Illini4Reel
- Champaign, IL.
A very intriguing name mentioned on Twitter today: TONY BENNETT. Could we lure him here?
2017 Coaching Carousel
- Status
It's worth trying to throw $ 4 mil at him, but it's a lateral move at best for him.
+1. The rest of this season is far more interesting than a completely unpredictable future season.
Illini4Reel
- Champaign, IL.
When I look at Virginia, I see East Coast Illinois. He would be in an awesome recruiting area with state-of-the-art facilities now. Also, he is from the Midwest, so it would be like coming home. Bennett is also a defensive coach, so we would have that going.
mattcoldagelli
- The Transfer Portal with Do Not Contact Tag
It's a shame there's not a single place on this board where you can discuss the current season.
Exactly. Right now, he's already in "an awesome recruiting area with state-of-the-art facilities".
Yeah, if he has a desire to get back to the midwest, maybe that helps? But seems like a real long shot to me.
Agreed. His wife is from North Carolina and he secured long term deals for his assistants during last contract. Seems pretty content.
I have no doubt he would be a success here, but he doesnt seem like a guy who can be solely swayed by money
Your sympathy is massively appreciated.
+1 The team is now 11-4 (1-1) with multiple seniors that are quality young men. I really don't see this team going down without a fight.
I think the point is that there should not be 41 pages of discussion about a coaching change at this time.
I still believe the light can come on. Of course, that reminds me of 2012 when I really believed that team was about to go on a tear until the white flag game at Nebraska.
Of course, we only lost that game by 23, and we've already lost by 25 and 32 so far this year :frustrated:
Feel like we've bounced back nicely from both, well maybe not immediately wrt the WV game, but both FSU and WV are defnitely top 25 teams.
I think as long as we avoid going 0-5 through the next 5 games we wont see a 2012 type meltdown. They are extremely important because they are all against potential tourney teams and we need at least 1 win if not 2. Groce has never shown the ability to avoid said losing streaks but hey theres a first time for everything.
It is concerning to me that we have been blown out like that but I guess even Bill Self lost by 31 at Indiana.
Slow news day...
Unavoidable with the 4 year record Groce has compiled here. Imo it would be a million times worse for him had Weber not preceeded him. The vitriol left over from Weber has kind of masked the really terrible record Groce has compiled here
mattcoldagelli
- The Transfer Portal with Do Not Contact Tag
Posting in the thread and thus bumping it to the top of the page is an interesting way of expressing that sentiment
haasi
- New York
Crazy day on this thread. Shoutout to S&C for starting an interesting discussion. Agree it's not so clear cut that a Groce firing would lead to a flood of transfers and "decommits" and that may not be the best reason to keep him around if he doesn't do something else to justify it.
Daily end of work day catching up post...
Regarding AAU, it seems like you're letting your impressions of Chicago AAU influence your impression of all AAU, and that's not right/fair to apply an impression of a subset of the scene to the entirety of the system. Peach Jam is a great event and showcases some of the really well run AAU programs out there. There are really skilled AAU players out there. Additionally, High school ball isn't all that different at programs with legitimate P5/D1 prospects, so I'm not entirely sure why you're targeting AAU and not HS ball. You even cited JCL's flaws, but JCL went to a top basketball high school, too, so whose fault are those flaws? Nunn's teams won titles at Simeon multiple times as well, iirc.
Also, what you're describing of AAU isn't exactly non-existent at the college level, and NBA scouts would certainly be happy to tell you all of the skills that college coaches aren't developing to an NBA level. All of the skills you mentioned are sometimes things guys can do at the HS level and not the college level, at which point it is on their college coach to develop those skills to work at the college level (and ideally, towards an NBA level to continue their progression after that). Top 50 guys are where you'll find the types who can come in and do most things at a college level early. We're not consistently getting those guys, and so you see the holes in their game. That's normal.
