Illinois Basketball Historic Standards

There has been a lot of discussion recently about what fans should reasonably expect Illinois basketball to achieve in a given season – what is the historic standard? And of course, is BU living up to it? Some posters say his seat should be ice cold because, “Do you remember what it was like before he got here?”. Some posters (and ADs?) believe making the second weekend occasionally is a fair expectation. Some have said Illinois is not as good of a program as we like to think it is and making the second weekend in a crapshoot tournament shouldn’t be a job requirement. So, I wanted to look at the results and see what kind of picture they painted. The truth is, none of the above are wrong. It’s all about your perspective.


This is an infographic that I hope sheds light on these different perspectives. My goal wasn’t to show that one side is right or wrong – it’s simply meant to help us understand each other’s point of view.

Methodology
So, before I summarize some of the results, I’ll talk about the methodology here. In order to compare one season to another, I needed to assign a value to each season which meant I had to (somewhat arbitrarily) give values to all the major, season-long milestones that comprise a season (wins, championships, AP ranking, tournament appearances, etc.). I’ve included a table outlining the scoring system. Using that system, I assigned a value to every season since 1980-81. To account for variances in different eras (like number of games played, number of teams invited to the tourney, addition of conference tournaments, etc.), each score was divided by the total number of points possible for that season. So, the numbers you see on the Y-axis are essentially a percentage that shows how closely that season came to being “perfect”.


*A few peculiarities:

• We were banned from the tournament in ’91, so I reduced the total points possible for that season accordingly.
• Same for the Covid year, except I did still award that team points for making the tournament since it inevitably was going to.
• I awarded us the B1G Title in ‘21
• I tried to do this objectively, but an unintended result of this methodology is that it values the regular season a little more than the post season. The most glaring example of this is 1984 ranking higher than 89 due to the regular season championship + winning two games in the tournament.

RESULTS
Alright, I’m going to leave most of this up for interpretation, but I did want to explain the different historic averages that I’ve highlighted.

• Overall moving average
  
  • Exactly what it sounds like. Our good coaches have spent most seasons near or above this line and BU is no exception. Post-sanction Henson, post-Dee Weber, and Groce spent most of their time beneath it.
• BDD Average
  
  • “Before and During Dee”. Dee was the exclamation point to a quarter century of near excellence. This line signifies the average level of performance from 1981 – 2006.
• AD Average
  
  • “After Dee”. After Dee left, we started our descent into darkness. The difference between how we performed in the 25 years before Dee and the 17 years after Dee is stark.
• Pre-Groce Average
  
  • I view JG as kind of like Covid to our basketball program. He brought everything to a screeching halt and just like many businesses who were affected by Covid, the goal is to get back to where we were prior to Covid, not lower our standards because of it.

Finally, what is an “average season” at Illinois? Well, again, it depends on your frame of reference:

• Overall average
  
  • 21 wins
  • 7 weeks in the Top 25
  • A tournament appearance and a first-round exit
    • Make the tournament 67% of seasons
    • Two or more tournament wins 16% of seasons
• Pre-Groce average
  
  • 22 wins
  • 8 weeks in the Top 25
  • A tournament appearance with a second-round exit
    • Make the tournament 75% of seasons
    • Two or more tournament wins 22% of seasons

21ChampaignSt said:

Illinois Basketball Historic Standards

There has been a lot of discussion recently about what fans should reasonably expect Illinois basketball to achieve in a given season – what is the historic standard? And of course, is BU living up to it? Some posters say his seat should be ice cold because, “Do you remember what it was like before he got here?”. Some posters (and ADs?) believe making the second weekend occasionally is a fair expectation. Some have said Illinois is not as good of a program as we like to think it is and making the second weekend in a crapshoot tournament shouldn’t be a job requirement. So, I wanted to look at the results and see what kind of picture they painted. The truth is, none of the above are wrong. It’s all about your perspective.
View attachment 26364

This is an infographic that I hope sheds light on these different perspectives. My goal wasn’t to show that one side is right or wrong – it’s simply meant to help us understand each other’s point of view.

