Illini Basketball 2023-2024

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#28      

Calvin

C
Calvin
alaskaillini said:
I am a half glass full person also. I think, if Coleman and others aren't being forced into so many end of shot clock prayers this year, we should shoot considerably better from 3, or at least better enough to be average. And average should be enough to get us to top 4 or so in B1G, in the dance, and a decent chance of making the second weekend when there.
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I'm half empty, personally. We get a lot of off-season hype each year, and while I can buy into some of it, I feel this team has too many unproven and/or questions to be projected as a second weekend team. I'll subjectively given them a 30% chance of getting through their first 2 tourney games, and a 95% chance of being a tourney team (and that would most likely be an injury situation).

Love Ty and what he brings, and it's a testament to his dedication the way he's adapting. But no way am I confident that a pure freshman outside the top 100 and Ty are a plus backcourt. DGL seems like he'll deserve plenty of tick.
TSJ has been a favorite of mine, so I'll enjoy watching him attack.
Don't really know the other new-comers, so that will be fun to watch how they play. If they're better than advertised, I'll up my optimism to half full :)
Really like Dain as well. Very efficient in his role.
Coleman IMO is going to continue to be Coleman --people will keep talking about his ceiling, and he'll be very solid, but the NBA level stretch 4 role would mean a big improvement in his 3 point shooting, which I don't think it's fair to expect.
I'm forming a guestimate of 12-8 in conference. Good enough for a middle tourney seed, but not competing for the title in the last week. And from a stats viewpoint, if the 3 point shooting and FTs are anywhere near the Spain trip, 12-8 would be quite impressive.
 
#29      

EyeoftheIllini

EyeoftheIllini
EyeoftheIllini
Calvin said:
I'm half empty, personally. We get a lot of off-season hype each year, and while I can buy into some of it, I feel this team has too many unproven and/or questions to be projected as a second weekend team. I'll subjectively given them a 30% chance of getting through their first 2 tourney games, and a 95% chance of being a tourney team (and that would most likely be an injury situation).

Love Ty and what he brings, and it's a testament to his dedication the way he's adapting. But no way am I confident that a pure freshman outside the top 100 and Ty are a plus backcourt. DGL seems like he'll deserve plenty of tick.
TSJ has been a favorite of mine, so I'll enjoy watching him attack.
Don't really know the other new-comers, so that will be fun to watch how they play. If they're better than advertised, I'll up my optimism to half full :)
Really like Dain as well. Very efficient in his role.
Coleman IMO is going to continue to be Coleman --people will keep talking about his ceiling, and he'll be very solid, but the NBA level stretch 4 role would mean a big improvement in his 3 point shooting, which I don't think it's fair to expect.
I'm forming a guestimate of 12-8 in conference. Good enough for a middle tourney seed, but not competing for the title in the last week. And from a stats viewpoint, if the 3 point shooting and FTs are anywhere near the Spain trip, 12-8 would be quite impressive.
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I’m more “wait and see” with a helping of “half empty” myself. Feel the same way you do on TSJ, Dain and CoHawk. I think the latter will continue to dazzle us with his potential and have some great in-game stretches as well as some full games that are really good, but in the end be only slightly better than last year in his overall stats. Just so many question with all the others. Some good pieces among the others for sure, but who knows. I mean who had RJ shooting almost 20 percentage points lower overall and 30 percentage points lower from 3?
 
#30      

foby

foby
Bonnaroo Land
foby
Glass is almost full for me.

Come on, take a sip, it's really good!

orange juice oj GIF
 
#33      

Old Farm Illini

O
Old Farm Illini
Calvin said:
Love Ty and what he brings, and it's a testament to his dedication the way he's adapting. But no way am I confident that a pure freshman outside the top 100 and Ty are a plus backcourt.
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Ty/DGL plus a very possible First Team All-American in TSJ is a plus backcourt. People are sleeping on what our team can look like with an improved TSJ alone.
 
#34      

mysterio2525

mysterio2525
mysterio2525
Old Farm Illini said:
Ty/DGL plus a very possible First Team All-American in TSJ is a plus backcourt. People are sleeping on what our team can look like with an improved TSJ alone.
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But we don't even know if ty/DGL are even big ten level starter material (at pg and next season)... It's an experiment. That's why not even getting a decent starter level pg (not a star) is such a miss/gamble because we had the opportunity to be plus plus in that area. Now... Hope for the best that ty can play pg and that DGL is ready to play in the big ten as a freshman.
 
#36      

BretMyBeachHouse

B
BretMyBeachHouse
With the exception of Shannon, all of our players have major gaps in their games. For that reason, who to play at any given time against any given team is going to be continually changing. It's really going to come down to coaching.
 
