guy is much better than their ranking, you go with it. This seems to be the case with Butler. It's too early in the cycle to take a commit from a player you don't 100% believe in.

 

[Joel Goodson]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1707039349747990720

 

[Frank]

5 of the 7 (6 of the 8?) most athletic guys in that game played for Arkansas last year.

RJ was the only Illinois guy who could hold his own athletically with Houston.

No matter how biased we are, southern schools lick their chops to play big ten teams. They know they’ll have trouble strength wise “but we’re able to go wherever we want to go” is the quote I got from the coach who came to my practice last week (my best guy is d1 so we have coaches consistently rolling through).

Not saying we're winning the athleticism battle, but I am saying that lack of athleticism is not why we lost those games. You could maybe make that argument for Houston, but the guy that killed us the most was also the smallest guy on the court. Against Arkansas, basically the same thing except their guards were bigger than Shead. Their super athletic 5-star players were not the ones that killed us.

 

[Frank]

We got infinitely better at shooting than we were last year.

Listen, I like to be an optimist, particularly on this board. But let's also be real -- we most definitely do not have any evidence that we got better at shooting this offseason.

 

[Rap47]

Maybe the NLI money available at Illinois is not as great as the people here seem to think. I also believe Underwood puts a major emphasis on the quality of the recruit as a person. He doesn't want the bad apples after last year.

 

[Frank]

All I'm speaking about is the trend. Jase will be the 4th, non-top 100 kid in a row. Something we probably haven't seen since the Weber or Groce years. So I'm not necessarily sounding alarm bells but I am saying it may be a cause for concern based on historical precedent. Hopefully, you are right and these kids will blow away expectations.

You see a number. I see that national talent evaluations believe that the kid is 10% better relative to the field. Why is that garbage?

You have way too much faith in the evaluators' ability to properly identify who should be #80 vs. who should be #110.

There is very little (read: none) evidence that a basketball player's contributions is statistically related to his ranking spot, after one gets beyond the top 40-50. Once you hit that point, the level of uncertainty is way too high to support the kind of definitive statements you've been making.

 

[NarrowJ]

You have way too much faith in the evaluators' ability to properly identify who should be #80 vs. who should be #110.

There is very little (read: none) evidence that a basketball player's contributions is statistically related to his ranking spot, after one gets beyond the top 40-50. Once you hit that point, the level of uncertainty is way too high to support the kind of definitive statements you've been making.

Also have to take into account 10% isn't accurate. The recruiting pool doesn't stop after Jakstys. You're looking at more like 300 which would make #111 roughly 3% lower, not 10% (still splitting hairs here).

Either way, totally agree, #100 vs #111 is not only a wash, but its certainly not a situation where #100 is completely acceptable and #111 means we're torpedoing into oblivion.

 

[CoachHooleyHoo]

I feel like you are getting too tied up in the order of the commitments. Butler (assuming he picks the Illini next week), will be coming in with one of the best PF prospects in the country. I'll get worried the next time we have a class that's exclusively 3-star or lower players.

Believing one 3-star player is better than his ranking is much different than believing you are ALWAYS smarter than the scouting industry and can build a good program recruiting only under-rated guys. If you have conviction that a guy is much better than their ranking, you go with it. This seems to be the case with Butler. It's too early in the cycle to take a commit from a player you don't 100% believe in.

That's a very reasonable response. Not something you see a lot of on forums.

 

[PepeSilvia]

5 of the 7 (6 of the 8?) most athletic guys in that game played for Arkansas last year.

RJ was the only Illinois guy who could hold his own athletically with Houston.

No matter how biased we are, southern schools lick their chops to play big ten teams. They know they’ll have trouble strength wise “but we’re able to go wherever we want to go” is the quote I got from the coach who came to my practice last week (my best guy is d1 so we have coaches consistently rolling through).

Man speaking of that it's a shame that RJ didn't work out.

I really thought he could be a special player. NBA caliber length and athleticism just couldn't get his shot to fall and he lacked any ball handling skills(could have been a good slasher on a better passing team). He also just rarely played with any confidence.

 

[PepeSilvia]

Also have to take into account 10% isn't accurate. The recruiting pool doesn't stop after Jakstys. You're looking at more like 300 which would make #111 roughly 3% lower, not 10% (still splitting hairs here).

Either way, totally agree, #100 vs #111 is not only a wash, but its certainly not a situation where #100 is completely acceptable and #111 means we're torpedoing into oblivion.

This is kind of similar to MLB prospects. Everyone gets caught up on the top 100 prospect rankings when really every prospect from 60-150 is basically the same caliber of prospect and there is fairly arbitrary separation.

 

[PepeSilvia]

I'd say that while we can be optimistic, it remains to be seen at this point. Basically we're going from:

TSJ 32%
MM 33%
CoHawk 28%
Epps 30%
RJ 26%
------
Sencire 33%
Luke 42%

To:
TSJ- 32%
CoHawk- 28%
Ty- 0%
Luke- 42%
Domask- 35%
-----------------
Guerrier- 35%
Sencire- 33%

Goode is a major shooting upgrade over Epps, Ty is a major shooting downgrade from RJ. Domask is slightly better than Mayer. Other than that, it's a bit of a wash. As well, while it's overseas and over the summer so you can take it with a grain of salt, our shooting in Spain was absolutely brutal minus Domask.

