Illini Basketball 2026-2027

[the juiceman cometh]

Not to keep this going, but the 9th man stuff is, ti me, just peak message board silliness for two reasons. First, we're just coming off a Final Four run, and we did not really use a 9th man. Do we think that hurt us? In what way? Do we think that playing Petro more in the regular season leads us to more win? To beating UConn in the FF?

Second, do we really think any team plans ahead for who it's 9th man is going to be and we dropped the ball? 9th is so far down the rotation I have a hard time beliving coaches are out here recruiting guys specifically for the 9th man role. So why are we so worried none of these players can fill those minutes? We don't even know what we have yet. The staff assembled a ton of freshman talent, how can we be so sure none of them can handle 10 mpg or so? 2 of the last 4 champions have had a freshmen as their 9th men, and one of those, Florida's, was a 3 star prospect rated (by 247) lower than Zens, Williams, and Brown and given the same rating as Landon Davis.

 

[wc_illini]

Not to keep this going, but the 9th man stuff is, ti me, just peak message board silliness for two reasons. First, we're just coming off a Final Four run, and we did not really use a 9th man. Do we think that hurt us? In what way? Do we think that playing Petro more in the regular season leads us to more win? To beating UConn in the FF?

Second, do we really think any team plans ahead for who it's 9th man is going to be and we dropped the ball? 9th is so far down the rotation I have a hard time beliving coaches are out here recruiting guys specifically for the 9th man role. So why are we so worried none of these players can fill those minutes? We don't even know what we have yet. The staff assembled a ton of freshman talent, how can we be so sure none of them can handle 10 mpg or so? 2 of the last 4 champions have had a freshmen as their 9th men, and one of those, Florida's, was a 3 star prospect rated (by 247) lower than Zens, Williams, and Brown and given the same rating as Landon Davis.

Except I don't think any of the bolded things were said in this thread.

This started on Monday with promising reports about Williams, which got some people excited about hockey lines (which I agree is a stretch, but I took those comments as light hearted). Others just think the possible depth is good, even if just to keep the regulars fresh for the NCAAT without sacrificing some games. Then some people seemed to say that giving more than a few minutes to your 9th+ men is a bad idea or at least rare among top teams, so I showed that the last five champions all did just that.

 

[Emerson Bigguns]

It would be interesting to see whether these teams were so good because they played 9+ guys or if they played 9+ guys because they were so good. In other words, were they playing with such large leads throughout the year that they could afford to give the end of their bench more minutes?

Looking at Michigan from last year, in games decided by 10 or fewer points, their 9th+ man averaged just 7.6 minutes. So, in competitive contests they tightened their rotation significantly.

This is the real question. Good teams play in more blowouts, which creates more “garbage minutes” for guys on the bench. Additionally, analyzing per game averages is problematic, because the average is not affected by games guys never got into. If you add up per game averages it always adds up to more than 100.
If you simply look at MPG, you’d think Jakstys averaged 5 minutes a game last year. We know he didn’t. He only played in 9 of the 37, 48 minutes total.
To get the answer at the crux of this debate, you have to look at the percentage of minutes a guy got in games, while they were still in doubt. Rotations tighten up during tournament time, because there are fewer blowouts. You need your best guys out there for as long as they can handle.
If our starters do what we expect them to do, the bench will get minutes. They just won’t be high leverage minutes.

 

[wc_illini]

This is the real question. Good teams play in more blowouts, which creates more “garbage minutes” for guys on the bench. Additionally, analyzing per game averages is problematic, because the average is not affected by games guys never got into. If you add up per game averages it always adds up to more than 100.
If you simply look at MPG, you’d think Jakstys averaged 5 minutes a game last year. We know he didn’t. He only played in 9 of the 37, 48 minutes total.
To get the answer at the crux of this debate, you have to look at the percentage of minutes a guy got in games, while they were still in doubt. Rotations tighten up during tournament time, because there are fewer blowouts. You need your best guys out there for as long as they can handle.
If our starters do what we expect them to do, the bench will get minutes. They just won’t be high leverage minutes.

I accounted for games with zero minutes by dividing total season minutes by team games. For Michigan, I also looked at just games decided by 10pts or less, and they still got 9.8mpg from their "9th" man after accounting for lots of missed games (147 minutes in 9 games played plus 6 missed games). When I get time, I might do that for one of the other recent champs.

We all agree that rotations tighten up for the tournament. The question was whether depth in the regular season (not just garbage time) helps a team in the NCAAT.

 

[21ChampaignSt]

I accounted for games with zero minutes by dividing total season minutes by team games. For Michigan, I also looked at just games decided by 10pts or less, and they still got 9.8mpg from their "9th" man after accounting for lots of missed games (147 minutes in 9 games played plus 6 missed games). When I get time, I might do that for one of the other recent champs.

We all agree that rotations tighten up for the tournament. The question was whether depth in the regular season (not just garbage time) helps a team in the NCAAT.

Just to be clear, I calculated it a little differently.

I looked at the box score of each game decided by 10 points or less and then averaged all the minutes coming from the 9th man for that game. Which, to be fair, the 7.6 minutes they got from their 9th man in close games was still more than what we got from ours.

But my take away is when it mattered, Michigan shortened their rotation. They relied on depth less. This was most apparent in the tournament where their 9th player off the bench averaged 1.33 minutes per game yet they still won the natty with relative ease. So, I'm not sure I can buy that depth played a sizeable role in Michigan winning a championship.

That's not to disqualify your other examples.