My hope for this past off-season was always that we'd go get a high profile DC... look at what Mike Boynton's doing with scUM's defense...
Illini Basketball 2025-2026
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Is Antigua known for being a tactician/X and O's guy? Or a stellar relationships/recruiting guy?
He can help develop big man. No doubt there.
I never saw Calipari differ to OA to draw up plays in timeouts nor BU. That's just not him...his value is getting into the door with Kofi/Andrej/name the 1st round pick at Kentucky...
I'm not sure how good any of these teams will be defensively with the personnel we are bringing in. Even bought in completely and with maximum effort..feels like top 25 would be a lofty expectation.
He can help develop big man. No doubt there.
I never saw Calipari differ to OA to draw up plays in timeouts nor BU. That's just not him...his value is getting into the door with Kofi/Andrej/name the 1st round pick at Kentucky...
I'm not sure how good any of these teams will be defensively with the personnel we are bringing in. Even bought in completely and with maximum effort..feels like top 25 would be a lofty expectation.
Sort of in the vein of what you're saying, this is something I've considered and really hope isn't the case- we seem to primarily target offense-first guys, which is a great way to make your offensive coordinator son look good. Even if it's not meant as a negative, there might be a mindset of "These are the guys who can run Tyler's offense" without any consideration for their defensive limitations.
don't mean to pick on you because i think i agree for the most part, and if you're talking about sherrone moore and pitino type stuff, you are right, and that should not be discounted in this day and age. look at ohio u. just today.
on the other hand, what was it, 34-0 against uconn? at least that was in the second weekend against a juggernaut. the "if he block a hundred, he blocks a hundred!" still makes me cringe and question his in-game xs and os, though.
against duke in msg last year?
both pretty embarrassing.
lol, c'mon. it's called illinois loyalty, not underwood loyalty.
i do like brad well enough, but i don't think it's crazy or contrarian to have questions and concerns about a program we'd all put in the top 15 nationally all-time to have such a dearth of postseason success, especially the last decade-plus to two decades.
on the other hand, what was it, 34-0 against uconn? at least that was in the second weekend against a juggernaut. the "if he block a hundred, he blocks a hundred!" still makes me cringe and question his in-game xs and os, though.
against duke in msg last year?
both pretty embarrassing.
lol, c'mon. it's called illinois loyalty, not underwood loyalty.
i do like brad well enough, but i don't think it's crazy or contrarian to have questions and concerns about a program we'd all put in the top 15 nationally all-time to have such a dearth of postseason success, especially the last decade-plus to two decades.
The problem with the defense isn’t scheme its communicating better. It’s not hard if you watch games. We have very good possessions when we switch and communicate effectively. Then just stretches where we don’t. I urge all of you to go watch Latulips breakdowns with Werner after the games.
I still maintain it’s a bad look that we’ve chosen to deploy our pretty substantial resources to build an offense first team when the coach’s son is offensive coordinator.
Is Tyler a good o coordinator? I think so. Has the axis in the sport shifted where most of the contenders tend to be elite offensively? I think that’s also right. But it still feels like we are an Iowa on steroids model, and Fran never won the conference and never got to a second weekend despite all the talent he had (Garza NPOY, Weiskamp nba pick, the Murray twins, couldn’t stand him but JBo was a plus BIG player, etc.)
Instead of grabbing strong offensive players and trying to teach them to guard, would like to see us grab a couple of athletic, defensive dogs and see if we can teach them to shoot corner 3s
Is Tyler a good o coordinator? I think so. Has the axis in the sport shifted where most of the contenders tend to be elite offensively? I think that’s also right. But it still feels like we are an Iowa on steroids model, and Fran never won the conference and never got to a second weekend despite all the talent he had (Garza NPOY, Weiskamp nba pick, the Murray twins, couldn’t stand him but JBo was a plus BIG player, etc.)
Instead of grabbing strong offensive players and trying to teach them to guard, would like to see us grab a couple of athletic, defensive dogs and see if we can teach them to shoot corner 3s
I'm old enough to have been following the Fighting Illini for nearly 50 years. I don't really need an opinion on retaining BU, because my opinion has no value in that. I do think that the coaching now in X's and O's in our 2 most memorable years (again, the last 50 years) was better than it is now, but temper that with how different the game has become. I think I am probably like the majority here (not the loudest) who cheer for the Illini only, and want the hope of obtaining the highest possible results. JMHO, but the ranting fire Brad posts, as well as the Brad cannot be criticized posts are outliers as fans. We have some posters here (2 in particular come to mind) that think every single post is directed toward them, and that they have to prove the opposite opinion wrong, going so far as to highjack threads with multiple page long arguments with the opposite opinion side (who are just as guilty by keeping it going.) It's like some just can't imagine a world where everyone doesn't see things the way they do - they have to WIN the argument. It may be just me, but I like differing opinions, and the usual banter about the team. I have never changed my opinion on anything by someone agreeing with me.