So if Domask, a 35% 3pt shooter is being looked to as our optimistic saving grace so to speak, I think we may be putting just a bit too much weight on him.

While the hope is that we're better than the 30.8% 3pt shooting team we were last year, without a dramatic increase in shot quality this year, I'm not sure we can expect all that much higher a shooting percentage from deep this year. That said, our offensive rebounding should be elite, so there's that.

You're leaving out Harmon though and he can stroke it. Also was far better spotting up and shooting off the catch which he will do far more often at Illinois.

Goode basically didnt play last year so you're realistically adding Goode and Domask who would be the best two shooters on the team last year plus Harmon and Guerrier who would have been 4th and 5th behind Mayer.

 

[Flyinghi71]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1707039349747990720

 

[illiniballknower]

You have way too much faith in the evaluators' ability to properly identify who should be #80 vs. who should be #110.

There is very little (read: none) evidence that a basketball player's contributions is statistically related to his ranking spot, after one gets beyond the top 40-50. Once you hit that point, the level of uncertainty is way too high to support the kind of definitive statements you've been making.

I've tried to look at predicting freshman performance off of recruiting ratings and you are basically right. Roughly speaking, players ranked 1-25 are generally better than 25-50. From 50 ~ 150, the average production does go down but the variance is very large so the difference between say 100 and 90 is not really meaningful.

 

[Frank]

You're leaving out Harmon though and he can stroke it. Also was far better spotting up and shooting off the catch which he will do far more often at Illinois.

Goode basically didnt play last year so you're realistically adding Goode and Domask who would be the best two shooters on the team last year plus Harmon and Guerrier who would have been 4th and 5th behind Mayer.

I hate being the pessimist but in fairness, Domask shot 35%, right in line with his career average. Mayyyybe what you would call a "good" shooter but just barely, if so. And Harmon shot 34%, just above his career average of 33%, and shot a frigid 27% in conference play. Perhaps he's better off the catch, but I don't think there's any evidence there to support us being "infinitely better" (per original poster). I'm optimistic more will go in this year (from 3) but that's mainly because we were so terrible last year that it's hard to see how we couldn't be better.

 

[Frank]

I've tried to look at predicting freshman performance off of recruiting ratings and you are basically right. Roughly speaking, players ranked 1-25 are generally better than 25-50. From 50 ~ 150, the average production does go down but the variance is very large so the difference between say 100 and 90 is not really meaningful.

A retrospective analysis of recruiting rankings vs. college playing time (or going pro) would be really interesting. Would love to see the accuracy (or lack thereof) as you slide down the rankings ladder.

 

[Frank]

This is kind of similar to MLB prospects. Everyone gets caught up on the top 100 prospect rankings when really every prospect from 60-150 is basically the same caliber of prospect and there is fairly arbitrary separation.

Hence why the # of stars is probably a more worthwhile measure with which to gripe, even if that also has it's flaws. I'm sure 4-stars are better, on average, than 3-stars. Same with 5-stars vs. 4-stars. Less sure that the #72 recruit (4-star) is better, on average, than the #87 recruit (also 4-star).

 

[Emerson Bigguns]

I hate being the pessimist but in fairness, Domask shot 35%, right in line with his career average. Mayyyybe what you would call a "good" shooter but just barely, if so. And Harmon shot 34%, just above his career average of 33%, and shot a frigid 27% in conference play. Perhaps he's better off the catch, but I don't think there's any evidence there to support us being "infinitely better" (per original poster). I'm optimistic more will go in this year (from 3) but that's mainly because we were so terrible last year that it's hard to see how we couldn't be better.

Harmon quietly shot 39.7% on catch-and-shoot jumpers last season at Utah Valley.

Domask was much more efficient shooting off the catch (37.3%) than off the bounce (24.1%).


https://247sports.com/longformartic...-ohio-state-chris-holtmann-213305267/#2202498

 

[dbeverly26]

Harmon quietly shot 39.7% on catch-and-shoot jumpers last season at Utah Valley.

Domask was much more efficient shooting off the catch (37.3%) than off the bounce (24.1%).


https://247sports.com/longformartic...-ohio-state-chris-holtmann-213305267/#2202498

Yeah, I think we had a few guys struggle to adjust to taking on larger roles last year (Hawkins, Mayer, and to some extent, Shannon) who I'm hoping will be more used to that this time around. And for the new guys coming in, Harmon and Domask will be taking on a signifcantly smaller scoring role than they had last year so I'm hopeful they'll flourish.

I'm also hoping that better chemistry, execution, and understanding of roles will be a thing that helps us. You're always just guessing about that stuff until you see live game action, but I can't see how it could be worse than last year. If it is, I'm going to break at least three televisions watching these guys.