Illinois Hoops Recruiting Thread (September 2018)

[Foggy Notion]

lets go get Kofi

Kofi is for closers.

 

[illini80]

We knew it was coming, and really the signs haven't been good for a long time. Best to move on.

I'm just so tired of coming close. Tired of being one player away from a good team.

I really have no idea what it takes to land these guys we consistently miss on. We'll get players who could develop into something special, but not enough of them do to rise to the level we expect and so often fall short of.

 

[ivwilsoniv]

This is dumb. The cycle of mediocrity continues. Sorry, but Illinois basketball needs to start changing things or it’s going to be the same for a long time. Maybe this year will be different but the Illini aren’t going to start winning without the talent to compete in the B1G. Recruit big boy style and get talent to jump start the winning. Then they will come. Much harder the other way (win first).

 

[Andy Kaufman]

This is really gettin old and puts me in a really, really bad mood. Ohio State comes in to our state snd has their way with us? This is total bs. I like BU and will give him another 2 years but that’s it. The Illini better be a top 20 team or as far as I’m concerned he can hit the road.

 

[GortTheRobot]

Losing an Illinois guy to a blue blood is one thing, but to anyone other than that is rugged. Pretty tiresome. Looking forward to the day this trend ends...hope I can still chew solid food.

 

[DB11Headband]

Honestly, I’d gladly welcome Cockburn after all of these nut punches.

 

[SescIllini]

BU seems to have a lot of ties in the coaching community. I could see him bringing in a better recruiter, it may not even be to recruit the state. Not a lot of state loyalty might be better if just having a midwest guy. Walker was best recruiter and coach on Groce staff. But is the weakest on this staff.

 

[OldSlowPG]

Everybody take a breath!!

 

[Deleted member 2050]

Too soon?

 

[SescIllini]

Are we even on Chris Payton's radar? I was impressed when I saw him play against Okoro. I thought he looked like the better fit with our system. Has good size and moves well with and without the ball.

I agree, Payton seems like he could be a solid 4 year player. Could surprise some folks in college.

 

[illiniguy24]

Kids don’t want to stay home nearly as much anymore, the world is a much smaller place than it used to be.

 

[ILL in IA]

This is dumb. The cycle of mediocrity continues. Sorry, but Illinois basketball needs to start changing things or it’s going to be the same for a long time. Maybe this year will be different but the Illini aren’t going to start winning without the talent to compete in the B1G. Recruit big boy style and get talent to jump start the winning. Then they will come. Much harder the other way (win first).

What would you like to change. We have a new coach hired by our new ad playing games in our newly renovated arena in new uniforms while getting ready to get a new practice facility. What's left to change?

 

[Love the Illini]

Do any of you think we will even get a player signed for the November signing period? Looking less likely all the time. I am more than willing to give Underwood and his coaches some time but you also have to recruit some Big 10 caliber talent at some point. Liddell was a big loss for us as both a player and due to how it makes us look in the state of Illinois. Downstate players like him are who Illinois use to get. With Smith transferring and Liddell going elsewhere not a good image for Illinois going forward. Only going to get harder to bring the talent we need to Illinois the longer we are down.

 

[Obelix]

BU seems to have a lot of ties in the coaching community. I could see him bringing in a better recruiter, it may not even be to recruit the state. Not a lot of state loyalty might be better if just having a midwest guy. Walker was best recruiter and coach on Groce staff. But is the weakest on this staff.

If Walker was the best recruiter on Groce's staff but the weakest recruiter on BU's staff, and the difference in recruiting was the assistants, then by default this staff would be doing many times better in recruiting that the previous staff, which is simply not true.

It seems to me that some fans are trying to present recruiting as a function of just the assistants in order to exonerate the head coach, but reality is that the main determinant of overall recruiting in a program is always the head coach.

 

[Second and Chalmers]

Tired of being one player away from a good team.

 

[Second and Chalmers]

If Walker was the best recruiter on Groce's staff but the weakest recruiter on BU's staff, and the difference in recruiting was the assistants, then by default this staff would be doing many times better in recruiting that the previous staff, which is simply not true.

It seems to me that some fans are trying to present recruiting as a function of just the assistants in order to exonerate the head coach, but reality is that the main determinant of overall recruiting in a program is always the head coach.

I don't disagree with the broader thrust of this post at all. Indeed, my ideal in bringing in a new assistant would be someone with experience installing and running the Underwood system from an X's and O's perspective, where I think there can be complimentary and overlapping skills.

But let's not be too cute about it. The John Groce era was a disaster. Jamall Walker was someone we'd never have considered hiring from elsewhere, who was rescued from that sinking ship (and given a bunch of money) for the explicit and direct purpose of retaining Jeremiah Tilmon and Javon Pickett, and preserving our connections to Mark Smith and EJ Liddell.

