Catching up again :thumb:
I think the sit out year is a huge deterrent to legitimate NBA prospects. Very few of those caliber players transfer under any circumstances.
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Finally I'm not sure they need to either fire or extend Groce following this season. Obviously you can't really fire a coach that makes the tourney because of media backlash and I don't think you can argue to keep him if they don't make it as it would be a fairly historic run of below expectation play.
If guys are already known as an NBA prospect to the point where they wouldn't transfer upon a coaching change simply because it's delaying their departure to the NBA, they'd just go to the NBA earlier. That happens all the time. Also, we certainly have to extend or fire Groce after the season. Coaches don't operate on 2 year contracts in college sports. That shows a complete lack of faith from the administration, and broadcasts that to opponents, recruits, and the players. And yes, you can fire Groce after making the tournament. The failings under his regime are well documented, the hot seat is known, and nobody would really question unseating him if he just squeaked into First Four or something like that.
Still have an opinion not shared by majority but still makes the most sense to me.
JG strengths are his recruiting, relationship to his players and good public presentation.
Weakness per this thread are X's and O's.
Believe it is much easier to cover his weakness with a good assistant than it is to find someone with his strengths in the other areas. Recruiting is not a one year project but building of relationships and starting over is not a one year project. In two years with a new coach, this thread would be repeated. IMO
You can have x's and o's guys on the bench, but I really think the model you are proposing is more effective in football than basketball (there are certainly more cases of it we can point to). Additionally, and S&C touched on this, Groce has been loyal to his own detriment at this point, I find it hard to believe he'll make a change. Additionally, we already added Darren Hertz as special asst to HC in the last 2 seasons after Brandon Miller went to Butler (iirc) and saw zero noticeable impact there (he's certainly not being sent out recruiting, and there haven't bee improvements on the court schematically).
You have too much time on your hands.
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Also your last line is why almost no one on this board likes you
Speak for yourself. Maybe you shouldn't take it so personally when you make a claim without any evidence, and then someone takes the time to actually disprove it. Tilmon could easily transfer for any assortment of reasons, and he could also bust. Just because he is committed to Illinois doesn't spare him from any of the variety of things we've seen happen to top prospects across the country at other schools.
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Where Groce's team usually fail in my eyes is in playing with confidence and trusting the system we're running in times of stress.
An assistant who is going to bring in different fundamental basketball ideas is only as good as the level of trust the head coach has in that person. Groce has steadfastly refused to make any staff changes, shockingly in my view, and it's clear that he doesn't have any desire to hand over some of his responsibility to an outside voice. Forcing that upon him would be ineffective at best. It's not like football where you can take away playcalling duties from someone, and even that is a bad idea.
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The idea that recruiting is hindered in the first year of a new coaching administration does not hold up to scrutiny.
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I'd agree with the first and second points. Our teams have bad habits. When they reel those in and play together, we've at times looked OK or even good for stretches, but the issue is when things get tough, or we get ahead, the bad habits start to come out due to adversity or comfort (thus why I get so angry at my TV when we go into 'prevent' offense with 4 minutes left with a lead!). I would add that our teams tend to display signs of a lack of basketball IQ, although some pieces are not necessarily victim to that.
I think there's definitely reason to believe recruiting is in fact boosted in the first year, because realistically, coaches can sell that any perceivable problems in the product are not theirs, but rather inherited, and also, as has been mentioned, coaching changes all come with hope and excitement. There are cases where this would not apply, such as moving from an excellent recruiter to a poor one, or are operating in a scenario a la Kentucky where your standard is incredibly difficult to maintain for ANY coach, you will likely see the first year have solid returns.
I don't mean to be a jerk. I don't think I'm smarter than everyone because I can do a Google search. Nor do I think others are dumb because they don't waste their work hours digging through the internet about college basketball players. I just feel like our arguments ought to based on factual predicates that hold up to scrutiny. And if people stubbornly cling to ideas that fall apart in the face of the evidence, the whole point of a discussion board like this is to point that out, right? Isn't that why this is fun?
And I understand how it's a bad, arrogant look for me to say so, but it's still true: a lot of the received wisdom on this board about how to estimate and anticipate the future of recruits is just not very accurate. And the accuracy of those assumptions is very, very important to people's perceptions of what we do about John Groce going forward, which is the purpose of this thread.
I agree with these points and think it is important to look at trends nationally (which, while inconclusive and not necessarily gospel when assessing our own situation, can help us evaluate potential scenarios). Many trends will be subject to small sample sizes, but they are still helpful and should be based in data available. UofIChE06, in my opinion, went a little overboard on trying to look at other possible factors in the individual points of the data set in this particular case, but those are important to look at as well because we are talking about 17-22 year old kids, after all.
Could have fooled me and a number of people that have been here a long time. I personally am going to do what I should have quite some time ago. Enjoy yourself railing on people on a message board proving you know the most about Illini basketball. I won't have the "pleasure" of seeing it anymore
I don't understand people being so averse and offended by being proven wrong. The data says you were incorrect. You weren't personally attacked. This is just discussion, not an attack on your character or intelligence. He took the time to fact check.