I'm guessing KSU would only make a move if their preferred candidate(s) agrees to become their next coach. Not sure how all that works behind the scenes when you've still got a coach in place.
Coaching Carousel (Basketball)
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Illini in Italy
- Illini HQ, Florida Panhandle
#1 name on my assistant coach wishlist if BU stays
You're surely referring to someone else with that statement. I only clarified the term, didn't discredit anyone.
C’mon, you can say that about most coaches. Does UConn win two national championships without Clingan? Heck, they might not even beat Illini last year without him.
I’m on the fence about BU. Hopefully he makes the staff moves needed and gets things back on track. But the argument that if you took away his best players his record would be bad or mediocre is just silly.
As would most unemployed assistants, right?
(I feel like I remember that he is unemployed, though I may be wrong!)
Battle89
- Cary-Grove, the better Trojan team
UNC 2005 now and always
Big Jack
- Decatur
Tim Anderson stepped aside on September 20. That left us very late to the assistant replacement game, especially when we kept his salary on the books. I don't think Hamer was ever anything other than a fill-in that will be demoted or fired at the end of the season. I'd like to think Tyler's role will change as well, but Illinois offense has not been all that bad during his tenure. He got us to the Elite 8 last year and our Kenpom rating is pretty good this year. We can and should do better next year, but Tyler has not been all that bad.
ILFaninFL
- Nature Coast in Florida
Can he start today?
Well if somehow there was a change and Brad does go sign me up for Wade.
Illini2010-11
- Sugar Grove
Hard to make that argument when this is his second season as an assistant coach and is in control of the defense. If Hamer was a fill in, as you suggest (or hope), Brad would have replaced him last summer.
Was he in control of the defense for the Elite 8 team? I thought not, but confess Google has not been my friend in finding an answer to this one.
Yep.
I missed where you said you included years where we missed the tournament. I’d push back on the use of median, just because those years where you miss the tournament feel so much worse and a Big Ten team isn’t getting in at less than an 12 seed very often.
I think we all want to see another run like 84-89 or 00-06. I think Brad is capable of building that kind of program, but I’m also acknowledge you have coaches like Tom Crean who get Indiana to the one seed line and can’t sustain that level of success.
If you look at Kenpom (2002-2025) the median is 32.5 and the average is 39.8. Those 2 bad seasons currently stand at 35 and 25.
The last 5 years doesn’t appear to be too far off KU and they’ve got a title in that time frame.
Good timing on Davis's part.
I agree it's hard to find an adequate replacement. Surely you could have found somebody other than just promoting Kwa. Yaklich was available and still is. Hamer was promoted before last season, so certainly we could have found someone this past offseason to replace him.
I'm not sure what was done that allowed an AC to step away and keep $600k, but not replacing him with another real D1 AC is basically saying you didn't need him. Also, he was a recruiter and trainer more than a strategist. So you have two second year ACs who have no prior experience in running an offense or defense, attempting to run offense and defense for what was supposed to be a top-10 final four team. That's bad staff construction. Yes, they did it last year with a veteran-laden team and TJ/Domask.
I have no problem with Tyler on staff, just not in his current role if we want to be a top 10 team nationally. Our aim should be much higher. The defense is the real issue right now anyways. I expect Brad to solve that problem this offseason. If he doesn't, we will be having this same conversation next year. I hope not, because it's getting pretty tiresome.
I do think Weber just kind of comes across as a dork and has a weird voice which probably doesn't help recruiting.
Dude could coach and I think there's a legitimate argument that Weber got more out of that 04-05 team than Self would have(though Self would have also had Charlie Villenueva so I think he wins the title).
Weber turned SIU around fairly quickly and they had some very good teams while he also developed Painter as a coach. Weber only won under 20 games twice at Illinois and one of those years he nearly pulled off a miraculous big 10 tourney run. Then he had a pretty good run at K-State.
I wonder if Weber would be remembered a bit differently if they didn't run into Brandon Roy the year after and they had another tourney run.
Big Jack
- Decatur
No Hammer was our defensive x/o guy the previous season hence the reason Chester left at the end of last season. It was never a fill in position. We can only hope he is dismissed at the end wot this season. I sincerely hope Brad finds Tyler a job elsewhere, he needs to earn his stripes somewhere.
Bruce was a good X & O's coach (much better than Brad) but he needed assistants who were recruiters. His recruiting classes in 2004, 2005 & 2006 were terrible. I always thought he should have offered the high school coach at Lawrence North a very high paying assistant's job in 2005 and brought in Greg Odom & Mike Conley, Jr. in 2006. Instead Ohio State somehow got them. Indiana was in the toilet then so we could have stole two Indianapolis high school superstars in 2006.
I think it's more how the season occured. They fell apart as the season went on and limped into the tournament before being put out of their misery in a game that never felt winnable imo.
This years team has followed a similar trajectory of falling apart later in the year and will likely end up limping into the tournament unless they lose out and miss all together.
Exhibit A of putting too much emphasis on analytics.
There is an argument to be made that Kofi and Edey are too of best bigs in the Big10 over the last 25 years.
It's not Kofi's fault that Edey also existed in this timeframe. It is Kofi's fault for leaving early when he could have played 2 more years of college basketball. I'm not saying Kofi would have stayed at Illinois but he would have put up some absurd stats if he stayed another year or two.
There is a decent chance that Kofi sets the program scoring record if he stays one more year and would have set an unbreakable record if he used his COVID year here. Same thing with the rebounding record.
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