We have a really good one and I love the way he handled the TJ Shannon situation. But, the University of Texas has Chris Del Conte who has done extremely well and they’ve won three consecutive Directors Cups for the best athletic program based on performances of the teams throughout the program. The coaches he’s hired since he was hired in 2017 have won 15 NCAA championships.
Illini Basketball 2026-2027
Here's Vaaks' eval tape before coming to Providence
via Arman.
via Arman.
Vaaks' 8.4 three point attempts per game was 5th amongst all Power Conference players.
OrangeBlue98
Iowa is not in a great spot right now (LvilleILL1)
- Des Moines, IA
Not really disagreeing with you, but 1) Texas has significantly more resources and 2) has Texas been any better relative to history and expectations in football and men’s basketball?
Ty Rodgers 247 59 rsci 57
Lucas Morillo 247 47 rsci 47
Ty didn't put up numbers, but he played rotation minutes. Other top 50ish recruits the last 25 years played a similar or greater role as freshmen..
Kofi Cockburn was 247 46 rsci 43; Deron Williams was rsci 48; Andre Curbelo was 247 47 rsci 45.
Others: Brandon Paul rsci 49; Kendrick Nunn 247 55 rsci 57; Leron Black 247 43 rsci 46; Brian Randle rsci 53
The 247 ranks are composite
Are there anymore games soon he's playing in?
But don’t you know we must always imagine the worst case scenario?
But, if it were me, there are much more entertaining things to discuss if we have to play devils advocate. What if Vaaks blows out his knee playing for the national team? What if Andrej quits basketball to become a male model? What if Brad takes an assistant job with Dusty in Dallas?
We are leaving a lot of meat on this bone.
The game where the recent highlights are from was a preparatory friendly for Estonia's World Cup qualifiers against Slovenia and the Czech Republic.
Slovenia: Friday (July 3), 11:00 AM Champaign time
Czech Republic: Monday (July 6), 9:00 AM Champaign time
I don't know if that's allowed here, but I can probably find a stream link if there is interest.
RabidDawgClassic
- Los Angeles, CA
Yes please!
Edit: younger me would have a hard time contemplating that older me would ever care about Estonian basketball.
There is no link. (from what I've checked)
Resources wise, absolutely, Texas does have big pocketed donors, but they also generate a lot of money. The credit of the appreciation and increase in revenue is due to Del Conte facilitating the move to the SEC
Their Big12 departure put them at a near 50 million deficit as they paid buy-out to their other SEC schooled except Oklahoma in revenues from the conference. They still won a couple of softball NCAA titles, volleyball, golf, and swimming, and diving. Add back-to-back WCBB final fours.
In Regards to recent history, in football, they were just on the outside of the CFP last year after two consecutive years of making it before it expanded. However, until then, you’d have to go back to 2007 when Texas was doing well at football, looking a lot like the Illinois basketball program from 2007 until Underwood took over. Texas basketball is kind of up and down. They won the Shaka Smart sweepstakes over Illinois and are on their third coach since him, so that should be telling how things are going. You could argue resources got them Sean Miller and they just made the S16 and will be F4 caliber next year.
The links open pretty much at game time usually in Euro games, I'll keep you posted.
Might be worth noting that in the game against Slovenia, Stefan Joksimovic (17 y/o) will most likely get game time for the opponents. Has been discussed as a very promising Euro-NCAA prospect for the 2027/28 season unless he breaks out this season.
Just think of what Josh would be able to accomplish with Texas size resources. Del Conte is a VG AD, but he has a much easier path for his sales pitch.
I will admit that's a pretty good record for Illini guys early production outside of Black and Randle. 5/8 or 62.5% if you're not counting Rodgers as super productive or 75% if you are.
However, it we take a bigger look at the entire classes it's pretty apparent that highly touted kids don't always make an impact, especially right away.
Just in the 2025 class from 247(which was really deep tbh), Isiah Harwell was 16, CJ Ingram was 19, and Jasper Johnson was 24. I'm going to stop there but if you look at the rankings going down to 47, you will see a ton of guys that did nothing as freshman. Some of which is opportunity based but a lot of guys simply aren't ready to contribute at the power conference level yet.
Harwell, Ingram?
So you're saying we should go ahead and just write off any decent contribution from Quentin Coleman too while we're at it?
Tunnel visioning worst case scenarios isn't really a great way to get a finger on the pulse of things.
No I'm not saying you should write anyone off.
And I really like both of Coleman and Morillo but it also shouldn't be a surprise if either one struggled to translate as freshman.
And if they did struggle as freshman that wouldn't necessarily mean they won't break out and be really good as sophomores.
Even, Will Riley who ended up being a 1st round draft pick didn't really come on and stary playing well until late in the season.
I'm just trying to say that it's not super fair to expect to have super high expectations for a guy like Morillo right off the bat. D1 is a huge jump for guys and it's a lot different when you're laying against a bunch of really good players that are 3,4, or even 5 years older.
His shooting mechanics were super inconsistent from game to game (he’s cleaned that up in the league).
I don’t think Coleman will have that problem.
I don’t think having him play 15-18 minutes as the 3rd guy off the bench is having “super high expectations” though, is it?
Would help fill the "vic" void after next season