Beat me to it.
Illini Basketball 2026-2027
What would that look like? Guards who can talk good $hit and freeze the shooter?Best FT defense percentage???
Yes, but the difference is Mara played 23.4 minutes per game, while Z only played 17.1.
Mara was their starting center, while Z is our backup. More times than not he won’t even play half the game.
Tomi who’s our starter, is a poor rim protector for his size.
Here's the difference between our AdjD against Q1A and overall since Underwood took over. Above zero means our defense was worse against Q1A than it was overall (after adjusting for opponent offense).
I also checked top 10 teams (0.5pts better against Q1A), top 10 defenses (0.3pts worse), E8 teams (0.6pts better), F4 teams (0.5pts better), NCG teams (0.4pts better), and champions (1.5pts better). So our underperformance against Q1A isn't expected or due to incorrect adjustments in Torvik's system.
Glass half full: we've had some years where we were similar or even much better against Q1A, so Underwood is certainly capable, and the average is only 0.5pts worse. This past year was Crocker's first, and he dealt with a lot. Our AdjD was outstanding against VCU and Houston when we were finally full strength.
Glass half empty: the seasons we were similar/better against Q1A were when our defense wasn't great overall (#97, #36, #33, and #91, and our offense wasn't great in those either except 2024), and if we ignore the first two rebuilding years, we've been 1.3pts worse against Q1A. Plus, our roster/staff will look a lot more like 2026 than any of the other seasons, and our AdjD in the tournament wasn't as good against Penn, Iowa, and UConn, so the end of season turnaround didn't quite hold up. If the goal is to be at least top-15 on defense, then this past year we needed to be 1.5pts/100 better overall, but 4.6pts/100 against Q1A, and that's a much taller order. I'm not saying we can't. It's just the biggest question mark for me.
...Good question.....where's Coleman when we need him..... my question is who's in charge of our FT defense....and do we practice this enough???I’m actually interested in what it takes to be good in that category.
We could definitely use some added “luck.”
Z is more explosive than Mara (both vertically and laterally).
Is it possible those teams are very smart about who they foul? Or just that they faced a larger number of teams with poor FT % (than other high majors did)? Or their home crowd/arena does something?
Man, didn't even get to September before the lustre wore off that Final Four appearance for some of you huh?
Btw the idea that we can't win a natty w/o a top defense is not correct. Of course a top defense helps, but Baylor won in '21 with the #22 KP defense, and Kansas won in '22 with the #17 defense. But the last time someone won without a top-10 offense was 2014. The emphasis on having an efficient offense is not misplaced. The staff is right to prioritize that first, and defense 2nd.
Btw the idea that we can't win a natty w/o a top defense is not correct. Of course a top defense helps, but Baylor won in '21 with the #22 KP defense, and Kansas won in '22 with the #17 defense. But the last time someone won without a top-10 offense was 2014. The emphasis on having an efficient offense is not misplaced. The staff is right to prioritize that first, and defense 2nd.
Tomi’s block rate was 2.6. Zvonimir’s was 12.6.
They’re both listed as PF/C on Torvik.
Here’s a graph of their block rates compared to all other PF/C in college basketball with at least 20 games played:
Big Z is ELITE. He’s the dot all the way at the top.
Tomislav at 2.6 is average. But I wouldn’t classify it as “poor.”
This is as close to a bulletproof sauce as it gets. It's basically UConn 2024. Big athletic guards and rim protector. Easier said than done as dudes like Clingan and Mara don't grow on trees, not sure there is one of them out there this year. I'd take a rim protector over a finesse stretch 5. Clingan sat back to protect the paint and they'd extend their guards to the three point line and blanket shooters.
Michigan had the frontcourt last year, not the backcourt. Yaxel was a huge advantage on that team. A 6'9" swiss army knife at the 3 is a rarity.
Swap Clingan and Hawkins and I think there is a decent chance the Illini win that 2004 game. Guys like that mask so much defensively.
I'll hold onto the thought of that UConn team was perfectly built. Only weakness could have been the bench, can't remember who they had back there. Only way you were beating them was getting Clingan in foul trouble, nailing circus threes or shooting 75% on middy's. They set the record for margin of victory, but I remember watching them thinking they could have won every game by 30+ if they wanted to, like they were playing a different sport, toying with teams in the second half and then they'd take the foot off the gas late, robotically.