Methodology
So, before I summarize some of the results, I’ll talk about the methodology here. In order to compare one season to another, I needed to assign a value to each season which meant I had to (somewhat arbitrarily) give values to all the major, season-long milestones that comprise a season (wins, championships, AP ranking, tournament appearances, etc.). I’ve included a table outlining the scoring system. Using that system, I assigned a value to every season since 1980-81. To account for variances in different eras (like number of games played, number of teams invited to the tourney, addition of conference tournaments, etc.), each score was divided by the total number of points possible for that season. So, the numbers you see on the Y-axis are essentially a percentage that shows how closely that season came to being “perfect”.

View attachment 26365
*A few peculiarities:

• We were banned from the tournament in ’91, so I reduced the total points possible for that season accordingly.
• Same for the Covid year, except I did still award that team points for making the tournament since it inevitably was going to.
• I awarded us the B1G Title in ‘21
• I tried to do this objectively, but an unintended result of this methodology is that it values the regular season a little more than the post season. The most glaring example of this is 1984 ranking higher than 89 due to the regular season championship + winning two games in the tournament.

RESULTS
Alright, I’m going to leave most of this up for interpretation, but I did want to explain the different historic averages that I’ve highlighted.

• Overall moving average
  
  • Exactly what it sounds like. Our good coaches have spent most seasons near or above this line and BU is no exception. Post-sanction Henson, post-Dee Weber, and Groce spent most of their time beneath it.
• BDD Average
  
  • “Before and During Dee”. Dee was the exclamation point to a quarter century of near excellence. This line signifies the average level of performance from 1981 – 2006.
• AD Average
  
  • “After Dee”. After Dee left, we started our descent into darkness. The difference between how we performed in the 25 years before Dee and the 17 years after Dee is stark.
• Pre-Groce Average
  
  • I view JG as kind of like Covid to our basketball program. He brought everything to a screeching halt and just like many businesses who were affected by Covid, the goal is to get back to where we were prior to Covid, not lower our standards because of it.

Finally, what is an “average season” at Illinois? Well, again, it depends on your frame of reference:

• Overall average
  
  • 21 wins
  • 7 weeks in the Top 25
  • A tournament appearance and a first-round exit
    • Make the tournament 67% of seasons
    • Two or more tournament wins 16% of seasons
• Pre-Groce average
  
  • 22 wins
  • 8 weeks in the Top 25
  • A tournament appearance with a second-round exit
    • Make the tournament 75% of seasons
    • Two or more tournament wins 22% of seasons

Click to expand...

21ChampaignSt said:

Illinois Basketball Historic Standards

There has been a lot of discussion recently about what fans should reasonably expect Illinois basketball to achieve in a given season – what is the historic standard? And of course, is BU living up to it? Some posters say his seat should be ice cold because, “Do you remember what it was like before he got here?”. Some posters (and ADs?) believe making the second weekend occasionally is a fair expectation. Some have said Illinois is not as good of a program as we like to think it is and making the second weekend in a crapshoot tournament shouldn’t be a job requirement. So, I wanted to look at the results and see what kind of picture they painted. The truth is, none of the above are wrong. It’s all about your perspective.
View attachment 26364

This is an infographic that I hope sheds light on these different perspectives. My goal wasn’t to show that one side is right or wrong – it’s simply meant to help us understand each other’s point of view.

Methodology
So, before I summarize some of the results, I’ll talk about the methodology here. In order to compare one season to another, I needed to assign a value to each season which meant I had to (somewhat arbitrarily) give values to all the major, season-long milestones that comprise a season (wins, championships, AP ranking, tournament appearances, etc.). I’ve included a table outlining the scoring system. Using that system, I assigned a value to every season since 1980-81. To account for variances in different eras (like number of games played, number of teams invited to the tourney, addition of conference tournaments, etc.), each score was divided by the total number of points possible for that season. So, the numbers you see on the Y-axis are essentially a percentage that shows how closely that season came to being “perfect”.

