Illini Basketball

ptgrd23 · Mar 23, 2022

Funny how we notice the loss of an all american guard who is an NBA starter. We also missed Miller.

Last year Ayo 6'5" and Miller 6'4" gave us more size to compensate for playing Damonte as a 6'3" PF

This year we were exposed with Frazier 6'1" and Plummer 6'1" and Curebelo 6'1"

It hurt our rebounding and our defense. Grandison injury at IA game made us even smaller.

Next year
* Hawkins to develop a mid range game to take advantage of his 6'10" size at PF
* RJ more minutes to give us size at SF
* Dainja to replace Kofi at center ( as much as anybody can replace a 1st team AA)
* Andre back at 100%
* 2G wide open for Jayden, Sencire, Luke

TheFameProtector · Mar 23, 2022

Man, I know it's been said on here many times before, but I am so pumped to see what RJ can do next year. Hadn't looked at some of his advanced stats before and it turns out he had the highest box plus-minus on the team this year (11.5 compared to 9.3 for Kofi). Win shares per 40 also comparable to Kofi and better offensive/defensive ratings. Obviously those don't tell the whole story, but it tells me enough (along with the eye test) to know he can be a dominant player. Depending on if Kofi is back, I wouldn't be surprised to see a Keegan Murray-type leap from him.

illini0440 · Mar 23, 2022

ptgrd23 said:
Funny how we notice the loss of an all american guard who is an NBA starter. We also missed Miller.

Last year Ayo 6'5" and Miller 6'4" gave us more size to compensate for playing Damonte as a 6'3" PF

This year we were exposed with Frazier 6'1" and Plummer 6'1" and Curebelo 6'1"

It hurt our rebounding and our defense. Grandison injury at IA game made us even smaller.

Next year
* Hawkins to develop a mid range game to take advantage of his 6'10" size at PF
* RJ more minutes to give us size at SF
* Dainja to replace Kofi at center ( as much as anybody can replace a 1st team AA)
* Andre back at 100%
* 2G wide open for Jayden, Sencire, Luke

Luke isn't a 2 guard. Mostly played the 4 for us this year....sometimes the 3.

Roundball Sage · Mar 23, 2022

Spirit of the Prairie (#323): “It is very good to read praise and appreciation for Da'Monte here... He was always a warrior on the court and even more worthy of praise because he never got the spotlight.”

Good teams are pieces that fit together the right way. Different roles for different skill sets.

You never, ever blame a guy for what he CAN’T do. Maybe Da'Monte wasn’t the kind of player some in Illini Nation wanted him to be. But that’s on them. Da’Monte always played and gave to the best of his ability. That’s the ultimate measure of judgment for a player.

You only blame a guy when he isn’t trying and giving his all on the court. Very few would ever accuse Da'Monte of not giving everything he had every night. He has HEART and passion and those are his strengths.

It was great that he had that ‘elite’ Three-point shooting season. This was a nice reward and brought him some National acclaim and attention to reward him for his hard work.

Coming out of high school he was getting National notice and it was a great catch for the Illini to grab him out of the Peoria hotbed.

Anyone who might try to play to fans expectations is on a futile and no-win course. You are what you are... and you work hard and develop your game without regard to what anyone outside of your coaches and positive mentors think.

Da'Monte is credit to Peoria and Illinois ball. A part of Illini history that now runs in his family.

bluemountain · Mar 23, 2022

ptgrd23 said:
Funny how we notice the loss of an all american guard who is an NBA starter. We also missed Miller.

Last year Ayo 6'5" and Miller 6'4" gave us more size to compensate for playing Damonte as a 6'3" PF

This year we were exposed with Frazier 6'1" and Plummer 6'1" and Curebelo 6'1"

It hurt our rebounding and our defense. Grandison injury at IA game made us even smaller.

Next year
* Hawkins to develop a mid range game to take advantage of his 6'10" size at PF
* RJ more minutes to give us size at SF
* Dainja to replace Kofi at center ( as much as anybody can replace a 1st team AA)
* Andre back at 100%
* 2G wide open for Jayden, Sencire, Luke

Good points on the rebounding - especially when AC was out we got very little in the way of rebounds from our guards this year.