I cannot think of a team stylistically that could cause them issues. 18 Nova would have gotten killed inside, but maybe their 3rd or 4th option could rip enough 3's to win. Last year's Michigan team against them would be a really interesting game.
Block rates don't alway tell the whole story - great shot blockers deter a lot of shooters from entering the paint period.
Great student fans behind the basket for homes games, elite smack talkers at the strip. I can't think of much else.
You're right that B1G Q1A games were rough for us. Here was our AdjD against various groups of Q1A opponents:
All: 101.0
Excluding games that Bos/Stoj missed: 100.2
Non-B1G: 93.9
B1G: 105.0
UConn: 99.6 (99.9 then 99.3)
NCAAT: 90.8 (82.2 vs Hou, 99.3 vs UConn)
I thought that too about Baylor, but someone here reminded me a while back that they hit a rough patch after a bout with COVID. Excluding that, their avg AdjD was 87.9, which would've put them #2 in the country. They returned to form in the NCAAT with an average AdjD of 85.1
As for Kansas, Torvik has their defense #13, and while they were worse against Q1A on the season, their AdjD in the NCAAT averaged 85.4, which would've been tied for #1 if they played that way all season. I'm not sure if there's an explanation for that though. They also had a pretty easy path: #196, #51, #34, #38, #8, #16
I agree that offense is more important, but I think the threshold for defense is higher than you're saying
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I think it's a lot more than decent. Hurley can coach but I don't think he could've drawn anything up to stop that team if they swapped Clingan and Hawkins.
Castle did a good job on Shannon with Clingan behind him but that defense suffers without him and he was in early foul trouble. Shannon would feast when Castle sits.
Then Domask actually was cooking them when Clingan sat in the 1st half. Was a tie game pretty late into the 1st half because of Domask.
Domask is so slept on in underwood era.
Not that he’s not greatly respected. But I felt as good with him having the ball as any guard whose come through here - which is a crazy compliment
Right but if we could get halfway closer between our 97.4 DRtg to Michigan's 88.5, then we're a top 10 team defensively and a top 2 team in the country in overall rating. I don't think Michigan was particularly remarkable, which is justified by my post linked here (TLDR; Michigan had the worst defensive rating of the #1 defenses of the last 10 years).
I think if you look at our defensive stats side by side with theirs, my main takeaway is that the areas where we were good defensively, they were great. Outside of tempo, it’s easy to draw a lot of similarities between the two teams. Even tempo is largely offense-driven, as Michigan did an excellent job of keeping opposing offenses on the floor for nearly the full shot clock.
What Michigan did especially well was use their size as you noted to defend the perimeter at a high level while also making the paint essentially a no-fly zone. I’m not saying we can necessarily replicate what they did, but I do think we can apply many of the same principles with huge wings and a monster frontcourt (regardless of their debatable athleticism, 7'1" 280 is 7'1" is 280) to move from good to great defensively. We don’t necessarily need to be the best but I think there is the opportunity there to move from 20 to 10.
Attachments
Felt absolutely automatic from the free throw line and I don't think I've ever seen another player so clearly improve game after game in season.
It always seemed like he made the right decision.
As much as Wagler? Not sure I’d agree.
Domask: 20.4% assist rate, 16.4% TOV rate.
Wagler: 23.2% assist rate, 12.5% TOV rate.
Domask was the primary handler of an offense that had the #3 efficiency and the 52nd best turnover rate.
Wagler was the primary handler of an offense that had the #2 efficiency and the 8th best turnover rate. (while also leading the team in scoring)
We heard it all the time about how a freshman can’t be leading your offense. Last year we saw one of the few exceptions.
Yes, but I would feel more comfortable in Domask than Curbelo or Kasparas.
Honestly, the fact one was second in efficiency and the other was third makes my general point.
If you wanna say 5th overall pick Wagler, or Ayo, you’re probably right. But Domask was nails
I know I'm quibbling over something that was a tangent to the point of this post, and Fly! already mentioned this, but scoring efficiency is up overall. Normalized to the yearly average (AdjD/NCAA_avg_AdjD * 100), they were very typical:
I agree that if we could get halfway closer to Michigan's defense from last year (including playing at least as well against Q1A), our championship odds would look quite different.
