Illini Basketball 2024-2025 Team Grade

I went with a C. If given the option I probably would've chosen a C+. For my thoughts I think we performed right at my preseason expectations: a young team that had an up and down season with a lot of inconsistency game to game. While we struggled due to injury and illness we also seemed to have some key offseason misses that really hurt us from a depth standpoint and left us with a much lower ability to cope with that. We made the tourney and won a game there which is good, but also was expected. Another win there, or a better run in the BTT, or competing for a B10 Championship would have raised the grade, but without that, I think it was a fairly average and expected season results wise for a young but highly talented team. C+

One Man Fast Break said:

A top 16-25 program historically doesn't mean you make the Sweet Sixteen perennially or anything close to 50 % of the time though, because there's naturally a lot of year to year ebb and flow as well as high/low extended periods. A period with a bunch of Sweet 16s in a relatively short time period is a historically great period for Illinois. That doesn't mean 1 in 20 years should be the "norm", not by any means, that's quite bad. But I also think expecting it as some sort of baseline for a solid season is unrealistic. There are maybe 5 programs that can expect that throughout the modern tournament era and then maybe another 5 at a given time based on where they are presently. 00-06 is basically the golden age of Illinois basketball post World War II. Until further notice, that's basically the program's "ceiling" (which is not a bad ceiling to be at to be fair), and while it's great to set high expectations, we also shouldn't pretend it's baseline. Illinois got a bit unlucky to get Self poached at the exact time Illinois could have really solidified itself as one of the preeminent programs of the 21st century but it is what it is. As far as sleeping giant, maybe, maybe not. Chicago kids are always kind of an ebb and flow for how they view Illinois, and outside of a small blip in time you certainly can't rely on like Central Illinois to be a consistent producer of elite high major talent.

I'd say 2020-2025 is a fairly decent indicator of where Illinois "should" be in the college basketball pecking order, which is not bad by any means. Basically, 7 seed (season cancelled before postseason, but that's about where they would have ended up based on projections), 1 seed, 4 seed, 9 seed, 3 seed, 6 seed. Perennial tournament team (average seed 5). 1 Big Ten regular season championship (that could have been two but for COVID shenanigans) and 2 BTT championships, in the deepest era for the Big Ten historically. Record of 6-5 in the Tournament with one underachievement and four about as expected, and then if they had but one over-achievement it would even that out. Using that as a standard, this season is pretty average within it (4th best out of the six and very close to the mean overall).

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Then why are we paying top 10 money now. Go tell Whitman to pay top 16-25 money. I expect more because we have underachieved to this point... And I think our AD agrees.

mysterio2525 said:

Then why are we paying top 10 money now. Go tell Whitman to pay top 16-25 money. I expect more because we have underachieved to this point... And I think our AD agrees.

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Which metric are you looking at that we fall short on? Just NCAA tournament wins? That's an important one for sure but it's only part of it.

There aren't many (any?) ways in which you can slice the data and conclude we haven't been a top 10-15 program of the last 6 years.

You have to look at the aggregate, not single season outcomes. For example, we're tied for the most wins in the B1G over the last 6 years. This doesn't mean that we had the most wins in the B1G every year.

mysterio2525 said:

Then why are we paying top 10 money now. Go tell Whitman to pay top 16-25 money. I expect more because we have underachieved to this point... And I think our AD agrees.

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Our AD has high standards and that's great! High standards are what you should have. Not being content to be the 20th best team, but at the same time, is Whitman rushing to fire the HC because he has one Sweet Sixteen in eight years (or 7 that had a postseason) and we want more? It's a balancing act. Look at Indiana, who certainly at least considers themselves a better program than ours. They've churned through coaches and have one RO64 win in the last 9 years (or 8 postseasons) and 6 missed tournaments. Illinois could very easily "regress" to that, just as they were at before 2020.

21ChampaignSt said:

Which metric are you looking at that we fall short on? Just NCAA tournament wins? That's an important one for sure but it's only part of it.

There aren't many (any?) ways in which you can slice the data and conclude we haven't been a top 10-15 program of the last 6 years.

You have to look at the aggregate, not single season outcomes. For example, we're tied for the most wins in the B1G over the last 6 years. This doesn't mean that we had the most wins in the B1G every year.

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Perfectly cromulent argument but this is a thread grading a single season. Also I get the 'average season' argument the previous poster made, I think it's just the difference between those who consider a B as average vs. those who consider a C as average.

Many here have come down in the B- / C+ range and that's probably right. But even if so, by definition a B was not earned in that range so the whole letter grade was a C. Want to more heavily weight the injuries & illnesses, move it up to a B. Want to beat your head against the wall with every defense of a player from behind, or a thrown away inbounds, move it to a C.

This team had some outrageous wins and all the talent in the world, but I can't go higher than C when they didn't make the second weekend and set a new program record for worst loss.

