Recent content by RollChief

I don't think you'll see it in the starting lineup but if Mirk misses playing time, we'll probably see a lot more twin towers, especially situationally if we're dealing with an opposing front court that plays two 6'9"+ guys.

There is presale information here: https://nashvillehoopsshowdown.com/tickets/ I've already got my plane tickets, I want to see Nashville 60%+ Illini fans again. In other news, THREE EXHIBITIONS! Thanks Illini staff for the free basketball! Quick edit: This means 139 days have passed with 57...

"very mediocre" is definitely a stretch. If you look at our 2P defense through 2P% and average 2PA distance the last two years, our defense was ranked 14th in 2P% and 11th in 2PA distance in 2025, and 39th in 2P% and 10th in 2PA distance in 2026. In 2026, teams opted to take 3's against us...

Got it, yeah I was having trouble adding in Atwell so I appreciate it. It's hard to say whether either will be back, but it seems like it's a bit more likely to get Mirk back after a stress fx in his foot after 3 months vs JT Toppin coming back from a torn ACL after 9, but who knows. With both...

I saw that TTU/UK exhibition was announced for late October, and I was curious about what TTU and Illinois looked like in terms of ratings considering respective power forward injuries... FWIW, if you remove JT Toppin from TTU's roster on Torvik, they drop from 13 to 26, and if you remove Mirk...

This will hopefully give a good barometer for what to expect from TTU Nov 10th.

Right, and I'm saying I'll keep the top offense and try to get the defense to 10-15, since the team that won a championship 8 of the last 11 seasons was ranked 3 or better. Average defense rank for champions in that time period is #9, and 5 of 11 of those seasons the champion had a defensive...

Well you'd probably be trading away significant odds to win a championship, since having a top-ranked offense is meaningfully more correlated with winning it all than a top-ranked defense. As @illini0440 said: "Just saying…I’d much rather have to figure out how to try and stop people from...

You're right, but the silver lining is that it allows some level of free-market economics which seem to be rewarding positive recruiting and player development (on aggregate) rather than roster building with guys like AJ Storr every year. Even with the rapid inflation of "the bag", I'm curious...

My advanced analytics below appear to show that he is indeed definitely taller than 6'4", although the results are inconclusive.

Welp, this timing is insane, I'm not sure if my (incorrect) take is being argued elsewhere, but the arbiter has stepped in on the conversation against the level of remarkableness of Michigan's Defense...

I really liked watching this dude play during FIBA Americup. Was super polished for a 17 year old

Yeah that’s a good counterpoint (and apologies if I missed the original point from you or Fly! about scoring efficiency) I’m an optimist and I try to find ways in the numbers to try and prove that we can win a championship haha

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...