College Sports (Basketball)
Don’t think it’s anything we’d care about
BU to name the winner of the ILLINI's 9th man contest by presenting him with a carton of cottage cheese.
good perspective:
This is how I generally feel about Gonzaga.
Just bus the team over to the Pizza Hut parking lot and see who's still standing after a few rounds - and the winner is ______________.
Curbelo Fanboy
BERTBALL IS LIFE
Also, my eyes tell me they don't get the same "favored nation" status they used to get from the zebras. Still get calls of course but for a long long time K was winning some big games simply cause he could intimidate the refs. Scheyer still has the Duke name but he doesn't have that sideline cache.
Seems Scheyer has smartened up and front loaded his OOC schedule. Beating up on the bottom 80% of the ACC definitely does not help them calibrate to the tourney.
Not convinced Scheyer knows what he's doing yet other than stacking his roster with IronDuke $$.
What am I missing here?
chrisRunner7
- San Diego
I didn't get it either, initially. The joke is that Illinois is KK Mega Superbet.
Didn’t even realize that’s who the other logo was, makes sense now
I know this is kinda out of left field, but how crazy would it be if we could get Ben back for one more year? He fixes a lot of problems right now...
Yes, he'd be one of our best defenders, and would provide much needed depth (especially with Mirkovic being out, we don't have another PF).
Honestly, I don't see where Ben meaningfully fits into this year's roster at this point, assuming Mirk comes back near 100%. It also seems like Ben has got enough of the winning stuff to give himself a shot on an NBA roster in the future, so probably wouldn't be a great deal for him.
My sense is the staff recruited the 5 freshmen this year as a multi-year play for the continuation of the culture and with the promise that they would have a shot at rotation minutes this year on a potential final four team if they committed to the winning philosophy.
It would probably create a sour taste with that cohort of players who have been around for the summer and dedicated themselves to improving with the team. I doubt they go for any 5th-year guys barring something major changing.
Backup 4. Right where he was last year.
I don't think you turn him down if he wants to be back (agree it's unlikely).
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Cool, but aren't rotation-level players on a championship-level team (at least as freshman).
Ben is, has proven it in our system, and solves a lot of problems.
You have to ask yourself: would any of the "cohort of players" you're talking about have played meaningful minutes on any of the Final 4 teams from last season?
If the answer is no, then they probably aren't worthy of major minutes on our team next year either, as the goal is Final 4 or National Championship.
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RabidDawgClassic
- Los Angeles, CA
Wait... did I miss something? Is there a court case pending that would somehow grant Ben another year?
Ben is signed with an NBA team...
Ben has also graduated twice already. He’ll have the record for most Senior Night appearances
Have you been attending the practices?
I think your "(at least as freshman)" is my point, you're going to burn some multi-year goodwill if you recruit over them in the 11th hour. I think the idea that you could wedge Ben or someone else in here and it would be smooth is a bit myopic.
Ben fit a key piece off the bench last year, in last year's system. My sense is there are probably some changes happening to that system this year, as there have been with every other year. If you asked this board about BH around this time last year, he belonged in NAIA at best. I think the staff is making some adjustments this year that are hard to envision at this point until we've seen these guys play, and there are guys that are probably going to be better than we expect (and some worse, but that's how it goes).
I don't know, I haven't seen them play, but according to the insiders on here who comment on the board, a few have shown flashes. Arizona made the final four last year starting 3 Freshmen with a 4th in the rotation, thankfully we only really need 1 to be starter-level and another to be good enough to play meaningful minutes in order to fill out an 8-man rotation.
For a lot of last season (at least through the tournament), BH actually played more at the 3 than the 4 (sorry, I know this is pedantic)
I wrote enough about it already a few minutes ago so I don't want to beat it to death, but honestly I think the culture downside outweighs the performance upside if you bring anyone else in at this point.