Illini Basketball 2025-2026
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pruman91
- interviewing new NL's daily....I really really am
I do not believe there is any chance with the roster we have (accounting for injuries), with a head coach who has gotten to the second weekend only once in his career (no shade but it's a fact), that we will make the second weekend. Maybe what I see when we start playing real opponents will change my mind, but that is where I think we stand today.
I believe that would be called a ceiling. On the flip side, the floor with this roster and Underwood as the coach is making the tournament. Unless we get more bad injury news I don't see how we miss it.
So because he’s gotten to the E8 once, round of 32 is the ceiling?
Your logic: the ceiling of a coach is limited to a peg or two below their previous best finish. Could you explain how you arrived at this?
I’d have to agree that I think you’re struggling with what ceiling actually means.
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No, my logic is that because Underwood isn't routinely reaching the second weekend, he doesn't strike me as a coach that overperforms his roster, and in my opinion his teams often underperform their rosters in March, and I'm pretty sure the stats back that up.
Please inform me what a ceiling is, because while y'all might disagree with where I'm placing the ceiling, I don't see you actually saying what you think a ceiling is, but if I'm just supposed to play coy and post memes instead of have an actual discussion, I could resign myself to that.
A “ceiling” within this context (projected finish of the men’s bball team) would mean something like:
“the most optimistic, highest possible value or outcome within a range of possibilities”
With you giving a ceiling of 2nd round and a floor of making the tournament, your median is 50. You think our coach and roster is the 50th best? All of the statistical models have our roster as top 15 (without Ty) and Brad is also most certainly a top 15 coach.
Your outlook for this season is more than 3x worse than what the most respected resources are projecting, so it’s odd that you’d be surprised people think it’s a bit silly. It’s equivalent to if you’d said Giannis Antetokoumpo’s ceiling this year is to average 9 ppg.
Would love to see your list of top 50 roster/coaches (since we are not in it)
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Why is my median 50? By my math, there are 38 spots in March Madness the Illini could acquire (37 at-large plus Big Ten autobid). The best team to miss the second weekend would hypothetically be 17th if everything played out exactly. Adding those together and dividing by two, the average would be 27.5. This is all predicated on tournament performance being directly related to team quality, which it isn't, but this effectively aligns with what I'm saying- I expect the Illini to behave like the 28th best team in the country when it comes to the tournament, which means I expect them to make the tournament and miss the second weekend.
Great timing with a few priority recruits on campus...
Tomi is jarringly tall. Not a CHawk "6'10"
The bigger problem I have is that your floor and ceiling are such a narrow band of possibilities, it's clear you either don't understand what a floor and ceiling mean, or haven't followed sports long enough to understand that the range of possible outcomes is never this limited.
Like, at this point I think it should be a pretty uncontroversial opinion that our ceiling is winning a natty and our floor is missing the tournament entirely. Are either of these outcomes likely? No! The likely outcomes are somewhere in between the floor and ceiling. But they are outcomes that are conceivable. We don't know enough about this team to rule them out entirely. To say that making the 2nd weekend is outside the realm of possible results for this team is absurd.
That's why they're my projected floor and ceiling for this team specifically, not the Illini forever.
Underwood is Mr. Consistent, he does not miss the tournament. If we suffer major injuries or our players' visas get cancelled or something else off-court happens, sure, we could miss it, but to me floor/ceiling are meant to be based in reality and not meant to account for those outliers that have nothing to do with the on-court performance. If the tournament is being held, and the roster is the roster and the staff are the staff, they will not miss the tournament, so that's the floor.
The ceiling for this team, again, in my opinion, is Round of 32. If you believe the ceiling is winning it all, that's great, I wish I could believe that too, but based on what I am seeing I see that as an impossibility this year. I see making the Final Four as equally impossible. I go down the line and Round of 32 appears to be the ceiling.
For reference, going into last year I believed the ceiling was Sweet 16 and floor was make the tournament (the floor with Underwood at this point is always make the tournament TBH). We ended up missing the ceiling.
My point is this, saying the floor is missing the tournament and the ceiling is the natty is an extremely unproductive conversation. There's simply no point because you've basically encompassed the infinite, there's no discussion to be had.
Timing wise-- Feels like Brad got Mr. Gies to throw a few Larry-bucks in the NIL jar.
Joel Goodson
- how was I to know, she was with the Russians too?
So you expect them to make the tournament and possibly win 1 game. This general expectation does not = ceiling. There's no ceiling or floor here at all, unless we're saying the floor is to lose in the 1st round and the ceiling is the win in the 1st round, in which case I cannot take a range of outcomes with only 2 data points seriously either in terms of trying to determine the true 'ceiling' of this team.
Sweet 16 minimum this year. Any less is a failure
Bit of a different discussion, but I completely agree. I am high on this team, even without Ty.
Too much returning production IMO not to set that as your baseline goal. Seems like a great chance to get 23+ season wins, secure a top 3 seed and make our way back to the 2nd weekend.
Keep all the B1G champion/B1G tourney for Purdue. I really don't care about that. Do it in March
Just because it's a narrow range doesn't make it any less valid. The competitive aspect of sport analysis is to see who can narrow their range the most while maintaining accuracy. Last year I said there were three possible outcomes and the Illini hit the middle one. This year I am saying there are two. I wish I could project a higher ceiling because I'd love for them to succeed, but I just don't see it at this time.
I'd love to be proven wrong, but if I expected to be proven wrong, their ceiling would be higher.
That's not the infinite. I think our floor is higher than a sub-.500 season for one, and I think our ceiling is lower than an undefeated season. And if someone thinks our ceiling is, say Final Four I'd buy that.
But essentially you are saying if absolutely everything goes right, the best case scenario is we have the same result as last season. And if everything goes absolutely wrong, the worst case scenario is we win one fewer game than if everything goes absolutely right. You can't actually believe that, can you?
We should all certainly hit both of those season outcomes (Illini 1rd, Illini 2rd) soon as they’re available for +17000 or whatever they’ll be on sportsbook and bet our houses on it in this case
When he hit me with the “competitive sports analysis” I was
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