On what grounds can we assume that the next coach would play Lucas? Lucas has 110 minutes logged this year. It's not like he's shown all that much that would instantly indicate to the new guy that Lucas has to be your #1 guy going into camp. With the way Groce plays our bench, I'd anticipate you'd see a very open depth chart with practice battles, ESPECIALLY in the case of Lucas v incoming freshmen. He hasn't shown he can play heavy minutes any more than the incoming guys have yet. Lucas will be competing for time with Frazier, Damonte, and Mark Smith if he comes here as well. Groce only goes 2 deep at PG, so if the next coach did the same, it's entirely plausible TJL finds his way down the depth chart again.
This was already thrown out in this thread, and I still think the odds are close to 0. Coming here would be a lateral move, at best.
You realize you both can ignore this thread, right? Asking for sympathy is quite ironic/hypocritical -- some of us hold a different perspective, and want to discuss it. Asking us not to because you disagree is selfish. From my perspective, our season(s) with Groce are effectively over in my mind -- I'm still watching every game, but our team's ceilings are drastically limited by having him at the helm, and IMO, we're wasting the careers of guys like Malcolm Hill by having him lead them. For me (and presumably some other posters in this thread), watching the rest of the season changes nothing of my opinion about the coach, but I am still watching the season because I am interested in our players.
I agree. I think at this point, some people's responses to S&C are less in the spirit of discussion than simply trolling. Try ignoring the name and picture on the post and pay attention to the points, why does S&C have to provide extensive data for claims when others are making similarly hard-to-quantify claims as well? I appreciate his posts, and while yes, there are at times assumptions being made, I don't find any of them to be out of line.
For example, this post:
(1) This poster made the claim it's more likely a coach could convince a kid already enrolled to stay than an unenrolled commit who had already signed. The initial claim is an assumption being presented as fact. S&C offered a set of points from a limited data set and was asked to prove the opposite, when in reality he should just be disproving that claim, and he did. I believe what he offered was a simple proof by contradiction on a theory, whereas some folks are looking for S&C to prove the opposite as if he had presented it as his own theory. He simply said that the quoted doesn't really fit what can be observed in recent trends.
(2) This poster also claimed (within his claim) that a recruit would lose a year of eligibility transferring, which is objectively false, because it would qualify as a redshirt season while sitting out, yet there was no comment on that point. Let's try to be unbiased when evaluating others' points, folks.
.
Here's a new topic for discussion, we've all spoken at length about possible HCs that could replace Groce, and Capel has been mentioned, but what other top assistants would be worth taking a look at from the college ranks? As fun as it is seeing people throw out Ettore Messina and such from the NBA ranks, I think the overwhelming majority of NBA assistants will not be interested, and based on the emphasis on recruiting within CBB, makes me personally find NBA assistants to not be a proper fit, as they lack both experience and name recognition to be a great candidate.
Regarding AAU, it seems like you're letting your impressions of Chicago AAU influence your impression of all AAU, and that's not right/fair to apply an impression of a subset of the scene to the entirety of the system. Peach Jam is a great event and showcases some of the really well run AAU programs out there. There are really skilled AAU players out there. Additionally, High school ball isn't all that different at programs with legitimate P5/D1 prospects, so I'm not entirely sure why you're targeting AAU and not HS ball. You even cited JCL's flaws, but JCL went to a top basketball high school, too, so whose fault are those flaws? Nunn's teams won titles at Simeon multiple times as well, iirc.
Also, what you're describing of AAU isn't exactly non-existent at the college level, and NBA scouts would certainly be happy to tell you all of the skills that college coaches aren't developing to an NBA level. All of the skills you mentioned are sometimes things guys can do at the HS level and not the college level, at which point it is on their college coach to develop those skills to work at the college level (and ideally, towards an NBA level to continue their progression after that). Top 50 guys are where you'll find the types who can come in and do most things at a college level early. We're not consistently getting those guys, and so you see the holes in their game. That's normal.
On what grounds can we assume that the next coach would play Lucas? Lucas has 110 minutes logged this year. It's not like he's shown all that much that would instantly indicate to the new guy that Lucas has to be your #1 guy going into camp. With the way Groce plays our bench, I'd anticipate you'd see a very open depth chart with practice battles, ESPECIALLY in the case of Lucas v incoming freshmen. He hasn't shown he can play heavy minutes any more than the incoming guys have yet. Lucas will be competing for time with Frazier, Damonte, and Mark Smith if he comes here as well. Groce only goes 2 deep at PG, so if the next coach did the same, it's entirely plausible TJL finds his way down the depth chart again.