View attachment 26365
*A few peculiarities:

• We were banned from the tournament in ’91, so I reduced the total points possible for that season accordingly.
• Same for the Covid year, except I did still award that team points for making the tournament since it inevitably was going to.
• I awarded us the B1G Title in ‘21
• I tried to do this objectively, but an unintended result of this methodology is that it values the regular season a little more than the post season. The most glaring example of this is 1984 ranking higher than 89 due to the regular season championship + winning two games in the tournament.

RESULTS
Alright, I’m going to leave most of this up for interpretation, but I did want to explain the different historic averages that I’ve highlighted.

• Overall moving average
  
  • Exactly what it sounds like. Our good coaches have spent most seasons near or above this line and BU is no exception. Post-sanction Henson, post-Dee Weber, and Groce spent most of their time beneath it.
• BDD Average
  
  • “Before and During Dee”. Dee was the exclamation point to a quarter century of near excellence. This line signifies the average level of performance from 1981 – 2006.
• AD Average
  
  • “After Dee”. After Dee left, we started our descent into darkness. The difference between how we performed in the 25 years before Dee and the 17 years after Dee is stark.
• Pre-Groce Average
  
  • I view JG as kind of like Covid to our basketball program. He brought everything to a screeching halt and just like many businesses who were affected by Covid, the goal is to get back to where we were prior to Covid, not lower our standards because of it.

Finally, what is an “average season” at Illinois? Well, again, it depends on your frame of reference:

• Overall average
  
  • 21 wins
  • 7 weeks in the Top 25
  • A tournament appearance and a first-round exit
    • Make the tournament 67% of seasons
    • Two or more tournament wins 16% of seasons
• Pre-Groce average
  
  • 22 wins
  • 8 weeks in the Top 25
  • A tournament appearance with a second-round exit
    • Make the tournament 75% of seasons
    • Two or more tournament wins 22% of seasons

Click to expand...

21ChampaignSt said:

Illinois Basketball Historic Standards

There has been a lot of discussion recently about what fans should reasonably expect Illinois basketball to achieve in a given season – what is the historic standard? And of course, is BU living up to it? Some posters say his seat should be ice cold because, “Do you remember what it was like before he got here?”. Some posters (and ADs?) believe making the second weekend occasionally is a fair expectation. Some have said Illinois is not as good of a program as we like to think it is and making the second weekend in a crapshoot tournament shouldn’t be a job requirement. So, I wanted to look at the results and see what kind of picture they painted. The truth is, none of the above are wrong. It’s all about your perspective.
View attachment 26364

This is an infographic that I hope sheds light on these different perspectives. My goal wasn’t to show that one side is right or wrong – it’s simply meant to help us understand each other’s point of view.

Methodology
So, before I summarize some of the results, I’ll talk about the methodology here. In order to compare one season to another, I needed to assign a value to each season which meant I had to (somewhat arbitrarily) give values to all the major, season-long milestones that comprise a season (wins, championships, AP ranking, tournament appearances, etc.). I’ve included a table outlining the scoring system. Using that system, I assigned a value to every season since 1980-81. To account for variances in different eras (like number of games played, number of teams invited to the tourney, addition of conference tournaments, etc.), each score was divided by the total number of points possible for that season. So, the numbers you see on the Y-axis are essentially a percentage that shows how closely that season came to being “perfect”.

View attachment 26365
*A few peculiarities:

• We were banned from the tournament in ’91, so I reduced the total points possible for that season accordingly.
• Same for the Covid year, except I did still award that team points for making the tournament since it inevitably was going to.
• I awarded us the B1G Title in ‘21
• I tried to do this objectively, but an unintended result of this methodology is that it values the regular season a little more than the post season. The most glaring example of this is 1984 ranking higher than 89 due to the regular season championship + winning two games in the tournament.

RESULTS
Alright, I’m going to leave most of this up for interpretation, but I did want to explain the different historic averages that I’ve highlighted.

