Carey Booth was memorable only for the rebound that bounced off his head
Illinois Hoops Recruiting Thread
Petro played limited minutes not only because Wagler was a gem but also because he was too small and weak to play any kind of defense, didn't put any observable effort into defense, couldn't rebound, loafed back on defense after poor plays and was not a shooter. Fortunately his large NIL number was offset by Keaton's bargain price
He'll forever be remembered fondly for his pass to AJ for AJ's redeeming 3
Before I take your wager, what are your criteria for "a very productive season"?
I saw effort, he just lacks size/ability to be a good defensive player at the POA.
My point was more so that the reason he didn't play wasn't due to a recruiting failure, but because of a huge recruiting win (Keaton Wagler was the primary reason he couldn't get on the floor, because lets be honest: you can't play Petro off ball because that isn't what he does... and he's also 6'2").
I think a very productive season for him in the Big East would be 10 points 4 assists. Personally, never expected more than that from him here anyway, and then voila... Keaton Wagler also happened.
But again, I was more pointing to the fact that he didn't play wasn't so much because we failed at recruiting a point guard. Every year you have to take shots on various guys in recruiting; there's not enough minutes for all 12 guys to play. Doesn't necessarily mean the bottom 4 are 'busts' every single season.
0 minutes against Wisconsin in OT with 6 guys is tough to pin just on Wagler (who sat for just 36 seconds) being a surprise. Or when Wagler went out for 5 minutes with the shoulder injury with us up 19 against UCLA (then played through the injury the rest of the game).
If he was good (and if he didn't shut down mentally), I'd think the staff would've tried to have him ready.
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Trying to find proper reaction to why he didn't play in 2 games... hmm... yeah no idea? Against Wisconsin I think you're still saying "can he play off the ball?" and then idk about the 5 minutes vs UCLA. Difficult for me to base any sort of opinion on a 5 minute sample of a 1,480 minute season (37 gms x 40 mins).
"If he was good" -- lol lets not go crazy here, he was MVP candidate in a league that brought us Tomi/Mirk.
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blackdog
- Champaign
I cant disagree more about his effort. He had the awareness of a peanut and consistently seemed to have no idea where he was supposed to be defensively. Brad has played bad defenders before but he wont play guys who dont know what they should be doing.
I thought I had recalled there being a pretty big language barrier when he got to campus. That, paired with getting in late, and then getting injured, probably had a lot to do with him struggling to fit into the defense schematically.
I think the new defense is a bit more complex than it's given credit for because it seemed like there was definitely a learning curve for Y1 guys. I remember that especially early on there was a lot of times where it seemed like Andrej was out of place, but he could make up for it with his size and athleticism.
We paid him good money to play a key role, so my threshold for "miss" is much higher than for someone like Lee.
If he was "good" but merely overshadowed, he would have played more than 1.4mpg (including 13 DNPs) in the 22 games after Jan 8, especially given the injuries and OT games we had. That suggests the staff didn't think very much of his ability to contribute.
And I can't blame all that on his visa and injury issues at the beginning of the season- I'd think the staff would get him on the floor more (especially in the games Bos missed) if they thought he had potential to get up to speed. So unless he was battling a secret injury all year, it's hard not to call that a miss.
I couldn't identify a ton of effort issues myself, but some of the heated discussions on the bench in a couple early games made it obvious there was frustration mounting. I'll cede on effort here. So issues were maybe effort, buy-in, etcetera and not lack of ability? I bet it was difficult to come in expecting to basically be the point guard of a top 15 preseason D1 college team and then some skinny 17 year old 3 star recruit is actually a top 5 pick in disguise.
Just been difficult for me to wrap my head around this annual discussion where the bottom half of the roster are all recruiting busts.
If he'd have came in, played 30 minutes per game at PG and the team finished 18-14 then I'd call him a bust. I think this is different.
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Part of building a good program is having enough talent to absorb the inevitable busts, so I don't see why it's contentious to call them that.
What would you have done differently? Play Boswell and Petrovic at the 1/2 spots, move Keaton to the 3, and Andrej/Jake come off the bench
So the riddle here is how do you get him on the floor with Wagler and Boswell? He wasn't supplanting either of those two players, and that doesn't mean he isn't a good basketball player (verbatim what you stated). A 5 minute stretch vs UCLA doesn't answer that question. There's a much larger sample size of him playing in EuroLeague averaging 14 & 7 that proves otherwise.
Calling a player a bust is literally a headline example of a contentious comment LOL.
RabidDawgClassic
- Los Angeles, CA
I guess, technically, you could call Podz a “recruiting bust” because he didn’t play much his freshman season. Without that criteria, we should probably wait at least one more season to see what Petro and Lee do or do not accomplish.
Not when you pay a guy high 6 figures and he can't even get on the floor and on the rare occasions that he did he looked like a junior high kid (both stature and skills wise) playing the seniors at IMG. That's a bust. That's not contentious in the least. Its a fact.