This was already thrown out in this thread, and I still think the odds are close to 0. Coming here would be a lateral move, at best.
You realize you both can ignore this thread, right? Asking for sympathy is quite ironic/hypocritical -- some of us hold a different perspective, and want to discuss it. Asking us not to because you disagree is selfish. From my perspective, our season(s) with Groce are effectively over in my mind -- I'm still watching every game, but our team's ceilings are drastically limited by having him at the helm, and IMO, we're wasting the careers of guys like Malcolm Hill by having him lead them. For me (and presumably some other posters in this thread), watching the rest of the season changes nothing of my opinion about the coach, but I am still watching the season because I am interested in our players.
I agree. I think at this point, some people's responses to S&C are less in the spirit of discussion than simply trolling. Try ignoring the name and picture on the post and pay attention to the points, why does S&C have to provide extensive data for claims when others are making similarly hard-to-quantify claims as well? I appreciate his posts, and while yes, there are at times assumptions being made, I don't find any of them to be out of line.
For example, this post:
(1) This poster made the claim it's more likely a coach could convince a kid already enrolled to stay than an unenrolled commit who had already signed. The initial claim is an assumption being presented as fact. S&C offered a set of points from a limited data set and was asked to prove the opposite, when in reality he should just be disproving that claim, and he did. I believe what he offered was a simple proof by contradiction on a theory, whereas some folks are looking for S&C to prove the opposite as if he had presented it as his own theory. He simply said that the quoted doesn't really fit what can be observed in recent trends.
(2) This poster also claimed (within his claim) that a recruit would lose a year of eligibility transferring, which is objectively false, because it would qualify as a redshirt season while sitting out, yet there was no comment on that point. Let's try to be unbiased when evaluating others' points, folks.
.
Here's a new topic for discussion, we've all spoken at length about possible HCs that could replace Groce, and Capel has been mentioned, but what other top assistants would be worth taking a look at from the college ranks? As fun as it is seeing people throw out Ettore Messina and such from the NBA ranks, I think the overwhelming majority of NBA assistants will not be interested, and based on the emphasis on recruiting within CBB, makes me personally find NBA assistants to not be a proper fit, as they lack both experience and name recognition to be a great candidate.
Last edited:
GortTheRobot
- North Bethesda, Maryland
This, ad infinitum. This is a brilliant summation, so thank you for putting it so succinctly. I am not "against" Groce, I am simply for our university, our fans, and our players. I think he needs to go, but not because he is a worthless person, he is just not the answer right now.
Regarding the bolded, could one assume then he never was and never will be the answer, thus the wrong answer initially?
Yeah, I can read, but when you, for example, follow up with things like
Off to a good start, let us know when you've finished.
you're trolling rather than really doing anything for the discussion or the topic at hand. His original post was to state the claim made by the other guy was not really backed up by the data. Not that one way or another was the de facto right answer. His data supported his point, that the original poster's claim was not supported by recent data.
This was the post I responded to initially. This is an unsupported blanket assumption common to a majority of the posts about Groce in this thread. It feels true. NCAA rules are designed to make it true. But I don't think it actually is true, what numbers I can find don't indicate that it's true, and I think the specific circumstances proposed here make it even less likely to be true.
If someone has something for me other than the old saw about Charlie Villanueva (who never signed an LOI, fwiw) from a million years ago, I'm all ears.
Here's a clue,
= humor. And is name calling "doing anything for the discussion or the topic at hand"? I think not.No, he claimed data supported his point, which was when I asked to see it. I didn't see any claims of data from "the other guy".
His data was limited in size and scope, which is why I asked him (using humor!) for more. This was also explained further in the conversation, which apparently you missed.
For the record, I'd love to see some more comprehensive data on recruits asking out of their LOI's after coaching changes. I did a bit of googling but I couldn't find anything.
It does definitely happen from time to time.
It does definitely happen from time to time.
- Status