Hard to grade this year honestly. We more or less met preseason expectations (think we either finished squarely on the nose of what KenPom predicted preseason both total W/L and conference or within one game) and played to our seed (Hard to complain about getting beaten by a lower seed).

But we certainly felt like we had the talent to do more. We did have one of the more favorsble draws I can remember against a beat up UK team. If we absolve underwood for 21 and 22 due to tough draws, think this year is a mark against him. And if we don’t have all the injuries/illnesses do we win a few more conference games and get into that 4-5 line and make a S16? Maybe.

But the S16 this year is overwhelmingly composed of old teams and we were one of the youngest/least experienced in P5. Underwood has preached get old/stay old and yet we went super young. Maybe Underwood deserves criticism for that approach. If we are going to lose our one n dones after this year and roster retention in this era is a crapshoot anyways, why not put together the oldest team you can? For all the talk of Kentucky’s vulnerabilities (and I do think we beat them if we played a little better) they went into the portal and got super old. Oweh, Brea, Williams, Jaxon Robinson, and I bet Butler were all old and pretty high priced portal guys. Even though UK might not have had the talent they normally do, I wouldn’t be surprised if their roster cost 2x what ours did.

So maybe going young may have been the best way to accumulate the most talent. If now everyone is valuing experienced portal guys (which were very good to us the past 2 years), maybe they market is maxed out such there was more value in the one n done and Euro markets? And maybe Undereood deserves credit for putting together such a talented team. Imagine how livid we would all be right now had we paid a kings ransom for AJ Storr.

So overall I think I’m going B. In a rebuilding year we met our preseason expectation, were in the tournament comfortably and were able to accumulate a lot of talent. Ultimately I think injuries, illnesses and youth cost us a top 4 seed line and capped how far we could go in the tourney. But I also think there were some coaching mishaps, in particular the insistence on shooting 3s and playing Ben 30+ minutes a game when it was clear we weren’t a good shooting team, and a flawed defensive scheme and a failure to make defensive adjustments when needed.

I think B is fair. Without injuries/illnesses I’d probably give us a C but we still met expectations despite how beat up we were.

mysterio2525 said:

Then why are we paying top 10 money now. Go tell Whitman to pay top 16-25 money. I expect more because we have underachieved to this point... And I think our AD agrees.

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Are we actually paying top 10 money? We missed on a lot of potential recruits and transfers to be paying top 10 in my opinion.

Illini2010-11 said:

Yeah, we ran such a clean program and others didn't. Sure.

But I do agree that we should stop comparing to the prior to coaches.

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We did run a clean program from 2005 to 2017.

pweo said:

Man, so many B's. Looking over the last 5 years:

20-21: 2 double digit losses at neutral sites - 1 to the eventual NC
21-22: 5 double digit losses at road / neutral sites
22-23: 7 double digit losses - 2 at home (!)
23-24: 1 double digit loss at neutral site to the eventual NC
24-25: 7 double digit losses - 3 at home (!), 1 neutral loss setting a program record for margin. Some of those losses could still be to an eventual NC

This team is closer (and arguably worse than) the much derided 22-23 team than any other recent year. That's a D for me.

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22-23 vs 24-25:

23:

- 9 seed
- lost first round of the NCAAT
- finished 35 in KenPom

25:

- 6 seed
- won first round of the NCAAT
- finished 17 in KenPom

In no world was 23 more successful than 25.

D

Top paid coach. Roster turnover brought in talent that relegated a starter from (a better performing) team last year to a red shirt. Two potential 1st round nba picks.

7th place in conference. 6 seed in tournament. Played only to seed in conference and NCAA tournament. Worst lost in school history.

I’d say this team didn’t meet expectations.

B but more specifically somewhere between a B and B-(maybe an 82 or 83% if we were grading it on a 100% scale). I think we hit the bare minimum expectations as far as finishing in the top half of the B10, making it into the NCAA tournament comfortably, and winning 1 game in the NCAA tournament. Do I think this team hit its ceiling? Absolutely not. Do I think this team had more business to take care of? Absolutely. But, we look at it in the context of injuries to key players, illnesses to key players, and how that impacted implementation of new concepts and strategies, I think a B/B- is an acceptable grade for this entirely new group that was put together. A lot of room for improvement for future rosters but I grew to like this new squad and wish they could've reached their potential

IlliniFan42 said:

Are we actually paying top 10 money? We missed on a lot of potential recruits and transfers to be paying top 10 in my opinion.

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I'm going off Brad's salary, our facilities and mostly what the insiders are letting me know. I'm not a fire Brad guy by any means either. But I am one to hold him to the expectations we have set financially as program. I think a few tweaks and we are there and up to the next tier, not burn the whole thing down because we didn't make the sweet 16. Regular season success matters, big ten title and tourney matter, NCAA success really matters (and can be exponential in value).

mysterio2525 said:

I'm going off Brad's salary, our facilities and mostly what the insiders are letting me know. I'm not a fire Brad guy by any means either. But I am one to hold him to the expectations we have set financially as program. I think a few tweaks and we are there and up to the next tier, not burn the whole thing down because we didn't make the sweet 16. Regular season success matters, big ten title and tourney matter, NCAA success really matters (and can be exponential in value).

