Illini Basketball 2026-2027
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It depends what his role is next year. If Morillo and Z surpass him on the depth chart, then it's possible he isn't thrilled with his minutes and intends to transfer.
Jake Davis led all of college basketball with a 146.6 offensive rating, which matched the highest individual offensive rating by any qualified player since 2014.
There's room for improvement. Maybe he will get the Senior bump
“Best team in the big ten” is subjective based on what you value.
Most talented roster: USC
Best Offense: Illinois
Best defense: Michigan
Best player: Michigan State (Fears)
I think you could go any direction.
To me LJ Cason is the biggest swing factor in this Big Ten season. Dusty said he will be back at some point. If he returns to being the same player in a 6th man role, I think Michigan supplants USC as the best roster. And paired with their defensive ability, that should make them #1 (in the conference).
USC’s rotation 9. Starters: Rice, Arenas, Lewis, Cofie, and Reibe. Bench: Cox, Collins (#8 freshman), Ratliff (#20 freshman), Ratliff (#31 freshman).
Michigan rotation 9. Starters: Cadeau, McKenney, McCoy, Estrella, Thiam. Bench: Cason, Cosby (#43 freshman), Castillo (#33 freshman), Reed.
Illinois is pretty clearly a step behind the two in terms of depth. We’ll rely on great injury luck, along with needing our newcomers to hit perfectly. Still, floor spacing and scheme will be good enough to generate good shots, and hopefully another efficient offense.
The 5th team after that should be UCLA.
Purdue has earned more credibility and benefit of the doubt than Nebraska.
I think Nebby has a season similar to two years ago (when they lost Mast for the season) - one All Big Ten player with no help around him. It’s a team that’ll be ranked preseason, based off of Cinderella discourse, but could’ve been in danger of missing the dance had it not expanded.
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This completely lines up with rankings and vegas agreeing that IL has the third best team in the B10, right?
I should Google this...
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lstewart53x3
- Scottsdale, Arizona
Torvik has USC at 31 in its projections. You could remove our 3 best players; Mirk, Andrej, and Vaaks, and Torvik would still project us as a better team:
The person you are responding to almost never has anything positive to say about Illinois and constantly posts positive things about Michigan, USC, UConn, basically any team other than Illinois (or whatever team Illinois is being compared to in any given post). Take a stroll through the post history.
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There's a pretty solid argument for Illinois if you value the best 5 guys (and probably best 7 guys). You mention USC having the best talent, but IMO Cofie, Riebe and the freshmen Ratcliff boys can't hold a candle to having Mirk + Senior Ivisics. I don't think you can find a frontcourt in the B1G that can, so I'm not sure how you're measuring talent.
Virtually every team trying to compete for a championship relies on great injury luck. I tried to find one team that has won a championship after a starter had a season-ending injury or missed a substantial part of the season because of injury, and I couldn't find one (although I stopped looking at 2013, so call it in modern times). Keeping your best players healthy is one of the key ingredients for winning a championship.
I feel like there has been enough evidence provided here that being able to go 9 deep is nice but non-essential; but if you need any more evidence, there is not a single modern college basketball team that has won a national championship by turning to your bench after a starter injury.
Call me a homer but I'll take our top 7 over any other top 7 in the B1G going into the season, and perhaps over any top 7 in the nation depending on how things come together this season.
lstewart53x3
- Scottsdale, Arizona
Yeah, I mean looking at Draft Kings player of the year betting odds, USC and Illinois both have 4 players on the list.
USC’s players are ranked:
45, 48, 80, 81
Illinois has 3 players ranked higher than USC’s best player:
4, 11, 35, 72
In no world is USC a more talented team. If Brad rolled out USC’s roster in 2026/2027, the fans on this board would want him fired.
select Renew Season Tickets on your home page, and that will take you to the link to request UC tickets.
Bro, I mean I don’t like getting my hopes up because I value keeping your head down to the grind and the motto of “jobs not finished until you’re at the podium,” but I fail to see us being “clearly a step behind” them. Especially USC.
Just go ask Rutgers how they enjoyed having two lottery pick freshman on the same team. Where did they end up? Freshman can be a huge wild card on whether or not they’ll deliver even if they work with the right coaching staff. There are very few programs in the country that can take multiple highly sought after Freshman on the same team and convert them into a cohesive team title contending team; and USC has not proven itself to be one of them. They have a talented roster on paper in comparison to other incoming freshman classes, but also because they don’t have the upperclassmen depth of other schools.
There’s a reason your title contending teams are predominantly mid to upperclassmen with experience and chemistry. Plus a coaching staff narrowing in on the right formula of play schemes.
This is a obviously a re-hash of the discussion a couple weeks ago, but Torvik ranks USC #6 in "Talent", while we're #9. They drop a ton in the actual prediction because of program history and other factors.
On his FAQ page, he says his talent rating "is based on composite recruiting ranks weighted for minutes played", but it isn't clear if that's just freshman, freshman & transfers, or all players, and if it's the latter it isn't clear how it's calculated for returning players.
lstewart53x3
- Scottsdale, Arizona
Yeah, I don’t really understand Torvik’s talent ranking. How is Cal ranked 86 in his projections but 7 on talent? 247 puts this year’s Cal transfer class at 60 and it’s recruiting class at 65. 51 and 85 last year. So I’m not sure how that adds up to the 7th most talented team in college basketball.
That said, Vegas’s player of the year odds have 3 Illinois players ahead of the top ranked USC player.
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Michigan guard LJ Cason plans to enter the NCAA transfer portal
Michigan guard LJ Cason plans to enter the NCAA transfer portal following Dusty May’s departure for the Dallas Mavericks, he told On3.
None of USC's freshman will be starting though. Illinois and Michigan are both projected to have more freshman in their starting 5 than USC.
(Prefix this by saying I do not think USC is better than us; on DraftKings player rankings Illinois has three players rated above USC's top player)
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Depth will be very important to us, and we should have plenty. Our freshman group is very strong. Some of them will click right out of the gate, some wll show big time potential, and some will probably be disappointing. We should know that from our recent past. But if we don't have serious injuries (a big if) our veteran nucleus is so strong and diverse, we should be in excellent shape for an elite season.
Illinois is deeper than Michigan.
We aren't as deep as USC or Michigan State.
We aren't as deep as USC or Michigan State.
Mirk's ability to finish around the basket with his Left hand was great last year. Really adds a layer of complexity to those trying to defend him.
He does need to improve his rim finishing percentages.
I agree it seemed like he missed so many, but 67.2% is actually pretty solid. Probably a bit of negativity bias or availability heuristic here.
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