Illini Basketball 2026-2027

#351      
RollChief
I saw that TTU/UK exhibition was announced for late October, and I was curious about what TTU and Illinois looked like in terms of ratings considering respective power forward injuries...

FWIW, if you remove JT Toppin from TTU's roster on Torvik, they drop from 13 to 26, and if you remove Mirk from our roster, we drop from 6 to 12. Apologies if someone has already done this exercise already

Quick note: This does not factor in Donovan Atwell
 
#352      
wc_illini
RollChief said:
I saw that TTU/UK exhibition was announced for late October, and I was curious about what TTU and Illinois looked like in terms of ratings considering respective power forward injuries...

FWIW, if you remove JT Toppin from TTU's roster on Torvik, they drop from 13 to 26, and if you remove Mirk from our roster, we drop from 6 to 12. Apologies if someone has already done this exercise already

Quick note: This does not factor in Donovan Atwell
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Now that Tovik's site added Darrion Williams, it let's me add Atwell and subtract Toppin to calculate an expected margin (Illinois by 3.2) and win probability (61%).

If both teams were full strength, it would tip a few tenths of a point and percentage points in our favor
 
#353      
RollChief
wc_illini said:
Now that Tovik's site added Darrion Williams, it let's me add Atwell and subtract Toppin to calculate an expected margin (Illinois by 3.2) and win probability (61%).

If both teams were full strength, it would tip a few tenths of a point and percentage points in our favor
Click to expand...
Got it, yeah I was having trouble adding in Atwell so I appreciate it. It's hard to say whether either will be back, but it seems like it's a bit more likely to get Mirk back after a stress fx in his foot after 3 months vs JT Toppin coming back from a torn ACL after 9, but who knows.

With both Mirk and JT Toppin out, this is kind of a nutty one to visualize how it would play out. We would likely have at least 2-3 inches on them at every position (assuming they don't start Bagayoko or Akuentok), but it would really test our defense against explosive guards/wings and good shooting early. That said, it seems like the rebounding margin would be like +20 us...

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#359      
NarrowJ
Fly Illini Fly! said:
https://twitter.com/x/status/2090459096780554347

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Click to expand...

Excellent stuff (and also got MLT fix in previous post). The inversion that happens when you have bigs that can step out and shoot, initiate offense, or do both really mixes up the defense. Great point in 1st video on that, defenses not used to solving that problem. You see an Illinois/Iowa St/etc on your schedule and prepare for it maybe only a couple of times per season, because it's so unique.
 
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