It will be hard to keep Goode off the floor next year; not only is he an excellent shooter but his BB IQ is probably the highest on the team

Bigtex · Mar 23, 2022

Roundball Sage said:
Spirit of the Prairie (#323): “It is very good to read praise and appreciation for Da'Monte here... He was always a warrior on the court and even more worthy of praise because he never got the spotlight.”

Good teams are pieces that fit together the right way. Different roles for different skill sets.

You never, ever blame a guy for what he CAN’T do. Maybe Da'Monte wasn’t the kind of player some in Illini Nation wanted him to be. But that’s on them. Da’Monte always played and gave to the best of his ability. That’s the ultimate measure of judgment for a player.

You only blame a guy when he isn’t trying and giving his all on the court. Very few would ever accuse Da'Monte of not giving everything he had every night. He has HEART and passion and those are his strengths.

It was great that he had that ‘elite’ Three-point shooting season. This was a nice reward and brought him some National acclaim and attention to reward him for his hard work.

Coming out of high school he was getting National notice and it was a great catch for the Illini to grab him out of the Peoria hotbed.

Anyone who might try to play to fans expectations is on a futile and no-win course. You are what you are... and you work hard and develop your game without regard to what anyone outside of your coaches and positive mentors think.

Da'Monte is credit to Peoria and Illinois ball. A part of Illini history that now runs in his family.

my comments regarding Da'Monte was that he received too many minutes. Agree he was tough, played hard, and and represented Illinois well. Because of his limitations (and some Illinois Injuries) felt he was exposed and should have received 15-20 minutes a game and others should have received some of his minutes.

Dbell1981 · Mar 23, 2022

Fanview said:
i'm excited for all the people who clamored to get minutes for RJ, Podz, and Luke to now ask for Epps, Rodgers, and Sincere to play over the latter. And the cycle continues

With all due respect i understand your point but much different situation. We are talking freshmen getting minutes over senior players that truly set the culture we have over sophmores losing minutes to talented freshmen. Its gonna be a downright battle for playing time next year and it is gonna bring out the best in our underclassmen. Gonna be fun, i think we will see 9-10 deep easy next year with lots of subbing to keep them fresh.

ptgrd23 · Mar 23, 2022

without Ayo and Adam we badly needed more scoring, defense and rebounding

Alphonso replaced Adam's scoring but not his defense or rebounding

Nobody replaced Ayo and Andre was not prior season Andre due to injury

Our seniors who were outstanding complementary players got over exposed and wore down. The last straw was Jacob getting injured in Iowa game.

JMO -- Brad need to play the freshman more to get more size, scoring and fresh legs on the court. His job was to win - not pay tribute to 5th year seniors. Izzo sacrifices wins during season to develop his team. After Andre went down Brad over relied on Trent, DaMonte Alphonso and Jacob. If he had played the freshman and Coleman more he would have had a deeper and better defensive team for the NCAA tourney.

Hopefully Brad learns from past 2 years and the early NCAA exits.

MDchicago · Mar 23, 2022

PIT_ILL said:
That athlete thing is about to change in a big way. This team had good players under 6'4" and over 6'10". RJ, Luke, Ty, etc are going to change that trend to have more length in the team over the next 12 months.

The percentage of minutes played by RSCI top 100 recruits will also likely shoot up from just under 30% this season to be a significant majority of the minutes played next season.

- We had 6 RSCI Top 100 players on the roster this season, but the three freshman, Omar and Andre (injured most of year) were 5 of the six (the other being Kofi).

- None of the five seniors/super-seniors on this year's roster were so rated and, so far, it looks like all of the incoming class (Dainja, #70 in 2020) and the new freshmen (Rodgers, Epps, Harris (54, 82 and 95 on the pre-season list, subject to end of season updating)) may be.

- Future transfers (in or out) and recruits could change the mix some, but overall the trajectory is pointing up on this metric.