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Strictly using HC salary as a predictive measure, based on the linked list, I don't know who in the top 10 we'd be ahead of financially. The best I'd put us at is 12th place based on this.

Would people feel better if the blowout wins and blowout losses each converged together to be more in line with more narrow wins/losses? If you just look at W/L and ignore Margin of Victory/Loss, the team basically lost to everyone "they're supposed to" and cleaned up well against the teams "they should beat".

IlliniFan42 said:

Strictly using HC salary as a predictive measure, based on the linked list, I don't know who in the top 10 we'd be ahead of financially. The best I'd put us at is 12th place based on this.

Men's Basketball Head Coach Salaries - USA TODAY

Ever wondered who the highest paid coach in men's basketball is? Find out today with USA TODAY's complete salary data.

sportsdata.usatoday.com

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Thanks this helps. Also Fred hoiberg at 13 is something!

IlliniFan42 said:

Strictly using HC salary as a predictive measure, based on the linked list, I don't know who in the top 10 we'd be ahead of financially. The best I'd put us at is 12th place based on this.

Men's Basketball Head Coach Salaries - USA TODAY

Ever wondered who the highest paid coach in men's basketball is? Find out today with USA TODAY's complete salary data.

sportsdata.usatoday.com

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Zags coach is 49?

Goillinikobd said:

Zags coach is 49?

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He loves where he lives (big into fly fishing) and has taken less pay to increase assistant salaries.

pweo said:

Cherry-picking a bit, but the split at 2005 is:

8 in 26 years
1 in 19 years

My glasses are orange tinted from attending UIUC for 3 of them.

I don't like getting blown out at home once - seeing it this many times in one year was something else. I'll still be at the home games next year with my unrealistic expectations.

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This is a pretty good way to break things down (bolded, above). We've had some successes in recent years and we've recruited and developed NBA level talent, but we're not peeking and playing our best basketball in March. And our defensive schemes have been sub-par.

C+ / B-

Ignoring the noise, I'm really interested more how the insiders grade this year, and the future.

IlliniFan42 said:

He loves where he lives (big into fly fishing) and has taken less pay to increase assistant salaries.

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Also lives in a state with no income tax so.m his take home check could be greater than a lot of coaches above him

Solid "B". Same finish without the infections and injuries, certainly a "C". Without those drawbacks, this team would have hypothetically jelled
and may have reached the sweet sixteen and beyond, an "A"!

We were 3-7 against teams in the Sweet Sixteen. I don't know what grade that should give us.

Consider our loses: We lost to Alabama, Tennessee, Michigan State (2). Duke, Maryland, Kentucky.

Lost to Alabama, we were overmatched.
Lost to Tennessee by 2 on a last second layup, in a game we could've won.
Lost at Michigan State by 2, with our starting point guard playing just nine minutes.
Lost again at home to MSU when we didn't score in like the last nine minutes.
Lost to Duke and Maryland, and Kentucky. We were either overmatched or extremely overmatched in each of those games.

Consider our wins:

We beat Arkansas, when they were ranked.
We beat Michigan when they were ranked.
We beat Purdue when they were ranked.

Biggest win against non Sweet Sixteen teams: At Oregon, who almost made the SS.

Summary: Experience wins over youth most of the time. Our inexperience showed in our loses. Our skill shined in our wins.

Grade: C

IlliniFan42 said:

He loves where he lives (big into fly fishing) and has taken less pay to increase assistant salaries.

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Something to be said for not being greedy and realizing when you have a good thing going. That being said, Gonzaga could definitely be a candidate for a major step back when he retires. For their sake, they gotta hope he's grooming a good Assistant to take his spot (he had Tommy Lloyd but he wasn't going to pass up a great opportunity with the Arizona job with Few still likely a decade away from retirement at the time when they are only 12 years apart in age).

I do not think Coach Underwood thinks, in private, that this was a 'B' season for his program. If so, what would he grade a team that made it two games deeper into the NCAA Tournament, on an Elite 8 trip? And then to the Final Four and further? Good grief! Suppose this year's team had won (not even tied for) a BIG regular season Championship? A B1G Tournament Championship season? Give the man some credit -- he hopes for vastly more than this.

So fire Brad? Nope. I am satisfied (with no evidence) that he feels exactly as do I: frustrated, unsatisfied, boiling for more. I think that is exactly what he thinks.

I do not believe for a moment that Coach Underwood would give this OK season a "B."

Go Illini, and let's ROLL next year. Today it looks like a foundation is in place for next year.