lstewart53x3
- Scottsdale, Arizona
Illini Basketball 2026-2027
- Status
St John’s is too high (just lost their best player).
lstewart53x3
- Scottsdale, Arizona
Replying to myself here to add that while encouraging, you’d obviously rather hear good things than bad things about a player, I file this under fluff piece. I still expect Williams to be the 9th or 10th man and likely play sparingly.
True statement. And like Brad said, basically he has that "want to" (desire) to be highly competitive and also great athleticism and offensive capability. That combination of traits will get you on the floor. If he's learning and picking things up, not hurting us on the floor, and elevating the team, or any of the young for that matter, play them. Keeps guys fresh and more aggressive on defense. Run teams out the gym.
Athleticism matters and he loves to play defense. I think he will see more minutes towards end of season if he rebounds and defends at a high level.
Early indications point to EDG
RichardKeenesCousin
Richard Keene's Cousin
It would really suck to play a 9-man team and be the only guy not getting double-teamed.
we'll get them in Detroit.
I didn’t see this posted anywhere. If someone did, my apologies for duplicating. In case anyone wants to follow in depth. This is just the European division. Turkey seems to be doing very well. There is also an Americas division as well.
FIBA World Cup European Division
A lot of reasons.
Conditioning- It is really tough to "wear out" other teams. Teams that have utilized it to some degree of effectiveness have been high pressure defenses. We play at a very slow pace, relatively speaking. High major athletes are extremely well conditioned these days, especially since so many of them are upper-classmen transfers. You are playing a lot of grown men, who won't necessarily hit a wall. If they do, it comes very late in the game. It often might be too late to make a difference
Continuity- Familiarity with the guys you are sharing the court with is vitally important. Sure, being on the court with the same group all the time would, in theory, help that, but its a long season and players are going to miss time.
Matchups- The rise of analytics has led to a LOT of matchup hunting and lineup tinkering to exploit certain mismatches. When you have set platoons, you limit your ability to take advantage of these things. We know how driven our coaches are by the numbers and matchups... they'd never paint themselves in a corner in this way.
Most importantly, you are limiting the amount of time you have your best 5 on the court. You either play your 5 best and then your next 5 best, creating stretches where you are likely to be over-matched, or you split up your best 5 and they don't play together.
Several coaches have tried it, they all eventually abandoned it.
To grue's point, Cal tried it the year he had 9 future NBA players. (14-15) He was trying to keep everyone happy. It kind of bit him in recruiting the next year, because a lot of guys want to play 30+ minutes. (4 top 20 recruits in 2014; 2 in 2015, while trying to replace 7 guys who were drafted. Fortunately for him, the #71 rated player that year, a Canadian kid, turned out to be pretty good...)
When asked after the 2014-15 season loss to Wisconsin in the Final 4 he said: "If you ask me if I'm ever going to platoon again, my answer is NO. Last season was an absolute outlier. It's just not the way I like to coach. I would rather play seven or eight guys because I believe that gives us the best chance to win. I think we wrote the book on platooning this year, but I hope we stick it on the shelf and never have to use it again."
He has tinkered with the idea again in subsequent years, occasionally doing a hockey style substitution in-game, but never embraced it as a primary strategy again.
Yeah I never understood some fans' fascination with the idea. It's extremely rare for any coach to do it. You want your best players on the floor as much as possible and furthermore you want them to build chemistry - hard to do if you're constantly subbing in guys. You do need some depth because of foul trouble, injuries, and fatigue.
And no stud wants to play just 20 mpg so the coach get do this.
It's this.
The part of the equation that people always overlook is that to play your bench more means your starters are going to play less. That is almost never a good thing.
There are exceptions, of course.
In the Underwood years, it seems like it has only happened to us on very rare occasions when he is especially annoyed with effort lol
Great overview on it more generally @Emerson Bigguns
RabidDawgClassic
- Los Angeles, CA
So we've went from having a #9thman problem all of the way to playing him (and our #10th man) for 20 mins a game?
Oh man… #11th man looking hard at that portal right now.
Will Vaaks play qualifiers in the August window (8/27 - 8/31)? That feels sub-optimal to leave right when school starts but I have no frame of reference for how college even works nowadays. I'm still on "Quad Day is Tuesday, go to your Monday classes on Wednesday" protocol which is certainly a relic of a bygone era kept only in the minds of those of the past who send greetings.
It would serve to end the charade in the NIL era.
It’s just now a CYA by schools with Mirk studying what music/DJ theory?
illinoisgrad1990
- Bloomington, IL
Will not miss DJ one bit. From the article Big Jack posted... I think most fans would consider this a "not the flex you think it is" statement. Guess it depends upon how you define "immeasurable impact".
Illwinsagain
- Cary, IL
I just remembered the time that Brad was so pissed off at the team that he did a hockey substitution. I had forgotten about that until this came up.
Illinifan533
- Normal, Illinois
Don’t know if this has been shared anywhere yet
Haha! Yes, he was a remarkable referee... I certainly made a lot of remarks about him...
The vast majority of HM college athletes do most of their work on-line, rather than in class. The flexibility for workouts, practice, and travel is extremely advantageous for them.
It's probably not ideal from a team building/chemistry standpoint, but it's not like he's going sightseeing... he will be playing against some of the best players in the world. Fortunately, he has been around the team a bit this summer, starting that process.
You probably don't get a kid like him on your team, unless you plan to honor his commitment to his country.
I bet @pruman91 got something to say about that…..
- Status