The question for me is that when we hit the seemingly annual injury/illness stretch, will Brad not move guys deeper down the bench up, basically playing only 6-6.5 guys.
Illini Basketball 2026-2027
Those guys are definitely capable of making those shots but a lot of those aren't exactly easy conversions outside of two of the Boswell misses(wide open layup and putback). A lot of those Stojakovic attempts and the Mirk one are not easy conversions though.
Yes, its definitely a different game if some of those looks fall but I also think Illinois was genuinely the more talented team(Ball and Demary were both hurt) and should have been able to win that game without needing those conversions.
The difference in that game was that every time UConn needed a bucket to stop the comeback of change the momentum they were able to dial up a play that got them an open look. While Illinois and to rely on hero ball and tough shot making. Wagler probably shoots a lot better in that game if he's getting some of the same looks that Mullins or Ball were getting.
The other thing about “adjustments” is that actually it’s not always the right choice…
In fact, when you’re better than your opponent, which Brad has gotten this program to the point where we’re usually better than our opponent, moving away from your identity or plan because it doesn’t “work” right away, can be a terrible choice the coach makes out of panic.
It’s college basketball, so I’m of the opinion there’s dozens upon dozens of chess moves throughout the course of the game many fans just can’t see. BUT, for all the losses we’ve had where Illini nation bemoans no adjustments, I’m curious how many more have been won by rightfully staying course.
If Wagler got the clean looks Mullins was getting?
Wagler 7-16 44%
Mullins 5-14 35%
Shooting was horrendous for both teams in that game:
Illinois 34%
UConn 35%
They got a few more threes to go and in typical Illinois fashion we only turned them over 4x, tough game where Illinois played well but just had a ton of easy shots bounce out while Ball was knocking them in off the shot clock lol.
I'm seeing some notion that UConn somehow had a better offense last year? Wasn't even close:
2025-26 Season ORtg KP Rank:
Illinois 2
(insert an ocean of teams here)
UConn 29
Wagler 7-16 44%
Mullins 5-14 35%
Shooting was horrendous for both teams in that game:
Illinois 34%
UConn 35%
They got a few more threes to go and in typical Illinois fashion we only turned them over 4x, tough game where Illinois played well but just had a ton of easy shots bounce out while Ball was knocking them in off the shot clock lol.
I'm seeing some notion that UConn somehow had a better offense last year? Wasn't even close:
2025-26 Season ORtg KP Rank:
Illinois 2
(insert an ocean of teams here)
UConn 29
Illini in Italy
- Illini HQ, Florida Panhandle
Just further indictment of your defense.
Wisconsin twice. MSU. UCLA. Michigan (holy). UConn twice.
I love last year’s team. But our defense was fringe top 30. And it showed against elite opponents. There’s a reason our best wins were when our offense was on another level. Dre vs. TTU. Keaton vs. Purdue.
Houston being the one exception. Need more games like Houston where we shut down teams.
Let the 9th man discussion re-open!
OrangeBlue98
Iowa is not in a great spot right now (LvilleILL1)
- Des Moines, IA
To say nothing about how UConn had a bunch of “slop” go in that game. Mullins banked at least one three from straight on in that game. They also had several highly contested shots at the end of the shot clock rattle in.
That was a game where a lot went right for them and very little went right for us, and we still had a pretty good chance to pull that game out.
A game in which your opponent shot 35% and barely cracked 70 points is an indictment of your defense?
Sheesh, man. UCLA was tough, but Wisconsin, MSU we were missing player(s)... and UConn and Michigan were F4 teams, no?
Defense was top 20 on all 3 of the main analytics sites - KenPom, Torvik, EvanMiya
We gave up a lot of points last year. Several 90-bombs. We rounded into form in the NCAAs but let’s not ignore the business end of the conference stretch. Injuries being an excuse for poor defense means we need greater depth.
Our defense was around #40 on Torvik against Quad 1A teams. That has to improve if we want to be the best.