• Overall moving average
  
  • Exactly what it sounds like. Our good coaches have spent most seasons near or above this line and BU is no exception. Post-sanction Henson, post-Dee Weber, and Groce spent most of their time beneath it.
• BDD Average
  
  • “Before and During Dee”. Dee was the exclamation point to a quarter century of near excellence. This line signifies the average level of performance from 1981 – 2006.
• AD Average
  
  • “After Dee”. After Dee left, we started our descent into darkness. The difference between how we performed in the 25 years before Dee and the 17 years after Dee is stark.
• Pre-Groce Average
  
  • I view JG as kind of like Covid to our basketball program. He brought everything to a screeching halt and just like many businesses who were affected by Covid, the goal is to get back to where we were prior to Covid, not lower our standards because of it.

Finally, what is an “average season” at Illinois? Well, again, it depends on your frame of reference:

• Overall average
  
  • 21 wins
  • 7 weeks in the Top 25
  • A tournament appearance and a first-round exit
    • Make the tournament 67% of seasons
    • Two or more tournament wins 16% of seasons
• Pre-Groce average
  
  • 22 wins
  • 8 weeks in the Top 25
  • A tournament appearance with a second-round exit
    • Make the tournament 75% of seasons
    • Two or more tournament wins 22% of seasons

Click to expand...

1. I think you should put the coach’s face on their starting year and not their ending year
2. WOW! This makes it quite clear that Weber killed this program, not Groce. He just happened to do so after coaching Self’s players to the best year in team history. Groce basically just poked a corpse with a stick and got no response.
3. Nice work

21ChampaignSt said:

Illinois Basketball Historic Standards

There has been a lot of discussion recently about what fans should reasonably expect Illinois basketball to achieve in a given season – what is the historic standard? And of course, is BU living up to it? Some posters say his seat should be ice cold because, “Do you remember what it was like before he got here?”. Some posters (and ADs?) believe making the second weekend occasionally is a fair expectation. Some have said Illinois is not as good of a program as we like to think it is and making the second weekend in a crapshoot tournament shouldn’t be a job requirement. So, I wanted to look at the results and see what kind of picture they painted. The truth is, none of the above are wrong. It’s all about your perspective.
View attachment 26364

This is an infographic that I hope sheds light on these different perspectives. My goal wasn’t to show that one side is right or wrong – it’s simply meant to help us understand each other’s point of view.

Methodology
So, before I summarize some of the results, I’ll talk about the methodology here. In order to compare one season to another, I needed to assign a value to each season which meant I had to (somewhat arbitrarily) give values to all the major, season-long milestones that comprise a season (wins, championships, AP ranking, tournament appearances, etc.). I’ve included a table outlining the scoring system. Using that system, I assigned a value to every season since 1980-81. To account for variances in different eras (like number of games played, number of teams invited to the tourney, addition of conference tournaments, etc.), each score was divided by the total number of points possible for that season. So, the numbers you see on the Y-axis are essentially a percentage that shows how closely that season came to being “perfect”.

View attachment 26365
*A few peculiarities:

• We were banned from the tournament in ’91, so I reduced the total points possible for that season accordingly.
• Same for the Covid year, except I did still award that team points for making the tournament since it inevitably was going to.
• I awarded us the B1G Title in ‘21
• I tried to do this objectively, but an unintended result of this methodology is that it values the regular season a little more than the post season. The most glaring example of this is 1984 ranking higher than 89 due to the regular season championship + winning two games in the tournament.

RESULTS
Alright, I’m going to leave most of this up for interpretation, but I did want to explain the different historic averages that I’ve highlighted.

• Overall moving average
  
  • Exactly what it sounds like. Our good coaches have spent most seasons near or above this line and BU is no exception. Post-sanction Henson, post-Dee Weber, and Groce spent most of their time beneath it.
• BDD Average
  
  • “Before and During Dee”. Dee was the exclamation point to a quarter century of near excellence. This line signifies the average level of performance from 1981 – 2006.
• AD Average
  
  • “After Dee”. After Dee left, we started our descent into darkness. The difference between how we performed in the 25 years before Dee and the 17 years after Dee is stark.
• Pre-Groce Average
  
  • I view JG as kind of like Covid to our basketball program. He brought everything to a screeching halt and just like many businesses who were affected by Covid, the goal is to get back to where we were prior to Covid, not lower our standards because of it.

