Illini Basketball 2026-2027

#776      
Combo
EmeraldCityIllini said:
Since when did this board get so up tight about “well if god forbid mirk and Vaaks get hurt I wanna finish 7th instead of 9th”

Who Cares Jake Gyllenhaal GIF by Saturday Night Live
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That sums it up perfectly! If a key player is out for the season, we're screwed. I would say that applies to Vaaks, Mirk, and Andrej. In that order.

This is true for every team in the top 10, save possibly Duke.
 
#777      
hangdog
Combo said:
That sums it up perfectly! If a key player is out for the season, we're screwed. I would say that applies to Vaaks, Mirk, and Andrej. In that order.

This is true for every team in the top 10, save possibly Duke.
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So the argument comes down to "Why doesn't the team have Duke depth?"

Time to fire Whitman for allowing such nonsense. 😤
 
#780      
ChiefGritty
Combo said:
That sums it up perfectly! If a key player is out for the season, we're screwed. I would say that applies to Vaaks, Mirk, and Andrej. In that order.

This is true for every team in the top 10, save possibly Duke.
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Perish the thought, but we've got to be less vulnerable to that than most, right?

We're not super dependent on any specific guy.

We'd be a weird PG-less offense without Vaaks, but in truth we're already a weird PG-less offense WITH Vaaks.

Very few teams have cloned their top big either.
 
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#782      
Uihoop2023!
PleaseMakeABowlGame said:
Well, it can’t FIX that, but it definitely can HELP that.

A team like USC that has stacked up on their depth - and essentially has a five star as their 9th man - is a lot better equipped to handle those injuries. The dropoff in quality just isn’t that severe.

Let’s say Illinois loses 2 of their top 8 players. And let’s say USC loses 2 of their top 8 players.

USC playing a 7 man rotation would still have a top 30 guy as their 7th man.

Illinois meanwhile, if they were to play 7, would consist of Lincoln Williams as their 7th man.

One team’s dropoff in talent, after those injuries, is just significantly less severe than the other.
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How did Eric Musselman get an account on Illinois Loyalty?
 
#783      
Fly Illini Fly!
ChiefGritty said:
We'd be a weird PG-less offense without Vaaks, but in truth we're already a weird PG-less offense WITH Vaaks.

Very few teams have cloned their top big either.
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No? Pretty confident in saying he'll be our primary initiator this year.

Really feels like the reason people don't think Vaaks is a PG, is because of his height.

But each of the last 2-3 years, our PG has been a tall dude exactly like him: Keaton, Kasparas, and even Domask.
 
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#784      
21ChampaignSt
ChiefGritty said:
Perish the thought, but we've got to be less vulnerable to that than most, right?

We're not super dependent on any specific guy.

We'd be a weird PG-less offense without Vaaks, but in truth we're already a weird PG-less offense WITH Vaaks.

Very few teams have cloned their top big either.
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We've had our best player go down for a prolonged period of time recently and we didn't really skip a beat.

It's an underrated element of how this staff configures and runs the offense. They'll find an advantage and exploit it even if their NPOY candidate takes a leave of absence.
 
#785      
ChiefGritty
Fly Illini Fly! said:
No? Pretty confident in saying he'll be our primary initiator this year.

Really feels like the reason people don't think Vaaks is a PG, is because of his height.

But each of the last 2-3 years, our PG has been a tall dude exactly like him: Keaton, Kasparas, and even Domask.
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Vaaks will be the primary initiator, and has the skills to do so well, but he's bigger, longer, stiffer and lower AST% than all the guys you mention.

Not by a lot, but he's just a further step down the path of where we've already been in terms of not having a PG in the classical sense.

I like point guards and positional basketball and I've been the boy who cried wolf on this stuff for years. I am not going to doubt BU's team construction abilities, and it's precisely because these guys don't fit neatly in positional molds that we're built to keep on trucking without a particular one of them. Again, knock on wood.
 
#786      
Combo
ChiefGritty said:
Perish the thought, but we've got to be less vulnerable to that than most, right?