Placing a negative label like “bust” on a player is contentious by definition of the word. But I’m not here to quibble over semantics and what words mean.
Likely most other situations I’d agree: bust. But the nuance here is Keaton combined with Mihailo not being able to play any other position except the one occupied by a top 5 pick for 34 minutes per game and another Senior for the other 6.
Edit: if people are just looking for something to bag on the coaching staff about, they don’t get off scot free in this situation either, because going into the season we thought Mihailo and Kylan were the backcourt and everyone mentioned how undersized it would be.
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If all this is over the word "bust", then let's set that aside since it's silly to argue over words.
If he came anywhere close to the expectations of his $, then he would have at least been a great bench option whenever Wagler or Bos rested or were hurt, and Wagler certainly could have rested more. The NCAAT was 2 months away when Bos got hurt, so his lack of playing time then tells me that the staff didn't have much hope at that point, and I don't get the impression they tried hard to retain him this offseason.
It could certainly be that he was good, but...
- was objectively a bad fit or the staff couldn't figure out how to use him effectively
- he's a slow learner
- he mentally shut down
- the time he missed at the beginning was just too much to reasonably expect him to overcome
All these are part of the recruiting/coaching equation except the last, though even that one is hard to separate from his talent, fit, and ability to get up to speed.
The irony in demanding we have more depth and then turning around and saying highly regarded players who might not have gotten a ton of minutes are total busts and not capable of playing at all…
Probably a semantics thing - I agree.
But would you consider Podz a bust? Or more so he was a freshmen behind two very tenured Illini guards and a flamethrowing grad transfer?
Oddly enough, I consider a player like Skyy Clark more a bust than someone like Petro, even though one got minutes
I buy all of this, with caveats that (1) he was a bad fit based on being small like Boswell and not that we already had a fantastic lead guard in Keaton circa June 2025 and (2) slow learning due to language barrier as it’s been said he doesn’t communicate in English as well as Tomi/Mirk. Both things we can bag on the coaching staff about, so I’m not here to defend them and you guys are free to do so as you please.
PS, discussing of terminology seems necessary and inevitable, especially if it’s the crux of the entire discussion (bust vs not). Ton of back and forth on it gets exhausting though, for sure.
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No, because he wasn’t thought to be a huge part of that team (and wasn’t nearly the investment Petro was).
When Petro came in, the idea was he’d be one of our best players, and we paid him a lot of money to be that. Because Wagler was so awesome, him not being one of our best players is completely understandable.
But not being able to play at all — including the OT game against Wisconsin where we played six guys — is where the bust conversations come in.
There's got to be some way that you can apply a linear regression to this. I need to call up my old econometrics professor
It's hard to know what to say about Podz, and I wasn't as tuned in at the time. Ignoring his future success, a composite #107 freshman doesn't have high enough expectations to ever be a bust in my book, while Skyy Clark is up there.
Was it a "miss" to not get more out of him and/or not retain him? Maybe he just got better his sophomore year. Maybe there were fit issues (basketball or personality), and he couldn't possibly have played that well for us- I guess that could be a "miss", but again, the stakes are different with a #107 recruit.
I totally agree with the first point, but I'd say during Underwood's tenure the other strength isn't as much finding guys that fit, but rather changing styles to fit the players.
Our offensive attacks in his 10 years have been wildly different. We played inside-out during the Kofi years. High paced transition->Booty ball with Marcus and TJ. Top of the key P&R/ distribute with KJ & Tomi, & Totally spread out, deliberate matchup hunting last year.
What are we doing this year? Who really knows!
They find the talent, then they figure out how to best leverage it. That is elite coaching, in my book. The secret is getting out and we are so hot right now...
This is not a shot at your post, because i actually dont entirely disagree. But MAN, how far we have come by saying the stakes are not high with a top 125 (4-star recruit) not panning out. As an aside, where are you pulling him at #107 from? 247 had him as 72 nationally and is that all the far off from Petro? Sure we were excited about him, but were people on this boarding think he was like 5-star equivalent coming in?
I can't prove this until we see it - so I guess some of us Petro stans have to "eat it". But I have faith that if Wagler didn't exist, Petro would have been a middle of the pack B1G guard, and probably a top 50-60 percentile offensive guard. For that matter, im of the opinion Brandon Lee can play too.
We tie so much up into this Wisconsin game when Andrej went down 10-minutes before tip-off
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What would you have done differently in the Wisconsin game since this single game proved he's a bust? Petro can't play off the ball, so he's our PG and Keaton/Boswell stand in the corners during PnR and other actions and Jake sits? I don't love it.
The reason he couldn't play is because he can't play off the ball and on-ball is Keaton's job.
Its crazy how adamant people are we have to use the word 'bust' to describe the situation. Like, there's no other possible way to explain the situation or any nuance whatsoever. But yeah, this irony wasn't lost on me at all LOL.