Certainly not a guarantee of success and there are plenty of outliers in both directions (talented teams that fail and less talented teams that develop skills/culture and win), but do believe that having a higher level of recruit increases the potential ceiling of the program over time. I'm sure there will be growing pains along the way, but will be interesting to watch their progress and see how BU and staff help develop and mold the different pieces into a cohesive team of everyday guys.

jrichisamazing · Mar 23, 2022

ptgrd23 said:
without Ayo and Adam we badly needed more scoring, defense and rebounding

Alphonso replaced Adam's scoring but not his defense or rebounding

Nobody replaced Ayo and Andre was not prior season Andre due to injury

Our seniors who were outstanding complementary players got over exposed and wore down. The last straw was Jacob getting injured in Iowa game.

JMO -- Brad need to play the freshman more to get more size, scoring and fresh legs on the court. His job was to win - not pay tribute to 5th year seniors. Izzo sacrifices wins during season to develop his team. After Andre went down Brad over relied on Trent, DaMonte Alphonso and Jacob. If he had played the freshman and Coleman more he would have had a deeper and better defensive team for the NCAA tourney.

Hopefully Brad learns from past 2 years and the early NCAA exits.

This argument could be made early in the year but once conference season hits, BU's job is to win a conference championship...not prepare for the tournament. And as we saw this year and almost every year, the margin for error in the B1G is very small.

There is really only one correlation for deep tourney runs. Have a good offense and a good defense. As long as BU keeps building teams like these last 2, the tourney wins will come.

dbeaverfg · Mar 23, 2022

ptgrd23 said:
without Ayo and Adam we badly needed more scoring, defense and rebounding

Alphonso replaced Adam's scoring but not his defense or rebounding

Nobody replaced Ayo and Andre was not prior season Andre due to injury

Our seniors who were outstanding complementary players got over exposed and wore down. The last straw was Jacob getting injured in Iowa game.

JMO -- Brad need to play the freshman more to get more size, scoring and fresh legs on the court. His job was to win - not pay tribute to 5th year seniors. Izzo sacrifices wins during season to develop his team. After Andre went down Brad over relied on Trent, DaMonte Alphonso and Jacob. If he had played the freshman and Coleman more he would have had a deeper and better defensive team for the NCAA tourney.

Hopefully Brad learns from past 2 years and the early NCAA exits.

Alphonso's stats were above Adam's in scoring, assists, FG % and almost equal in rebounding. (14.6 vs 8.3, 1.1 vs .8, 42.4 vs 39.1 and 2.5 vs 2.8) Agree that his defense was quite a bit worse than Adam.

skyIdub · Mar 23, 2022

ptgrd23 said:
.........
Our seniors who were outstanding complementary players got over exposed and wore down. The last straw was Jacob getting injured in Iowa game.

JMO -- Brad need to play the freshman more to get more size, scoring and fresh legs on the court. His job was to win - not pay tribute to 5th year seniors. Izzo sacrifices wins during season to develop his team. After Andre went down Brad over relied on Trent, DaMonte Alphonso and Jacob. If he had played the freshman and Coleman more he would have had a deeper and better defensive team for the NCAA tourney.

Hopefully Brad learns from past 2 years and the early NCAA exits.

JAF (just actual fact)....he did win.

Are you suggesting that he should have forgone a B1G Championship in favor of "developing" freshmen and sophomores with more playing time in place of the seniors?

Before you answer that, are you suggesting that the freshmen and sophomores weren't developing in the roles they had?

Hopefully people here learn that losing one game in a 'one and done' tourney (vs. very worthy opponents with little preparation time) has less to do with convoluted fan interpretations of "success" or a successful season, and more to do with random factors at the time of the game. (injuries, illness, matchups etc)

It literally plays out every year in March. Teams that "should" win, don't.....and then everyone clamors for a reason other than "we got outplayed for one game".

Brad is not only doing "his job"....he's literally doing it better than any coach in Illinois basketball history for the last three years.

If you are going to give credit to having the players (Ayo, Kofi, Trent) that led you there.....it's silly to avoid giving the coach the same or even more credit for guiding them there....especially given what he had to guide them through over this year...as well as the pandemic realted shutdowns and bubble tourney.