We're not super dependent on any specific guy.

We'd be a weird PG-less offense without Vaaks, but in truth we're already a weird PG-less offense WITH Vaaks.

Very few teams have cloned their top big either.
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I don't think so. If Vaaks is out, that would be a huge blow to our chances. I can't see anyone else that could be that dishing, scoring PG like I think Vaaks will be. IMO the guy looks exactly like the kind of PG we want. Mirk is probably next on the list - we'd obviously be extremely thin up front and he gives us so much with rebounding, scoring, and passing. Next Andrej - excellent perimeter defender and can be electric scoring.

After those 3 I think we could "survive" but obviously not a FF calibre team.
 
#787      
wc_illini
lstewart53x3 said:
Torvik disagrees with you:

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I'd like to think PleaseMakeABowlGame is just making a point about their 9th+ men and not that they'd be better than us if we each lost two guys, so I tried removing David and Andrej and swapping our replacements with theirs to see if that gives a better result than it does with our replacements, but I couldn't get it to work.
 
#788      
Calvin
Fly Illini Fly! said:
No? Pretty confident in saying he'll be our primary initiator this year.

Really feels like the reason people don't think Vaaks is a PG, is because of his height.

But each of the last 2-3 years, our PG has been a tall dude exactly like him: Keaton, Kasparas, and even Domask.
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100%
Long time posters on this board were scarred when coaches missed on priority PG targets and then pretended we could do PG by committee. BU and crew are doing something entirely different.

LaTulip had this discussion on the F68 podcast. The host hadn't figured out how Illinois had done it year after year, but Illinois has not had a traditional PG in some time, and values ball handling and passing at all positions. The only guy I would say was an exception last year was AS, who was a match-up problem as a driver. His A/T was by far the worst at 0.8, but the value of driving, getting fouls, pulling defenders in has a lot of value that's not in the stats. I suppose KB was a traditional PG coming off the bench, but BU has also said many times he loves having different tools in the toolbox, so to speak, and having Kylan with his toolset (traditional PG and leader, great on ball defender, etc.) gave us something important especially situationally.

By the way, when I went to post this, I was checking stats and still am in disbelief --Jake and Ben, combined for 1557 minutes and ...13 TOs. Did not realize they were that good. Unreal.
 
#789      
Battle89
Det_Illini_fan said:
Which honestly, because of the changing landscape of College Athletics and how Whitman has proven himself, I’m more confident having him at the helm than anyone else. Let him be the consistency we need at the moment, while everything changes. He’s shown at great lengths that he’s able to be flexible and adapt to the changing landscape; being competitive with less and but also helping go out and get the bigger items we need when necessary as well.

I’m a big Whitman Stan. I think with any team or program, success starts at the top with leadership and direction. I’m out of state now, deep in Wolverine and Spartan territory, but it’s clear that since he took over, our branding has jumped tenfold. The respect we now are getting is apparent. I’ll keep buying merch and wearing it proudly to show Illinois belongs at the top with the best of them. Whitman’s hire was undoubtedly the spark of this new age of Illini.
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As a former Rochester Hills resident (many years ago but post-college), I am envious!
 
#790      
Fly Illini Fly!
The only team I think that's truly lacked a point gaurd... is the Mayer team (especially after Skyy departed).

Any other year we've had a point guard. They've just been too tall for people's liking.

What's ironic though, is that those same people will actually look at the 22-23 team as having that point guard, and the 23-24 team as not having one. Because, well, Jayden Epps is 6"1 and Domask is 6"6. This despite the assist rate and facilitator ability being SIGNIFICANTLY more advanced for Domask, compared to Jayden Epps.

It's all so ignorant.
 
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#791      
RollChief
Fly Illini Fly! said:
The only team I think that's truly lacked a point gaurd... is the Mayer team (especially after Skyy departed).

Any other year we've had a point guard. They've just been too tall for people's liking.

