What will be funny though is when we add another quality player to the roster and #9thman was all a waste of time
Narrator: “it was a waste of time anyhow”
Illinois Hoops Recruiting Thread
What will be funny though is when we add another quality player to the roster and #9thman was all a waste of time
Narrator: “it was a waste of time anyhow”
You need a less annoying hobby
Apologies, it wasn't necessarily directed at you, specifically, rather the idea passed around the just because freshmen are ranked outside of the top 100.....it doesn't mean anything. You are correct, it would be more than out of the ordinary for a kid outside of the top 100 to be a Maxpreps AA.....or an AA as ranked by any service.
All of these discussions are 100000% born out of the biography and made for TV movie that Keaton will make millions on getting produced.
He's going to be the comp for every kid that walks through our door that isn't in the top 100. Infinitely more times than not, the scouts, coaches and services get things right.
Except its not a "would be" hypothetical. He actually made the top 15 for max preps but is outside the topp 100 for rankings. This has nothing to do with Wagler. Its an outlier and it's certainly reasonable to wonder why and who is "right".
I promise I would've made the exact comment if Keaton Wagler never happened lol.
It's just a very rare, notable attribute.
How much should it impact Zens' college projection? Should he have been ranked higher? Is he good enough to be the #9thMan?
TBD for the folks here to debate.
My only root question was HOW the two scoutings could be on such opposite ends. (considering every other player was a 5 star)
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Again, here were the teams:
2026:
1st team:
— Quentin Coleman
— Colben Landrew
— Miles Sadler
— Jordan Smith Jr (player of the year)
— Tyran Stokes
2nd team:
— Abdou Toure
— Cam Williams
— Brandon McCoy
— Caleb Holt
— Jason Crowe Jr
3rd team:
— Luke Ertal
— Cayden Daughtery
— Christian Collins
— Caleb Gaskins
— Zavier Zens
2025:
1st team:
— Nate Ament
— Brayden Burries
— Cam Boozer (player of the year)
— Darryn Peterson
— Koa Peat
2nd team:
— AJ Dybantsa
— Malachi Moreno
— Braylon Mullins
— Caleb Wilson
— Tounde Yessoufou
3rd team:
— Mikel Brown Jr
— Kingston Flemings
— Nik Khamenia
— Jordan Smith Jr
— Tyran Stokes
Here's the listed description/stats for QC:
"6-3 | Senior | Guard | Illinois
Averaged 23.1 points, 6.1 rebounds, 3.9 assists and 2.7 steals per contest to lead the Panthers to the No. 4 spot in the final MaxPreps Top 25. Coleman scorched the nets for a career-high 50 points in a lopsided state title game victory."
Zens:
"6-7 | Senior | Wing | Uncommitted
MaxPreps Wisconsin Player of the Year averaged 23.4 points, 5.4 rebounds and 4.4 assists per contest to power the Vikings (30-0) to their third straight state championship."
Putting Cox in the same realm as Vaaks is absurdly undermining to how important Vaaks is for our team next year.
Cox will be the floor general guard with the second unit, provide good defense. Think Malachi Smith at UConn. Those guys (very likely) aren't starters sans injury.
The point is that USC's 9th man is one of Cox OR three top 25 recruits. That's significantly more DEPTH than what Illinois got.
A guy like Morillo would be the 10th man on their team, but is the 8th here.
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USC's 9th man could also be one of the mid major xfers. This acting like you know exactly how their season is going to play out is quite rich, considering our recent go-round with Keaton Wagler (261st ranked recruit) and Mihailo Petrovic (Euro league MVP candidate).
I hate to be so harsh on this subject, but the distrust you all have for this staff to put together a quality roster on the heels of a F4 appearance where we had a 3 star recruit get picked in the top 10 in the draft really grinds my gears.
The point wasn't that USC's 9th man is one of Cox OR three top 25 recruits. It was outright stated with absolute certainty that Cox was their 9th man. To question or push back on that is not controversial by any means.
Could one of the top 25 kids be 9th man for USC? Absolutely. It is absolutely possible one of them plays about 5 minutes per game in 20-25 appearances and scores like 1.5 ppg (which is what a typical 9th man does).
USC's 9th man built the iron Man suit in a cave with a box of scraps
If I'm in the category of people grinding your gears (I know I did the other day, though today seems less contentious), I think you might be reading too much into what I'm saying.
Brad (and staff), has done a phenomenal job of getting surplus value above our freshman/portal ratings. But I think until we win a natty and/or are a 1-seed with some regularity, I will wonder what could be if we were getting surplus value on top of even higher-rated freshmen/transfers. It very well could be that NIL $ is the constraint though, so I don't hold that against Brad.
Hopefully this is the year that puts all that to rest.
I don't feel that being positive but bringing some perspective along with that positivity equates to "tearing down the team (I) root for."Figured wrong, I guess?
Vaaks is certainly our primary ball handler, Rice & Cox will likely share that role for USC.
I don't know how you came up with these completely arbitrary percentages, but Cox is certainly not 9th in their pecking order (which was the whole point) unless they plan to roll out a post player at point guard.
I can walk that back but he's very very good, as is Cox... that's the point I was making (but your semantic nitpick stands)
Dunno why it is the mission of the message board to tear down the team they root for and hoot and howl over the rest of the league... USC with the best roster in the B1G made me chuckle for sure.
There’s been a pretty extreme devils advocate movement with this whole 9th man thing that’s rather undeniable.
We’ve had a group who’s had to make sure everyone knows Michigan and Duke and Florida (and now USC) are positioned better than Illinois going into the season.
It’s just going to be the next checkmark in the very long list of things that this message board has been wrong about (Ben Humrichous, RayJ Dennis, etcetera).
If Jalen Cox is playing behind both the Ratliff twins then ironically, that means USC’s guard depth has fallen off a cliff.
Theres a long list of ways that the pessimists, the optimists, and the coaches have been wrong.
It's not an exact science. Ergo, debates.
Sure, but generally speaking this message board collectively freaks out about a lot of things that end up being nothingburgers.
This is one of those things. We can revisit in 10-11 months and see if I’m right but the track record is on my side.
The so called 9th man in actuality will be the new 6th man and the 8th man will become the 9th man