stlrunner
jakeyjakey
- St Louis, MO
Can we do this without USC level depth? /s
Illini Basketball 2026-2027
Illinois had the 3rd best offense in the country last season against quad 1 opponents.
And finished the year with the 2nd best overall offense.
Don’t think there’s any “inflating” going on there.
…..
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The optimistic buzz about freshman Lincoln Williams has seemed to (somewhat) calm the #9thMan anxiety.Let the 9th man discussion re-open!
RabidDawgClassic
- Los Angeles, CA
Joel Goodson
- it's all ball bearings, nowadays
Never said I was disappointed.
Pointed out several losses to #1/2-seed type teams not counterbalanced by wins against this same strata. And building a bridge to how this season’s team hopefully does finish with a winning record against that caliber.
Y’all carry on.
P.S. Someone feel free to remind me the defense was Top 20 and not Top 30. And by someone, I mean a specific one.
"10 more names to watch...
- Amani Hansberry, Virginia Tech"
Haha I was clarifying for someone else who misunderstood my argument.
Didn’t mean to trigger you so hard!
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I like LD as a future 3 instead of 4.
He has nice size, a great shot, and a good feel for the game...
Add some strength and quickness/agility to him and he is a very intriguing 3 prospect imo.
We’ve missed 23 free throws between the ISU and Houston games in the S16.I dunno… I seem to remember being VERY uncomfortable down the stretch.
In the two games, we’ve shot 27-50 (57%).
Both games would be more comfortably won had we not missed so many foul shots.
Realistically, Toppin will be 1 if he's back healthy. He was 2nd team AA and B12 POY in 2025.
It's interesting to see which programs have moved to more of a stretch 4 vs a traditional 4.
Duke's situation at the 4 will be interesting - they go 3 deep, and the starting role will be a battle between a really young reclass pegged to be the first pick of the 2028 draft and another 5 star many are mocking lottery this year. Their third stringer is a 2025 four star who is a fully developed dude - Sebastian Wilkins.
How Scheyer is loading up with all this stud freshman talent is incredible. It seems every year there is a reflex to try and plug whatever the roster gap was the previous year, in spades. He had no PG in 2025 and now has 3 and he's recruiting Beckham Black. This is a pressure year for him - stacked and expensive roster, depth out the ears. Anything outside a loss to Florida will be another disappointment, after blowing massive leads two years in a row. I love seeing them lose.
They have a stacked schedule, so he'll know early what he has. @Florida, UConn, Illinois, Michigan St, Zags. Had Michigan on there too until venue issues cancelled it. UConn's is stacked as well: Duke, Illinois, Arizona, Virginia, Michigan, Kansas, Ohio St. They could effectively be playing 6 out of the top 7-8 teams in the country, only missing Florida.
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Is this when and where he gets married off to a very tall Croatian woman?
Wasn’t it all those 6’1” guards that burned us last year? And now we’re presumably slower. That’s the concern.
Those 6"1 guards are actually our biggest obstacle.
Thornton, Smith, Fears, Dent, Boyd, even someone like Jayden Reid.... caused us the most problems last year because we don't have ideal quickness to match up with them.
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This whole positional size thing is novel, but quickness/speed are a thing in basketball. Check out Nijel James at Marquette.
So, I tracked every game last season where we shot below 70% from the FT line.
There were 10 such games. Here are those opponents and where they ranked in FT percentage defense (which measures how well teams shoot free throws against you):
Jackson State l 305
Texas Tech l 49
Alabama l 35
Tennessee l 54
Nebraska l 202 (4th best FT defense percentage amongst Big Ten teams)
Washington l 171 (best FT defense percentage amongst Big Ten teams)
Wisconsin (twice) l 201 (3rd best FT defense percentage amongst Big Ten teams)
VCU l 78
Houston l 32
And 2024 ISU was 100th.
So, outside of a weird game against Jackson State, every team here is a good free throw shooting defense.
…..
Keep in mind that POWER CONFERENCE teams ranking highly in this statistic is especially significant, because they face better quality teams as opposed to mid majors. For example -- Houston was 32nd nationally, but 4th amongst power 5 teams.
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some pretty arcane (inane?) debates going on here. But it beats the heck out of debating whether the committee thinks our 3 point loss to Bowling Green is less bad than Minnesota's 4 point loss to Eastern Kentucky when trying to figure out which of us is going to get the last at large bid.
Best FT defense percentage???
Thats unlikely because our defensive personnel is worse than last year, and last year we were 20th.
If you weren’t elated with our defense last year, then you’re probably not going to be elated with it this year either.
IMO, any D rating below 100.0 is a take for this team.
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I say this with all due respect but I don't think there is anyway that Illinois approaches what Michigan did defensively last year(they had the number 1 defense by a good bit).
I do think that Z can be a fantastic rim protector but he doesn't have the insane size and length that Mara did. Hopefully, Tomi can also do a bit more defensively after another off-season with Fletch.
The part where Illinois falls far short is not having anyone that can compare to Yaxel or Morez. Michigan had two 6'9 guy that were extremely physical and capable of guarding 1-5 defensively. It's a fantastic luxury to have one guy capable of doing that at the college level while they had two and an incredible rim protector behind them.
I'm not sure if it's going to be a popular answer but, to me, it's get better athletes on the perimeter and rim protectors on the interior. We can't have only one true shot eraser on the roster(Z). Brad likes to play Euro ball, which creates more offense because the bigs thrive on the perimeter and are far more skilled, but it's not ideal on the other end of the floor. We don't need ultra quick guards if we had true paint presences. Michigan, last year, was effective defensively because of Morez and Mara. You could beat their guards off the bounce, but you have a problem when you get to the rim.
We look at that Final Four game and point out the issues with missing open looks, but a major problem was Taris Reed. He controlled the paint on both ends and was a real issue, especially in the first half.
We play a fun type of ball and we can rack up a ton of points, but that same personnel is what makes our ability to play defense and grind out a win more difficult.