Finally, what is an “average season” at Illinois? Well, again, it depends on your frame of reference:

• Overall average
  
  • 21 wins
  • 7 weeks in the Top 25
  • A tournament appearance and a first-round exit
    • Make the tournament 67% of seasons
    • Two or more tournament wins 16% of seasons
• Pre-Groce average
  
  • 22 wins
  • 8 weeks in the Top 25
  • A tournament appearance with a second-round exit
    • Make the tournament 75% of seasons
    • Two or more tournament wins 22% of seasons

Click to expand...

Re: Underwood, last year was objectively a bad year. The previous two years, even with our faltering in the NCAAT, were objectively good years.

The question we seek this season:

Was last season a one off or the beginning of a trend?

I'll applaud the nice effort. But overall, not how I'd approach it.

First, far too heavily weighted to regular season.

Second, total wins and tourney wins are too linear of a number. Each successive step gets tougher.

Third, AP Rankings should be weighted toward the end. Recently, someone said that our preseason rankings in the top 25 for four years straight was unprecedented (I think this was the case). I couldn't believe it, but it was accurate. We had years in the 80's and 00's where we started out unranked but finished ranked. That's really the only measurement that matters.

Thanks for the work. I'm guessing this is in a format that would allow you to tweak formulas if you wanted.

BretMyBeachHouse said:

I'll applaud the nice effort. But overall, not how I'd approach it.

First, far too heavily weighted to regular season.

Click to expand...

Thanks. I agree, actually. I was trying not to introduce any of my own bias - which would push me toward overvaluing the post season. The result was more of a 50/50 weighting between regular season and post season. The 1984 and 1989 seasons show how this scoring system can produce some wonky results.

BretMyBeachHouse said:

Recently, someone said that our preseason rankings in the top 25 for four years straight was unprecedented (I think this was the case). I couldn't believe it, but it was accurate. We had years in the 80's and 00's where we started out unranked but finished ranked. That's really the only measurement that matters.

Thanks for the work. I'm guessing this is in a format that would allow you to tweak formulas if you wanted.

Click to expand...

That was me. Yes, I believe IF we are ranked in the preseason this year, that'll be the first time we've been ranked preseason 4x in a row.
I like your other suggestions. I considered giving higher values to higher rankings but it just got too time consuming. ~18 AP polls per year over 45 years is a lot of data input.

But yes, I can continue to work on it and make updates. Perhaps someday I'll share a v2.

Appreciate the feedback.

Nice work. Would be interesting to see avg lines for some peers, say MSU, UM, IU, PU, Ariz, Baylor, Mizzou (Lol), maybe?

FloridaMan said:

Nice work. Would be interesting to see avg lines for some peers, say MSU, UM, IU, PU, Ariz, Baylor, Mizzou (Lol), maybe?

Click to expand...

My God man. This guy has a real job too.

21ChampaignSt said:

There has been a lot of discussion recently about what fans should reasonably expect Illinois basketball to achieve in a given season – what is the historic standard? And of course, is BU living up to it? Some posters say his seat should be ice cold because, “Do you remember what it was like before he got here?”. Some posters (and ADs?) believe making the second weekend occasionally is a fair expectation. Some have said Illinois is not as good of a program as we like to think it is and making the second weekend in a crapshoot tournament shouldn’t be a job requirement. So, I wanted to look at the results and see what kind of picture they painted. The truth is, none of the above are wrong. It’s all about your perspective.
View attachment 26364

This is an infographic that I hope sheds light on these different perspectives. My goal wasn’t to show that one side is right or wrong – it’s simply meant to help us understand each other’s point of view.

Methodology
So, before I summarize some of the results, I’ll talk about the methodology here. In order to compare one season to another, I needed to assign a value to each season which meant I had to (somewhat arbitrarily) give values to all the major, season-long milestones that comprise a season (wins, championships, AP ranking, tournament appearances, etc.). I’ve included a table outlining the scoring system. Using that system, I assigned a value to every season since 1980-81. To account for variances in different eras (like number of games played, number of teams invited to the tourney, addition of conference tournaments, etc.), each score was divided by the total number of points possible for that season. So, the numbers you see on the Y-axis are essentially a percentage that shows how closely that season came to being “perfect”.