Injuries are never an excuse, but rather a reason. Reasons are objective, factual explanations (such as players missing entire games). An excuse is an explanation used to avoid blame, dodge responsibility or justify a failure in which I've done none of those things here.
Gave up 90 several times? That happened in exactly 4 games with 3 of them being overtime games and the 4th was vs Alabama (one of the best offenses in the country).
You said the defense was fringe top 30. It wasn't and you were wrong.
Its fairly typical defenses perform worse against good teams, no? If our defense was 17th on Torvik, that's right where I'd expect us to be against Q1A teams (what was the exact rank? you say 'around' 40).
Everyone agrees we want the defense to be better, but acting like the unit was a screen door on a submarine isn't really an accurate take.
The overall point, the defense needs to improve from top 20 to top 15, agree. 100%
But part of the reason we rounded into form late was health. Last year, in that Wisconsin game we were down Boswell and Stojakovic, you’re not gonna have the depth to overcome that, especially defensively.
No Boswell against fears of all people was brutal.
And the UConn defense the second game seemed… fine? First game seemed okay too. Tennessee defense seemed good. At Nebraska was good defense. Think we had a few more good ones than given credit for.
Our "exact" rank was 40 if you take out teams who played less than four Q1A opponents.
Torvik adjusts for opponent strength, plus that was our ranking. 39 teams had better defense against Q1A teams.
You could increase the minimum Q1A game threshold (removing Gonzaga, St Marys, etc, so not just teams that obviously don't belong) and see us ranked closer to #30, but we still allowed 3.1pts/100 more (after adjusting for opponent offense) against top teams than our season avg. UConn allowed 2.9pts/100 LESS (adjusted) against top teams. Michigan allowed 3.4 less. Duke and AZ allowed about the same. Those were all top 6 defenses against Q1A. Houston dropped to 13, which isn't surprising since their pressure could become a weakness against a team who could exploit it.
Thanks for clarifying on Q1A defensive rank. I get that "in order to be #1 we should strive to improve" but that's sort of a no-brainer. I just didn't think the defense qualified as being poor last year, which was what I thought I was responding to.
Good stuff.
30-ish against top opponents seems about right.
I’d be curious how much weight was carried in the Wisconsin / Big10 games? Not that it matters, the games happened, but it seems ucla, wisky 2x, Nebraska, Michigan and at Purdue probably were cluster that really whacked us.
Whereas I imagine we probably performed better than 30 in the non con games? UConn 2x, Tech, Bama, Houston, Tennessee. Bama sucked, but my gut tells me the rest of those games seemed better than 30
The significance is that our overall net efficiency was 4.1pts/100 behind #1 on Torvik using season averages. But against Q1A, it was 10.8, and the difference was almost entirely on the defensive end.
Maybe we can eek out some gains on offense, but I'm guessing there isn't a lot of room to improve there. And on defense, it isn't just that we need to be a few points better overall- we need to figure out why our approach performed a fair amount worse against top teams. I'll dig up what I found before the tournament, but I think this has been a trend for a few years
Cool, and I definitely look forward to that when you get around to it.
But my point was (again) that the defense wasn't poor overall. Someone said it was fringe top 30. I pushed back on that. I totally agree with you that if there's a genuine gap with how it performs versus middle-of-the-pack or worse teams and top tier opponents, that it warrants attention.
Okay, I was wrong on the fringe 30 comment. You’ve only brought it up in every single reply since. Trees. Forest.
@Purdue, @Nebraska and vs. Houston were our best wins last year.
But we were 0-3 against Final Four teams. We didn’t beat Wisconsin. We didn’t beat Michigan State. We didn’t beat UCLA.
Offense performing vs. top teams/defenses while feasting vs. others will inflate our efficiency. Simpson’s paradox.
From a look test, we were a clear cut below Duke/Michigan/Arizona.
So perhaps, I should have said being a top 2 offense / top 20 defense didn’t lend itself to being a true contender (I think the 0-3 suggests as much).