They're all gone now. As he should soon be.

 

[GortTheRobot]

The rational part of me says to forget all about the misses, and just look at who we get to build the roster. As the saying goes, real-estate is location, location, location...I think we need to accept that, for Illinois, recruiting boils down to winning, winning, winning.

 

[Spoon House]

Jamall Walker was someone we'd never have considered hiring from elsewhere, who was rescued from that sinking ship (and given a bunch of money) for the explicit and direct purpose of retaining Jeremiah Tilmon and Javon Pickett, and preserving our connections to Mark Smith and EJ Liddell.

They're all gone now. As he should soon be.

I chewed on this a while and I can't find much to criticize. Short of asking Rob (which I think would be pretty unfair to do), we don't know how much of a role Walker plays in the current team's morale/day-to-day practice/whatever. And unless he's doing a ton in these areas... why do we have him?

 

[IllFanInMi]

The rational part of me says to forget all about the misses, and just look at who we get to build the roster. As the saying goes, real-estate is location, location, location...I think we need to accept that, for Illinois, recruiting boils down to winning, winning, winning.

I don’t think there is any rational way to justify how much in state talent we can’t get to play here. Sure, there’s always the spring signings we had this year, and kudos to the staff getting what they did, but perhaps the energy spent there impacted where they’re at now this fall.

 

[FeelYourPaign]

What is odd about this graph to me is that I would expect recruiting to be the leading indicator. So, I would think that our performance would be improving in 2011-12, about 2 years after we had the #1 class in 2009-10. But almost continuously through those 10 years, as the recruiting gets worse, the performance gets even worse. That doesn't disprove the value of talent, but it does say that our coaching has been for sh*t. So, I think the jury is still out I'm not even slightly happy with where we are, but if BU can start to do more with what he has, rather than the pattern we have suffered through for the last 10 years, then all of this starts to be stood on its head.

I'm reluctantly hanging in there. And realistically, what choice do I have? I don't have millions to give to Josh so that I can make these calls.

 

[illinidd12]

I give about a 5% chance on landing Miller. Need a decent big in a bad way!

 

[FeelYourPaign]

I don't disagree with the broader thrust of this post at all. Indeed, my ideal in bringing in a new assistant would be someone with experience installing and running the Underwood system from an X's and O's perspective, where I think there can be complimentary and overlapping skills.

But let's not be too cute about it. The John Groce era was a disaster. Jamall Walker was someone we'd never have considered hiring from elsewhere, who was rescued from that sinking ship (and given a bunch of money) for the explicit and direct purpose of retaining Jeremiah Tilmon and Javon Pickett, and preserving our connections to Mark Smith and EJ Liddell.

They're all gone now. As he should soon be.

I saw that Spoon House said much the same thing, but I have to say that when you boil it down . . . and this post does it well . . . He GAWN !!

 

[Second and Chalmers]

What is odd about this graph to me is that I would expect recruiting to be the leading indicator. So, I would think that our performance would be improving in 2011-12, about 2 years after we had the #1 class in 2009-10.

To be clear, that "talent level" ranking reflects the total talent on the roster for each of those seasons. It's neither a leading or a trailing indicator, it's the actual players that were on those teams.

For that and a seemingly bottomless vat of additional wisdom, please do see Soupy17's magnum opus: https://www.illinoisloyalty.com/Forum/threads/recruiting-talent-vs-conference-standings.24569/

 

[FeelYourPaign]

To be clear, that "talent level" ranking reflects the total talent on the roster for each of those seasons. It's neither a leading or a trailing indicator, it's the actual players that were on those teams.

For that and a seemingly bottomless vat of additional wisdom, please do see Soupy17's magnum opus: https://www.illinoisloyalty.com/Forum/threads/recruiting-talent-vs-conference-standings.24569/

OK, thanks. I think I knew that at one time, but forgot it. Was thinking of it as a recruiting measure and forgot that its a total team talent measure.
I now remember the convo about weighting the players by class year, for example, as a measure of experience.
Good call, SC

 

[westms77]

The team's recent performance and the recruiting skill of the staff are definitely issues here, but the first place I'm looking to place blame right now is on Mike Thomas. The half-ssa job he did on the SFC (which is now only 10 years behind other elite facilities instead of 20) and failure to keep up with the Joneses on secondary facilities is killing us. It's not a coincidence that our most recent big recruiting losses came at the hands of Oregon, Kentucky, and OSU.

Improving what we can improve now will help, but I'm not sure I see anything other than a steady march of classes in the #20-30 range as our best case scenario until we catch up. You can get back to the dance with that, but it's going to take some work.

We need about $300MM of plastic surgery to make things right. To use a different analogy, these kids are looking to buy an iPhone X and we're selling a bag full of old Motorola Razr flip phones.

And we all remember when that phone was awesome...just like our program