Well, if Indiana fired Crean...
2017 Coaching Carousel
- Status
Well, if Indiana fired Crean...
89illinigrad
- Chicago
I haven't seen the data from Tyler on IlliniBoard. How does it rank us in our ability to get 3 point shots? People use to complain that we took too many 3's and you are the first who indicates were not getting enough or at least not enough "high value" shots from 3.
Quick google search shows us at 80th nationally with a 37.3% from 3PT range. Not great, but certainly not as bad as our inside or mid-range game.
Deleted member 29907
D
Guest
The argument I would make against recruiting class grades is the small sample size per class. If one player's evaluations is wrong - that would throw this argument out given the relatively small variances in final group values. AND, it does not then take into account who actually was able to stay on the floor in any given season.
The assumption being made is that grading from HS is a science not an art.
The assumption being made is that grading from HS is a science not an art.
"Point guard Jalen Brunson, No. 22 in the 2015 ESPN 100, ended his recruiting on Wednesday when he committed to Villanova over Illinois."
ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT NARRATOR VOICE: "And Brunson was the only five star player on Villanova last year"
Anyone bringing up Dan Muller's name is really grasping at straws. Is this what our school has been reduced to? Picking up scraps from lower level conferences who haven't succeeded at all? Even John Groce had a better resume at Ohio U than Dan Muller right now.
Pre-Muller
2011: 236
2012: 93
Muller:
2013: 64
2014: 148
2015: 62
2016: 120
2017: 35
Pre-Groce:
2007: 125
2008: 95
Groce:
2009: 169
2010: 94
2011: 150
2012: 57
Muller has a longer tenure, a more definite improvement, and a higher peak in a tougher league. And he's a super fringe candidate.
89illinigrad
- Chicago
Yeah, I think that's basically saying we're not getting enough shots in the paint. Don't think you can take that a step further and say we're not getting enough quality 3 point shots.
Sent from my MotoE2(4G-LTE) using Tapatalk
I would argue we don't get very many clean looks from 3, but don't have paywall accounts to verify with statistics
Not the whole story. Muller also never smelled NCAA tournament in 4 years, whereas Groce took Ohio to 2 NCAA tournaments (Ohio gone to 1 NCAA tournament in the last 15 years), and actually won 3 NCAA games and got to S16, something that no coach at Ohio had done since 1964 - that is in the last 46 years before Groce.
Muller is also one of those names that will definitely not even make the short list.
Here's the big difference between this and the twilight of the Weber era. Because of the quality of Weber's pre-Illinois resume, the enormous, beyond expectation, obviously coach-driven success he had over his first 2.75 years, and the infusion of talent that had cured what was assumed to be the problem of the Weber years, it was tough to explain what was wrong with those teams. It's still tough to explain. We all have our ideas, but it's a bank-shot sort of theory. It can't just be that Weber is a garbage basketball coach, because we have overwhelming evidence that that's not true.
On the other hand, with Groce everything on his resume points in the same direction. Good dude, just a so-so coach, not a difference maker at the top level. Nothing he's ever done really refutes that.
On the other hand, with Groce everything on his resume points in the same direction. Good dude, just a so-so coach, not a difference maker at the top level. Nothing he's ever done really refutes that.
It is pretty easy to explain. Self's recruits, and actually players who had played for Self, graduated and Weber was left on his own to send Illinois into a tailspin. Weber was a terrible fit for the Illinois job from day 1, just the luckiest man alive.
I mean, can the same not be said for Groce at this point? We haven't been top 50 in Adj O or Adj D without guys Weber developed, and haven't even been sub 90 in Adj D without Nnanna. At least Weber thrived when he had talent (and was still respectable with his own roster, enough so to get picked up at another P5 after being fired here), whereas Groce has landed talent of his own and achieved nothing with it.
That's an extremely short-sighted way of looking at it. If BW was so far out of his depth, how do you explain the DMAC-Chet-Meachum team that was so much more than the sum of their parts?
I've heard the rumors of the power struggle between Snacks and BW and my gut tells me the reason for Weber's failures here involve something more like that. Something more complex than, "he just sucked and got lucky with Self's guys."
Credit due to Groce for beating highly seeded Michigan and Georgetown teams in the tournament. Those were his two biggest wins there by far. Georgetown was Kenpom #11 and Michigan was Kenpom #22 (South Florida was #47 FWIW).
Muller, for his part, beat Kenpom #13 Wichita State in Arch Madness 2015, and also Kenpom #13 Wichita State last year and #26 Wichita State this year. He also beat Archie Miller's Elite Eight Dayton team (#42).
Tournament bids are totally irrelevant from an analytical perspective, especially so because neither of Groce's NCAA teams were or would have otherwise been at-large teams. The big scalps he got there certainly count, but they count the same as everything else.
And Muller is certainly sniffing the tournament right now. This ISU team is better than any of Groce's Ohio teams.
As for his pre-ISU resume, check out what happened to Kevin Stallings' Vandy program after he left. After some of the most sustained success that program has ever seen while he was there, under a good coaches coach with a defined philosophy.
I agree with you that Muller isn't anything more than a fringe name to throw around in our search. That's exactly my point. He's got a better resume than Groce and he's barely even worth discussing.
In 2012 we hired, out of a much more promising pool, a head coach who, at the time, by any objective measure, had a low probability of success here. It was a poor decision by Mike Thomas at that moment, not merely in retrospect. We have no reason to believe the same thing would happen should we seek a new coach now.
There is an incredible difference between the talent Weber inherited and the talent Groce inherited. Not even in the same stratosphere. I think the talent that Groce recruited was also highly overrated with many positional gaps. Groce showed much promise early on the recruiting trail but did not deliver. His current class is good IMO, not exceptional, but that is the kind of class Groce needed in his 2nd-3rd year, not his 5th.
As far as choice/fit, Groce was not on the A list, but seemed to have potential, not a terrible fit, but Illinois could have done better. Weber was a terrible fit. But at the end, you are evaluated by results and Groce has failed, I have personally lost faith on him long time ago as the coach who can return Illinois to prominence.
The inherited talent was closer than the results.
The idea that he never quite harmonized the players he was recruiting, the players he could land, and the players he needed to win while at Illinois seems clearly true to me. That's the best I've got.
Having an occasional good season says nothing about a coach's ability to succeed in the B1G. I guess Pitini Jr. is a great coach. So was Groce then in his first year (unlike Weber, the players he inherited had miserably failed in Weber's last year and our best player, Leonard had left for the NBA). Even if Groce miraculously squeezes into the tournament this year, it would mean nothing.
As far as 2008, I have explained before. Now if you like Weber, that is fine, but he was a terrible fit and failed miserably. Starting point (what he inherited) and ending point tell the story
You try to downplay tournament success and this couldn't be further from the truth. What makes mid-major coaches hot names is their success in the tourney more than conference titles. Unless you have tournament success you will not get many opportunities at high major jobs.
Muller also won at Kenpom #15 Creighton his first year, whoops.
mattcoldagelli
- Script Illinois Enthusiast
Which is why that sentence ends with "from an analytical perspective" - I think we all realize that tournament wins are attention-grabbers.
Though it's not like the secret isn't out that Cinderella's coach is not a good candidate unless the bulk of the resume dictates so.
Sports, writ large, is much smarter about this kind of thing now than it was 15 years ago.
He retired, he wasn't fired, that's a non-starter
- Status