Ferd · Mar 23, 2022

Fanview said:
i'm excited for all the people who clamored to get minutes for RJ, Podz, and Luke to now ask for Epps, Rodgers, and Sincere to play over the latter. And the cycle continues

Who said "play over"? Did anyone, or did you just build that strawman to have something better to attack? I would like to see the incoming freshmen play. They need to get their feet wet, and feel like they are an important part of the team, not just someone for the starters to go against in practice. How often has someone mentioned getting someone with experience from the transfer portal? Build your own experience using Illini players. Guys who wanted to be here as freshmen. The incoming guys can play over this year's freshmen if they prove to be better, and I will be ok with it. Seniority doesn't determine who plays basketball unless the coach has no vision.

Rammer34 · Mar 23, 2022

ptgrd23 said:
Funny how we notice the loss of an all american guard who is an NBA starter. We also missed Miller.

Last year Ayo 6'5" and Miller 6'4" gave us more size to compensate for playing Damonte as a 6'3" PF

This year we were exposed with Frazier 6'1" and Plummer 6'1" and Curebelo 6'1"

It hurt our rebounding and our defense. Grandison injury at IA game made us even smaller.

Next year
* Hawkins to develop a mid range game to take advantage of his 6'10" size at PF
* RJ more minutes to give us size at SF
* Dainja to replace Kofi at center ( as much as anybody can replace a 1st team AA)
* Andre back at 100%
* 2G wide open for Jayden, Sencire, Luke

This! Truth.

BBIQ · Mar 23, 2022

Gunner23 said:
All Kofi needed to do is pull a DMFW "throw the ball of the D" move and we don't turn it over. Also, if Kofi pulled that move out, it would have taken until today to find the dude that he launched the ball against.

sure, but if you've been watching him for 3 years how likely is that?

Fanview · Mar 23, 2022

Ferd said:
Who said "play over"? Did anyone, or did you just build that strawman to have something better to attack? I would like to see the incoming freshmen play.

I recall several people asking for RJ to play over Da'monte. Even as recent as the Chattanooga game. And that was 2 games ago. No strawman here.

I don't disagree that I want freshmen to get their feet wet. But I also believe people see freshmen as the next best thing and want to see them play more so they can evaluate their potential for themselves. People have a right to feel that way. But me personally, I believe these coaches see these guys in practice everyday. They know what they want to achieve with their system and I trust them to make the call.

Ferd · Mar 23, 2022

skyIdub said:
JAF (just actual fact)....he did win.

Are you suggesting that he should have forgone a B1G Championship in favor of "developing" freshmen and sophomores with more playing time in place of the seniors?

Before you answer that, are you suggesting that the freshmen and sophomores weren't developing in the roles they had?

Hopefully people here learn that losing one game in a 'one and done' tourney (vs. very worthy opponents with little preparation time) has less to do with convoluted fan interpretations of "success" or a successful season, and more to do with random factors at the time of the game. (injuries, illness, matchups etc)

It literally plays out every year in March. Teams that "should" win, don't.....and then everyone clamors for a reason other than "we got outplayed for one game".

Brad is not only doing "his job"....he's literally doing it better than any coach in Illinois basketball history for the last three years.

If you are going to give credit to having the players (Ayo, Kofi, Trent) that led you there.....it's silly to avoid giving the coach the same or even more credit for guiding them there....especially given what he had to guide them through over this year...as well as the pandemic realted shutdowns and bubble tourney.

Are you suggesting that RJ or Podz wouldn't have been a better PG than DMFW or Hawkins when Trent and Belo were both injured? Are you suggesting that running the freshmen onto the floor for a couple of minutes in most of the games would have cost the B1G title? We may have lost a little glue for a couple of minutes, but we would have gained because the opposing defense couldn't sag off of anyone. We wouldn't have lost any rebounding. We WOULD have lost some defense except when they subbed for Plummer, then our defense would have improved. For sure not playing them a little more, especially Podz is a loss for the team. Show confidence in your team, have some onions.
Reminds me of Weber saying that he got to the point where he wasn't playing to win, he was playing not to lose.