View attachment 26365
*A few peculiarities:

• We were banned from the tournament in ’91, so I reduced the total points possible for that season accordingly.
• Same for the Covid year, except I did still award that team points for making the tournament since it inevitably was going to.
• I awarded us the B1G Title in ‘21
• I tried to do this objectively, but an unintended result of this methodology is that it values the regular season a little more than the post season. The most glaring example of this is 1984 ranking higher than 89 due to the regular season championship + winning two games in the tournament.

RESULTS
Alright, I’m going to leave most of this up for interpretation, but I did want to explain the different historic averages that I’ve highlighted.

• Overall moving average
  
  • Exactly what it sounds like. Our good coaches have spent most seasons near or above this line and BU is no exception. Post-sanction Henson, post-Dee Weber, and Groce spent most of their time beneath it.
• BDD Average
  
  • “Before and During Dee”. Dee was the exclamation point to a quarter century of near excellence. This line signifies the average level of performance from 1981 – 2006.
• AD Average
  
  • “After Dee”. After Dee left, we started our descent into darkness. The difference between how we performed in the 25 years before Dee and the 17 years after Dee is stark.
• Pre-Groce Average
  
  • I view JG as kind of like Covid to our basketball program. He brought everything to a screeching halt and just like many businesses who were affected by Covid, the goal is to get back to where we were prior to Covid, not lower our standards because of it.

Finally, what is an “average season” at Illinois? Well, again, it depends on your frame of reference:

• Overall average
  
  • 21 wins
  • 7 weeks in the Top 25
  • A tournament appearance and a first-round exit
    • Make the tournament 67% of seasons
    • Two or more tournament wins 16% of seasons
• Pre-Groce average
  
  • 22 wins
  • 8 weeks in the Top 25
  • A tournament appearance with a second-round exit
    • Make the tournament 75% of seasons
    • Two or more tournament wins 22% of seasons

Click to expand...

Nicely done, i.e., elite.

CharliedonSurf said:

My God man. This guy has a real job too.

Click to expand...

And it often gets neglected because of this board.

I suppose it is being older, but I have tried to post about keeping things in perspective. The "need to take another step or else" folks who are looking for greener pastures really need to relax. Top half of the B1G and a tourney bid every year is a tough standard for anyone to meet consistently. Look at OSU and Holtman last year - he is also a top 10 paid coach. BU has us in a great place. He keeps doing what he does, and we will get there. Every year we go the tourney and compete for a B1G championship is another year of results we can showcase to recruits. Add in some NBA players and it is just going to get easier.

alaskaillini said:

I suppose it is being older, but I have tried to post about keeping things in perspective. The "need to take another step or else" folks who are looking for greener pastures really need to relax. Top half of the B1G and a tourney bid every year is a tough standard for anyone to meet consistently. Look at OSU and Holtman last year - he is also a top 10 paid coach. BU has us in a great place. He keeps doing what he does, and we will get there. Every year we go the tourney and compete for a B1G championship is another year of results we can showcase to recruits. Add in some NBA players and it is just going to get easier.

Click to expand...

I considered Henson a great coach but didn’t think he was a good ncaa tourney coach.

Sample size for underwood is much smaller and still in progress.

Coaching / preparing / motivating for ncaa tourney is significantly different than regular season games.

Bigtex said:

I considered Henson a great coach but didn’t think he was a good ncaa tourney coach.

Sample size for underwood is much smaller and still in progress.

Coaching / preparing / motivating for ncaa tourney is significantly different than regular season games.

Click to expand...

