Illini Basketball

#151      
gary?
21ChampaignSt said:
Sharing this infographic that I update at the conclusion of each year.

We are fully back. By my objective-ish methodology, the BU era is now equal to the Before and During Dee era (1980 - 2006) of Illini basketball. And BU is quickly becoming the most decorated coach in Illini basketball history.

As a reminder, I started this a few years ago to:
a) Quantify the successfulness of a full season - regular season and post season summed together rather than thinking of them in a more siloed way.
b) Understand what our expectations should realistically be as a program.
c) Give context / a frame of reference for all the differing opinions about what those expectations should be. For example if one person's frame of reference is the After Dee years and another's is the BDD years, those expectations will probably deviate wildly. I wanted to visualize that.

Methodology:
Basically, I assign a point value to all the relevant milestones that happen throughout a season. (Scoring system is below) Then, I sum up those values and turn them into a percentage of the total points possible for that particular year. A perfect season would have a score of 100. Different years have different points possible due to number of games, conference tournaments, and size of the tournament field. This allows me to standardize the results across different eras.

This year, I did increase the value of a Final Four. It always bothered me that 1984 scored higher than 1989, but it was easy to view that as an anomaly..until this year's team scored a little bit lower than I felt was fair. Even still though, this year ranks as our 6th best season behind three non-Final Four teams: 1984, 2001, and 2021. Won't lie, that still seems not right to me, but I'm trying to keep in mind the point of this - to look at the season in its totality and not overvalue too much the one game difference between an Elite Eight and a Final Four for example.

View attachment 50016

Scoring:

View attachment 50017
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i appreciate the effort, but no way a final four is worth less than a conference title, be it reg season or tourney.
ncaas way underrepresented. when you talk about a program’s success, especially in comparison to teams outside your conference, it’s always performance in the ncaa tournament.
 
#152      
21ChampaignSt
Thanks! Glad you liked it, @chrisRunner7

gary? said:
i appreciate the effort, but no way a final four is worth less than a conference title, be it reg season or tourney.
ncaas way underrepresented. when you talk about a program’s success, especially in comparison to teams outside your conference, it’s always performance in the ncaa tournament.
Click to expand...
I agree. In my scoring system a conference title is worth 8 points and a Final Four is worth 14 (2 points for making the tournament + 2 points for each tournament win to get to the Final Four + 4 point Final Four bonus). So a Final Four is worth as much as a conference reg season and tournament championship combined.

For reference, a perfect season where you go undefeated, win the conference regular season and tournament titles and win the NCAA title would be worth 42 points. So, relative to that, 14 points is a lot - 33% of the overall points vs 19% of the overall points for a conference title.

It's a good discussion though. I value the tournament as much as anyone but my goal here is to judge an entire season.
 
#154      
lstewart53x3
Where does this put us in the B1G?

Mirk: 1st team all B1G
Andrej: 2nd team all B1G
Vaaks: 3rd team all B1G
Coleman: All Freshman team
 
#156      
Combo
lstewart53x3 said:
Where does this put us in the B1G?

Mirk: 1st team all B1G
Andrej: 2nd team all B1G
Vaaks: 3rd team all B1G
Coleman: All Freshman team
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I think those picks are a bit optimistic. That said, if Tomi reverts to his 1st year form, he could make some lists. Before last season, many thought he would be our best player.
 
#158      
sdiver68
21ChampaignSt said:
Thanks! Glad you liked it, @chrisRunner7


I agree. In my scoring system a conference title is worth 8 points and a Final Four is worth 14 (2 points for making the tournament + 2 points for each tournament win to get to the Final Four + 4 point Final Four bonus). So a Final Four is worth as much as a conference reg season and tournament championship combined.

For reference, a perfect season where you go undefeated, win the conference regular season and tournament titles and win the NCAA title would be worth 42 points. So, relative to that, 14 points is a lot - 33% of the overall points vs 19% of the overall points for a conference title.

It's a good discussion though. I value the tournament as much as anyone but my goal here is to judge an entire season.
Click to expand...

Saying the goal is to value an entire season is open to interpretation. I value high ceiling, development, exposure, and end game success (Elite 8+) over easy early wins and consistent but ultimately capped veterans taking down a conference championship and losing in the round of 32.
 
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#159      
AnnoyedWithGarza
Combo said:
I think those picks are a bit optimistic. That said, if Tomi reverts to his 1st year form, he could make some lists. Before last season, many thought he would be our best player.
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Why are those optimistic? If we have a season where we are in the top 3 in the conference standings (I believe we will be fighting for the regular season championship), having 3 players total on the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd teams would almost be required to get there. Coleman is going to have to give us good starter stats, and I don't see the freshmen in the conference being that much stronger than Coleman.

I understand that people need to downplay their expectations because they have been hurt in the past, but some of you go too far in underestimating what our expectations should be. I can see two on the 1st team to be honest (Vaaks and Mirk or Stoj and Mirk).
 
#160      
NarrowJ
AnnoyedWithGarza said:
Why are those optimistic? If we have a season where we are in the top 3 in the conference standings (I believe we will be fighting for the regular season championship), having 3 players total on the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd teams would almost be required to get there. Coleman is going to have to give us good starter stats, and I don't see the freshmen in the conference being that much stronger than Coleman.

I understand that people need to downplay their expectations because they have been hurt in the past, but some of you go too far in underestimating what our expectations should be. I can see two on the 1st team to be honest (Vaaks and Mirk or Stoj and Mirk).
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I think the thought we get 3 guys on the 3 teams is optimistic, but I also don't think those selections necessarily directly translate to a better season. We had 3 on the 21-22 and 23-24 teams but only 1 on last year's F4 team. The frustrating 22-23 team had more guys on All-B1G teams than last year's team.

All-B1G selections:

20-21: 1st Team (2: Kofi, Ayo)
21-22: 1st Team (Kofi), 2nd Team (Trent), 3rd Team (Plummer)
22-23: 1st Team (TSJ), 3rd Team (Mayer)
23-24: 1st Team (2: TSJ, Domask), 3rd Team (Hawkins)
24-25: 3rd Team (KJ)
25-26: 1st Team (Keaton)
 
#161      
21ChampaignSt
sdiver68 said:
Saying the goal is to value an entire season is open to interpretation. I value high ceiling, development, exposure, and end game success (Elite 8+) over easy early wins and consistent but ultimately capped veterans taking down a conference championship and losing in the round of 32.
Click to expand...
I think the 2022 team is a good example.

2025, 2022, and 2021 all had 2nd round exits. To someone only looking at tournament results, all three of these seasons would be viewed as equal or close to equal.

A more extreme example would be to compare a team like the NC St. Final Four team from a few years ago to our 05 team. If you're only evaluating post season or if you're weighting the post season too heavily, you'd look at those two seasons and say that Illinois had a marginally better year.

This is why I wanted to look at it holistically - to tease out the nuances and truly be able to compare seasons and eras to one another.

Also, I already have pretty high value put on the tournament. Here is how I weight everything:

NCAA tourney = ~45%
Reg season championship = ~20%
Conference tourney championship = ~15%
Total wins = ~10%
AP Poll ranking = ~10%

But yeah, I fully understand some people might have the tournament at like 75% or something. Which I appreciate but just don't quite share that view. Especially since if you don't perform well in the regular season, you are highly unlikely to realize that full 75%.
 
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