What's ironic though, is that those same people will actually look at the 22-23 team as having that point guard, and the 23-24 team as not having one. Because, well, Jayden Epps is 6"1 and Domask is 6"6. This despite the assist rate and facilitator ability being SIGNIFICANTLY more advanced for Domask, compared to Jayden Epps.

It's all so ignorant.
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It's crazy how far we've come from the question mark coming into the season being Ty Rodgers at PG, vs now having the question be Vaaks at PG
 
#792      
RockfordIllini
Fly Illini Fly! said:
The only team I think that's truly lacked a point gaurd... is the Mayer team (especially after Skyy departed).

Any other year we've had a point guard. They've just been too tall for people's liking.

What's ironic though, is that those same people will actually look at the 22-23 team as having that point guard, and the 23-24 team as not having one. Because, well, Jayden Epps is 6"1 and Domask is 6"6. This despite the assist rate and facilitator ability being SIGNIFICANTLY more advanced for Domask, compared to Jayden Epps.

It's all so ignorant.
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Agree it’s very silly. The question that should be asked is do we have a replacement for Keaton? That is, a lead guard who can shoot, play in ball screens and process and make the right play? We do. His name is Stefan Vaaks.

Will he play that role to the level Keaton did? Still very much TBD and let’s be fair, probably unlikely as Keaton was a consensus AA last year.

But those are the questions that should be asked about us. Why I tuned out national pundits 20 years ago. Most of their takes are uninformed bordering on ignorant.
 
#793      
NarrowJ
I remember getting my arse handed to me arguing Domask was our point guard

Apparently to be a PG, you have to average 5+ assists and be shorter than 6'4
 
#794      
hangdog
NarrowJ said:
I remember getting my arse handed to me arguing Domask was our point guard

Apparently to be a PG, you have to average 5+ assists and be shorter than 6'4
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I'm guessing there are many well paid college basketball analysts who believe that, so we should probably give a few similarly inclined Loyalty members a break.
 
#795      
Combo
RockfordIllini said:
Agree it’s very silly. The question that should be asked is do we have a replacement for Keaton? That is, a lead guard who can shoot, play in ball screens and process and make the right play? We do. His name is Stefan Vaaks.

Will he play that role to the level Keaton did? Still very much TBD and let’s be fair, probably unlikely as Keaton was a consensus AA last year.

But those are the questions that should be asked about us. Why I tuned out national pundits 20 years ago. Most of their takes are uninformed bordering on ignorant.
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Agreed. He's the one that can give you a lot of what Keaton did. Not saying he'll be as good (though he could be).

Blows my mind that some folks insisted Ty could be our PG, yet don't believe it with Vaaks. You want your PG to be able to score - both from outside and taking it into the lane. If the guy can't do that, defenders will sag off of him, and whatever distributing ability he has is less useful.
 
#797      
jamarvelous31
Fly Illini Fly! said:
The only team I think that's truly lacked a point gaurd... is the Mayer team (especially after Skyy departed).

Any other year we've had a point guard. They've just been too tall for people's liking.

What's ironic though, is that those same people will actually look at the 22-23 team as having that point guard, and the 23-24 team as not having one. Because, well, Jayden Epps is 6"1 and Domask is 6"6. This despite the assist rate and facilitator ability being SIGNIFICANTLY more advanced for Domask, compared to Jayden Epps.

It's all so ignorant.
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Well put. Latulip also called it out on the field of 68 after dark grades podcast on the main page.

If Vaaks were 6'2 everyone would be fine. Which is...dumb.
 
#798      
lstewart53x3
jamarvelous31 said:
Well put. Latulip also called it out on the field of 68 after dark grades podcast on the main page.

If Vaaks were 6'2 everyone would be fine. Which is...dumb.
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To give a few of the talking heads the benefit of the doubt, Vaaks did have quite a bit lower of an assist rate than Keaton last year (Keaton’s was 23.2 vs 18.1 for Vaaks).

Jason Edwards had the highest assist rate on Providence at 21.9.

But, let’s say Vaaks played for us last year in the Keaton role and Keaton played for Providence in the Vaaks role, would their assist rates have switched? How much of their stats were system and role related?
 
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