It may be different but I think the "everyday guys" approach resulted in some very beat up / exhausted teams going into the tourney. BU has been successful in competing in the B1G because he did get his guys to put out effort every game (not so much last year), but I think there is a price his teams and B1G teams in general pay for beating each other up all season long - i.e. against Houston we had Frazier with a bad shoulder and pink eye, Grandison banged up, etc. The year before we had Ayo in a mask and had played a brutal B1G tourney a week before getting handled by Loyola. It is a lot easier physically and mentally to get to the tourney still fresh if you are Gonzaga.

Infographic has been updated with this year's results along with some minor adjustments to the methodology.
Again, this is just my personal way of ranking/scoring the individual seasons. It's not perfect but I do think it's fair. The first post of this thread has more details.

Big takeaways:
- Twin peaks! Every great era of Illini basketball has had two distinct peaks. The 80's had the '84 team and the '89 team. The 00's had the '01 team and the '05 team. Now, the '20s has the '21 team and the '24 team.
- I personally believe our baseline as a program should be the "Pre-Groce Average" because it takes into account the good, the bad, and the average, while throwing out the truly awful outliers that Groce gave us. BU's tenure now safely exceeds that line and is inching closer to the BDD line. If you throw out his first two years, by this metric, BU's tenure on average has been better than every coach not named Bill Self and he's really not far off from Self either.

Where does this season rank in the last 40 years?
1. 2005 - 95.5 pts
(this is where it gets controversial)
2. 1984 - 70.2 pts
3. 2021 - 66.7 pts
4. 2001 - 64.5 pts
5. 1989 - 63.8 pts
6. 2024 - 59 pts

I realize this is blasphemy having the 89 team so low. This ranking system values teams that combined conference championships with tournament success. 89 suffers from not having won the conference. The 2021 team didn't have the tourney success but they won the regular season* and BTT championships to make up for it.

Anyway, here you go!

There's always going to be something about 2001 that stands apart from 2021 and even this year 2023-2024 season. What stands apart is all the homegrown talent that came together to don the Illini uniform(Frank Williams, Sergio McClain, Brian Cook, Lucas Johnson, Sean Harrington, Marcus Griffin, Damir Krupalija). I don't include Corey Bradford b/c he was from Memphis and Robert Archibald was from Missouri. But, we all get the idea. I miss the days when Illinois kids stayed home and took some pride in going to the state school. Also, this was the group of players that caused me to fall in love with Illinois basketball. These guys introduced me to becoming an Illini fan after the Bulls broke up the band after the 98 season. So, that is part of why that team holds a special place in my Illini heart.

Ayo was the first one in a long time that chose to stay in-state and made it cool to go to Illinois again. Although being a transfer, it was nice to see Terrence come back to the home state and finish out his last 2 collegiate years at the state school. But, keeping kids in state is just not like it used to be and certainly is different in the transfer portal era.

In general, I think sports fans/social media are wayyyyy too hard on coaches and players.

As long as the team is consistently making NCAA Tournaments, my standards are met. Championships or March Madness runs are gravy. Recent years have greatly exceeded my expectations, and I am grateful.

I like your methodology but don’t agree with point values. Here is another system

-1 point less than 15
1 point 20 win season
1 point 25 win
1 point 30 win season

1 point regular season Big Ten champ
1 point BTT champ

1 point sweet sixteen
1 point elite 8
1 point final 4
1 point championship

.5 point beating Missouri lose= -.5
.5 point winning holiday tournament like Maui

2005 team 8.5 points
1989 team 7.5 points note no BTT but won early season tournaments. 2005 team gets the advantage because they won the conference and conference tournament

2001 team 5.5 points
2024 team 5.5 points
1984 team 5.5 points
2006 team 3 points
2021 team 2.5 points gave credit for regular season
1998 team 1.5 points
1983 team 1.5 points
1999 team -1.5 points


With this scale 5 points or more you had a really good season
Anything over 2 is a good season
1-2 is ok
0 or less not a good season

21ChampaignSt said:

Infographic has been updated with this year's results along with some minor adjustments to the methodology.
Again, this is just my personal way of ranking/scoring the individual seasons. It's not perfect but I do think it's fair. The first post of this thread has more details.