I therefore hope for some significant improvement defensively given the diminishing returns of an already #1/2 offense.
But I suppose we should question how the offense performed vs. Michigan and UConn - the two Final Four team we played last season.
I thought we were questioning the defense? Now you're questioning the offense too? It was ranked 2nd nationally.
Is this a Final Four team or a Crown Invitational team we're discussing here?
The thing we all seem to agree on is we can improve the defense from top 15-20 range up into the 10-15 range. That's not really moving mountains, but a small push. Hopefully we see that come to fruition this year.
assuming those 3 teams were the only true contenders last year?
ptgrd23
- orange county CA
Everybody agrees you need great defense to win National Championship.
Reasons to be optimistic
Year 2 Cam Crocker
Year 2 Andrej
Year 2 Big Z - how to use him
New athletic freshman Lincoln 6'4" and Quentin 6'4"
Big strong 21 year old PG Vaks 6'7" 215
Positional size
Mirk 6'9"
Tomi 7'1"
Andrej 6'7"
Stefan 6'7"
Quentin 6'4"
Big Z 7'3"
Lucas 6'7"
Jake 6'6"
Lincoln 6'4"
Good luck playing against us with 6'1 guards
Reasons to be optimistic
Year 2 Cam Crocker
Year 2 Andrej
Year 2 Big Z - how to use him
New athletic freshman Lincoln 6'4" and Quentin 6'4"
Big strong 21 year old PG Vaks 6'7" 215
Positional size
Mirk 6'9"
Tomi 7'1"
Andrej 6'7"
Stefan 6'7"
Quentin 6'4"
Big Z 7'3"
Lucas 6'7"
Jake 6'6"
Lincoln 6'4"
Good luck playing against us with 6'1 guards
If I have any worries about this season (besides injury), it's that we follow a similar path as Purdue last year. We had a similar resume to them in terms of W/L - They had some good wins in Alabama, TTU, and Michigan in the B1G Tourney, but also lost to a lot of the "top tier" teams they played (us, Arizona, Iowa State, Michigan in the regular season, MSU, UCLA, Wisconsin, and even Indiana).
They had a great season by all merits, but are almost thought of as a disappointment when they were the consensus #1 pre-season. They relied heavily on returning their core, surrounded by a few additive pieces, to take one final step to get over the hump and win a championship.
I think the difference for us this year is I believe our team is capable of achieving more defensively than Purdue was able to last year, and I think our guys (Dre, Tomi, Z, Mirk, etc.) have more capability to improve YOY. Purdue's guys were simply maxed out and there were holes where they could be beaten. I think we have the size and athleticism to run a 2025-2026 Michiganesque defense in final form, but the key is getting it to final form.
lstewart53x3
- Scottsdale, Arizona
What I’m curious about is why you’re acting disappointed in last year’s season?
To refresh your memory, here’s a few things that happened last year outside of the Michigan, UConn, and Wisconsin losses:
(Using Torvik end of season data for rankings)
— We beat fully healthy #16 Texas Tech
— We beat #12 Tennessee
— We beat #24 Ohio St on the road
— We beat Missouri by 43
— We beat #23 Iowa twice (once to make the F4!)
— We beat #8 Purdue in Mackey with a legendary performance by Keaton
— We comfortably beat #5 Houston in Houston to make the E8
— We made the F4! First time in 20 years
— We finished ranked #6 in Torvik
— We had our boy Keaton become an All-American and get drafted in the top 5!
Was it perfect? No. Could our defense have been better? Sure.
But why are we talking about one of the best seasons in Illinois basketball history as if it was anything other than a resounding success?
To be fair, I didn’t necessarily read it like that. I got the impression this is all under the context of trying to take that final step and winning the title.
Personally, I’d quibble and argue we were contenders last year. I think we were better than UConn, and with Yaxel hobbled, I really believe that game would have been epic.
I do wish we could turn the page a tad tho and just focus on what @NarrowJ pointed out - how do we get to 10-15 range defensively.