#37      

80'sIllini

80'sIllini
Arizona
80'sIllini
EyeoftheIllini said:
I’m more “wait and see” with a helping of “half empty” myself. Feel the same way you do on TSJ, Dain and CoHawk. I think the latter will continue to dazzle us with his potential and have some great in-game stretches as well as some full games that are really good, but in the end be only slightly better than last year in his overall stats. Just so many question with all the others. Some good pieces among the others for sure, but who knows. I mean who had RJ shooting almost 20 percentage points lower overall and 30 percentage points lower from 3?
Click to expand...
I didn't see any of the Spain games but if Coleman still shoots with very little arc on his shot- I have a hard time believing his 3-point % is going to improve much at all. Maybe if he is shooting them with more than a few seconds left on the shot clock that will benefit him a few % points but he's gonna need to be better than that to make an NBA roster. It's crazy to think how much we need Domask to show up as a reliably good shooter to prevent this team from being an epically bad 3-point shooting team. If he turns out pretty good and gets 20 minutes/game, with our athleticism, we could be a really good team.
 
#39      

SkyysNotFalling

S
SkyysNotFalling
Sweet 16 teams season 3PF%
Michigan State 39% (3rd)
Xavier 39% (6th)
Gonzaga 38% (17th)
Miami 37% (47th)
Florida Atlantic 36% (54th)
UCONN 36% (67th)

Creighton 35% (104th)
UCLA 35% (144th)
San Diego State 34% (149th)
Texas 34% (157th)
Kansas State 34% (173rd)
Princeton 34% (177th)
Houston 34% (185th)

Alabama 33% (215th)
Tennessee 33% (255th)
Arkansas 31% (324th)

ILLINI: 30.8% (339th)

As you can see, you don't HAVE to be an elite 3p shooting team to make the second weekend. Does it help? Yep, there were 3 elite shooting teams that made it, 4 good shooting teams (one of which were national champion), and the rest are average to bad. Our issue was the 3p attempts.. Let's look at some of these teams more in depth...

Alabama was a bad 3p shooting team by percentage. 33% and 215th in the country..but were the #1 overall seed. They also led the nation in 3 point attempts. It worked for them....

Arkansas was 324th in the country in 3p%...But were 327th in attempts... Worked for them. I think this is the model we need to use.

Our issue wasn't the shooting it was the amount of attempts. We were 61st in 3PA last year, and 339th in makes. That made 0 sense.

If we can raise our percentage up to even 32% on the year, cut the attempts in half...Focus on getting to the rim and offensive rebounding...We are a sweet 16 team. It's either that, or jack so many up like Alabama that we roll the dice.
 
#40      

Central IL Illini

Central IL Illini
Springfield, IL
Central IL Illini
BretMyBeachHouse said:
With the exception of Shannon, all of our players have major gaps in their games. For that reason, who to play at any given time against any given team is going to be continually changing. It's really going to come down to coaching.
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I do like the way this roster can be mixed and matched in different ways. The problem is most of them have the same gaps, shooting the ball and the inability to play PG.
 
#41      

NarrowJ

NarrowJ
NarrowJ
I had sort of the same thoughts, but then remembered we are talking about college players. Of course Shannon is the only player without a major gap/hole in his game. Fully-rounded, complete players are rare in college. The guys in college with little-to-no weaknesses in their game are NBA prospects. Everyone else at the college level has some shortcoming or another.

I can go through the B1G rosters and pretty much any non-NBA talent players on these teams have weaknesses. Many of these teams, the 1st/2nd/3rd best players have very glaring weaknesses. And, as you go down the roster from those guys, there are just more and more players with more and more holes in their game. Not many teams trot out an entire roster of Terrance Shannons, and even the ones that do, we've seen issues with that too (are there enough basketballs to go around, etcetera).
 
#42      

thefalcon5

T
thefalcon5
a big part of our 3pt percentage last year was just the sheer volume we took. I think a lot of that was chucking and not getting looks off set plays. Obviously that number isn’t going to zero this year, but hopefully guys play more within the offense. That should help the percentages.
 
#43      

3 point girl

3
texas
3 point girl
thefalcon5 said:
a big part of our 3pt percentage last year was just the sheer volume we took. I think a lot of that was chucking and not getting looks off set plays. Obviously that number isn’t going to zero this year, but hopefully guys play more within the offense. That should help the percentages.
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NBA players call those shots "grenades" since you are getting the ball with a couple seconds left on the clock & you have to "chuck" it up there no matter what. This is a really good point you are making. Eliminate a bunch of these & your % goes up significantly.
 
#46      

foby

foby
Bonnaroo Land
foby
Any word on who our "secret scrimmage" team is going to be?
 
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