Big takeaways:
- Twin peaks! Every great era of Illini basketball has had two distinct peaks. The 80's had the '84 team and the '89 team. The 00's had the '01 team and the '05 team. Now, the '20s has the '21 team and the '24 team.
- I personally believe our baseline as a program should be the "Pre-Groce Average" because it takes into account the good, the bad, and the average, while throwing out the truly awful outliers that Groce gave us. BU's tenure now safely exceeds that line and is inching closer to the BDD line. If you throw out his first two years, by this metric, BU's tenure on average has been better than every coach not named Bill Self and he's really not far off from Self either.

Where does this season rank in the last 40 years?
1. 2005 - 95.5 pts
(this is where it gets controversial)
2. 1984 - 70.2 pts
3. 2021 - 66.7 pts
4. 2001 - 64.5 pts
5. 1989 - 63.8 pts
6. 2024 - 59 pts

I realize this is blasphemy having the 89 team so low. This ranking system values teams that combined conference championships with tournament success. 89 suffers from not having won the conference. The 2021 team didn't have the tourney success but they won the regular season* and BTT championships to make up for it.

Anyway, here you go!


View attachment 33042

View attachment 33044

Click to expand...

Well I somehow missed this the first go-around back in June, so just let me say this is top-notch work and appreciated.

Navy_illini said:

I like your methodology but don’t agree with point values. Here is another system

-1 point less than 15
1 point 20 win season
1 point 25 win
1 point 30 win season

1 point regular season Big Ten champ
1 point BTT champ

1 point sweet sixteen
1 point elite 8
1 point final 4
1 point championship

.5 point beating Missouri lose= -.5
.5 point winning holiday tournament like Maui

2005 team 8.5 points
1989 team 7.5 points note no BTT but won early season tournaments. 2005 team gets the advantage because they won the conference and conference tournament

2001 team 5.5 points
2024 team 5.5 points
1984 team 5.5 points
2006 team 3 points
2021 team 2.5 points gave credit for regular season
1998 team 1.5 points
1983 team 1.5 points
1999 team -1.5 points


With this scale 5 points or more you had a really good season
Anything over 2 is a good season
1-2 is ok
0 or less not a good season

Click to expand...

I dig it. This is probably closer to actual fan perception. The only thing I would take issue with is a 20 win season, conference championship, BTT championship, and Sweet 16 are all considered equal achievements here.

The other hard part is assigning raw point values across years. The number of games played, teams invited to the tournament, conference tournaments (as you noted) have all made it so that teams today have more points possible than in the past. So you probably need to adjust for that somehow.

Hard to argue with your end result though. Good stuff.

I also think it should be a percentage of wins in the season rather than 20 win season. In 1989 I think the amount of regular season games was less than it is now. It is easier to get to 20 wins now than it was due to the amount of games. In 1984 when we got screwed at Kentucky the final season total of games was 31 (26-5).

21ChampaignSt said:

I dig it. This is probably closer to actual fan perception. The only thing I would take issue with is a 20 win season, conference championship, BTT championship, and Sweet 16 are all considered equal achievements here.

The other hard part is assigning raw point values across years. The number of games played, teams invited to the tournament, conference tournaments (as you noted) have all made it so that teams today have more points possible than in the past. So you probably need to adjust for that somehow.

Hard to argue with your end result though. Good stuff.

Click to expand...

It’s hard because there are so many different eras of college basketball

Pre 1939 no NCAA tournament
Prior to 1950 only 8 teams and you had to be a conference champion
1975 32 teams
1985 64 teams
1986 3 point line established and shot clock

The best players also probably didn’t get a chance to play in college prior due to athletic scholarships around 1950and that doesn’t involve the discussion of race

To me late 70s early 80s was the start of modern basketball

JTOWNillini said:

In general, I think sports fans/social media are wayyyyy too hard on coaches and players.

As long as the team is consistently making NCAA Tournaments, my standards are met. Championships or March Madness runs are gravy. Recent years have greatly exceeded my expectations, and I am grateful.

Click to expand...

I agree about beging too hard on players especially but also on coaches.

At the same time, I want this program to capture a national championship. It really, really is Illinois' turn!