TCTORNADO · Mar 23, 2022

dbeaverfg said:
Alphonso's stats were above Adam's in scoring, assists, FG % and almost equal in rebounding. (14.6 vs 8.3, 1.1 vs .8, 42.4 vs 39.1 and 2.5 vs 2.8) Agree that his defense was quite a bit worse than Adam.

Torvik BIG rankings

Miller #73 (2021)
Plummer #16 (2022)

ptgrd23 · Mar 23, 2022

agree - in NCAA both years it felt like we were playing not to lose

Brad needs to fix this

ptgrd23 · Mar 23, 2022

Both Pods and RJ showed they could create their own shot. We needed offense badly vs IU UTchat and Houston. Cant wait till next year

GForce · Mar 23, 2022

illini0440 said:
Luke isn't a 2 guard. Mostly played the 4 for us this year....sometimes the 3.

I can see Luke taking over Jake's role at some point

GForce · Mar 23, 2022

ptgrd23 said:
Funny how we notice the loss of an all american guard who is an NBA starter. We also missed Miller.

Last year Ayo 6'5" and Miller 6'4" gave us more size to compensate for playing Damonte as a 6'3" PF

This year we were exposed with Frazier 6'1" and Plummer 6'1" and Curebelo 6'1"

It hurt our rebounding and our defense. Grandison injury at IA game made us even smaller.

Next year
* Hawkins to develop a mid range game to take advantage of his 6'10" size at PF
* RJ more minutes to give us size at SF
* Dainja to replace Kofi at center ( as much as anybody can replace a 1st team AA)
* Andre back at 100%
* 2G wide open for Jayden, Sencire, Luke

I think this is why we saw so much RJ and Luke against a long, athletic Houston team

altgeld88 · Mar 23, 2022

skyIdub said:
JAF (just actual fact)....he did win.

Are you suggesting that he should have forgone a B1G Championship in favor of "developing" freshmen and sophomores with more playing time in place of the seniors?

Before you answer that, are you suggesting that the freshmen and sophomores weren't developing in the roles they had?

Hopefully people here learn that losing one game in a 'one and done' tourney (vs. very worthy opponents with little preparation time) has less to do with convoluted fan interpretations of "success" or a successful season, and more to do with random factors at the time of the game. (injuries, illness, matchups etc)

It literally plays out every year in March. Teams that "should" win, don't.....and then everyone clamors for a reason other than "we got outplayed for one game".

Brad is not only doing "his job"....he's literally doing it better than any coach in Illinois basketball history for the last three years.

If you are going to give credit to having the players (Ayo, Kofi, Trent) that led you there.....it's silly to avoid giving the coach the same or even more credit for guiding them there....especially given what he had to guide them through over this year...as well as the pandemic realted shutdowns and bubble tourney.

Mon frère, this GIF would be dead of exhaustion if applied as often as warranted since the final buzzer on Sunday:

soupy17 · Mar 23, 2022

Chukwuwumba said:
Andres Feliz would have really helped out his team ( and last years team, and future teams lol)

Jayden Epps

altgeld88 · Mar 23, 2022

Props to @DICKnaggie from the I-BB thread on March 12 for endorsing the recent podcast that Deon had with Eddie Johnson. I listened to it last evening. 90 mins of solid gold. Fantastic conversation spanning from growing up on the mean streets of the West Side; to the towering stature of Lou Henson as a coach and teacher; to getting knocked on his a$$ constantly as a frosh and realizing he needed to hit the weight room and put on 40+ lbs; to what he took away from his study of economics and history at UIUC; to his stellar 18-yr pro career; and also a word about how the kids today don't know how to listen and learn, and that no one ever says "no" to them in H.S.

We hear regularly on the Loyalty board from those criticizing the coaches for failing to develop the players sufficiently. Put aside what BU did with Ayo, Trent and DMW, to pick three outstanding examples. It might just be that certain players (just like certain people in life) are more coachable than others. Present-day, 18-year-old prima donnas just out of high school, and deluded that they're heading to The Show in 12 months, are often the least coachable of all.

Highly recommended listening; I downloaded it on iTunes:

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Illini Basketball

Winged Warrior

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