There has been a lot of discussion recently about what fans should reasonably expect Illinois basketball to achieve in a given season – what is the historic standard? And of course, is BU living up to it? Some posters say his seat should be ice cold because, “Do you remember what it was like before he got here?”. Some posters (and ADs?) believe making the second weekend occasionally is a fair expectation. Some have said Illinois is not as good of a program as we like to think it is and making the second weekend in a crapshoot tournament shouldn’t be a job requirement. So, I wanted to look at the results and see what kind of picture they painted. The truth is, none of the above are wrong. It’s all about your perspective.
This is an infographic that I hope sheds light on these different perspectives. My goal wasn’t to show that one side is right or wrong – it’s simply meant to help us understand each other’s point of view.
Methodology
So, before I summarize some of the results, I’ll talk about the methodology here. In order to compare one season to another, I needed to assign a value to each season which meant I had to (somewhat arbitrarily) give values to all the major, season-long milestones that comprise a season (wins, championships, AP ranking, tournament appearances, etc.). I’ve included a table outlining the scoring system. Using that system, I assigned a value to every season since 1980-81. To account for variances in different eras (like number of games played, number of teams invited to the tourney, addition of conference tournaments, etc.), each score was divided by the total number of points possible for that season. So, the numbers you see on the Y-axis are essentially a percentage that shows how closely that season came to being “perfect”.
*A few peculiarities:
RESULTS
Alright, I’m going to leave most of this up for interpretation, but I did want to explain the different historic averages that I’ve highlighted.
This is an infographic that I hope sheds light on these different perspectives. My goal wasn’t to show that one side is right or wrong – it’s simply meant to help us understand each other’s point of view.
Methodology
So, before I summarize some of the results, I’ll talk about the methodology here. In order to compare one season to another, I needed to assign a value to each season which meant I had to (somewhat arbitrarily) give values to all the major, season-long milestones that comprise a season (wins, championships, AP ranking, tournament appearances, etc.). I’ve included a table outlining the scoring system. Using that system, I assigned a value to every season since 1980-81. To account for variances in different eras (like number of games played, number of teams invited to the tourney, addition of conference tournaments, etc.), each score was divided by the total number of points possible for that season. So, the numbers you see on the Y-axis are essentially a percentage that shows how closely that season came to being “perfect”.
*A few peculiarities:
- We were banned from the tournament in ’91, so I reduced the total points possible for that season accordingly.
- Same for the Covid year, except I did still award that team points for making the tournament since it inevitably was going to.
- I awarded us the B1G Title in ‘21
- I tried to do this objectively, but an unintended result of this methodology is that it values the regular season a little more than the post season. The most glaring example of this is 1984 ranking higher than 89 due to the regular season championship + winning two games in the tournament.
RESULTS
Alright, I’m going to leave most of this up for interpretation, but I did want to explain the different historic averages that I’ve highlighted.
- Overall moving average
- Exactly what it sounds like. Our good coaches have spent most seasons near or above this line and BU is no exception. Post-sanction Henson, post-Dee Weber, and Groce spent most of their time beneath it.
- BDD Average
- “Before and During Dee”. Dee was the exclamation point to a quarter century of near excellence. This line signifies the average level of performance from 1981 – 2006.
- AD Average
- “After Dee”. After Dee left, we started our descent into darkness. The difference between how we performed in the 25 years before Dee and the 17 years after Dee is stark.
- Pre-Groce Average
- I view JG as kind of like Covid to our basketball program. He brought everything to a screeching halt and just like many businesses who were affected by Covid, the goal is to get back to where we were prior to Covid, not lower our standards because of it.
- Overall average
- 21 wins
- 7 weeks in the Top 25
- A tournament appearance and a first-round exit
- Make the tournament 67% of seasons
- Two or more tournament wins 16% of seasons
- Pre-Groce average
- 22 wins
- 8 weeks in the Top 25
- A tournament appearance with a second-round exit
- Make the tournament 75% of seasons
- Two or more tournament wins 22% of seasons