What concerns me is that (so far) I don't think Crocker's been a upgrade. Colgate this past season was #295 out of 365 teams in defensive efficiency. This year they're up to #207 after Crocker's departure.
Illinois I think has better personnel than they did a year ago. We don't seem to have improved, and Kylan in particular, does not seem to be having the same level of impact (other than against TTU).
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Thanks for the Button Dan.
So you essentially want to go back to Webers recruits?
With our resources I think we could snag an Iman Shumpert or 2.
Let's face it... if you're not a good/great offensive team, you're also likely not a very talented team. Just the name of the game, talent = scoring points. You end up a team like Tennessee, which is a good team, but Illinois is the better/more talented team as showed in our game.
All we really need to do is figure out the communication on the defensive of the ball. Versus a team that's prone to regularly stalling out offensively. To me the first is a more "fixable" problem of the two.
Just my two cents
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I'm disrobing right now thinking about a 38-33 ball game.
Seems like a fair take.
I mean, Brad recruited and rerecruited Ty for the very thing the poster is describing (minus the threes) so he must see some value in having defense-first guys on the roster, no?
And MLT has said that he's surprised we prioritized someone like Petrovic over a guard like Justin Harmon who is more of a do the little things, toughness player. So, the guy whose content you just implored people to go watch kind of supports the poster's opinion as well.
This is what I'm seeing too. Just watch the difference between the second half of the Tennessee game and the Nebraska game. We are capable of executing... Just prone to getting complacent or confused too. (I won't pretend to know which reason is more prevalent, just that the mistakes are obvious)
Yes. There is value to Ty and Bam in your defensive horse but has an offensive game you can play with.
It’s much easier to recruit offensive talent and have them play just average to above average D than it is to recruit a guy who can’t shoot and hopefully teach him to shoot….
This is right on. No one is saying Tyler isn’t a good offensive coach, but I do feel that our offense can get very stagnant at times, especially when teams switch a lot. We don’t run many set actions—it’s mostly “read and react,” which works in the NBA, but we don’t have the shooting to space the floor like they do, nor do we have the same level of athleticism.
I’d like to see some of the actions we ran last year with Will, and we’ve seen a bit of it with Andrej, like the Iverson cut over the top set of Horns. I also wish we’d run some double staggers like Nebraska was doing with Sandfort—we could do something similar with Keaton and let him make decisions.
I will say it’s been very disappointing how inconsistent Tomi has been, especially in the post. I remember Brad saying this summer that he wanted to use Tomi in the post more. At times, our offense feels one-dimensional. Sure, there will be stretches where the offense looks good, especially against weaker teams, but what happens in the tournament when we can’t grind out a game because we get stagnant and have no sets or actions to rely on?
Every year, we end up back here, criticizing Brad for not getting over the hump, and some will say it’s not Tyler’s fault since we’re still a top-10 offense. But without adjustments or actionable plays when teams know what we’re doing in the tournament, we’re likely looking at a first- or second-round exit every year.
That's Josh's responsibility to not let that happen. Meanwhile, if it ain't broke why fix it
What even is Hamer doing that you're so upset about?
The thing about Hamer is, he's a resource allocation question. Parts of the staff are very expensive (i.e. OA). I doubt we have the resources to pay 5 assistants top dollar. So we take savings where we can (Hamer, Tyler) so we can pay more for the GAs and OAs of the world. And now with revenue share you have to factor that in as well. Would you rather put another 300k a year into landing another high paid assistant, or into upgrading talent on the court? If you look at other staffs, having a couple younger, lower paid ACs is very common in the era of expanded coaching staffs, and will become even more common with revenue share.
I’m right with you
Guy has nothing to do with the defense anymore and we’re still yelling at him! Lol
Tyler hate is kinda crazy
What does he even make now… $120k? The guy down the hall doing front-end web development makes more than that
Luke Murray, whom tingles everyone’s saliva glands on here, makes $800k total comp
KP offensive rank:
Illinois 2
UConn 19
UConn won titles, Murray’s contract is more than justified, I’m just saying we are getting an absolute steal
Hamer hate on the defensive side, also a little weird… he isn’t running the defense anymore from what I’ve gathered?
What does he even make now… $120k? The guy down the hall doing front-end web development makes more than that
Luke Murray, whom tingles everyone’s saliva glands on here, makes $800k total comp
KP offensive rank:
Illinois 2
UConn 19
UConn won titles, Murray’s contract is more than justified, I’m just saying we are getting an absolute steal
Hamer hate on the defensive side, also a little weird… he isn’t running the defense anymore from what I’ve gathered?
how much of this is language barrier? how much is lack of practice and having the team healthy together? how much is it they are just bad at communication? really the main question... how much of it is fixable this season?
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