We don’t have a lot of luck with European players…nothing against them personally but last year we didn’t have any and look at where we were…bring in an ace recruiter who can recruit nationally.
Illinois Hoops Recruiting Thread
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Don't think the scheme is a massive issue to be totally honest. It could be better, but guys are just missing wide open shots right now
Tomi and KJ have still be awesome overall this year. Just totally false. Tomi is a huge difference maker for this team and Kasparas still is our best player, even though he's struggling
Yeah, but at what point does the scheme need to adjust for the fact that we are not a good 3pt shooting team. I get that some of these guys were better shooters elsewhere, but at this point it's obvious that it isn't working this season. We rank #326 in 3 point percentage, and #5 in 3pt attempts. I actually wonder if we own the record for the widest rankings gap between percentage and attempts.
I think that is the downside of building a team with the sole emphasis on everyone should be able to shot 3 point shots,so what happens when
those shots ain’t going in ?. I believe there are great value in players like Dain,Ty who can’t shoot but are able to play in the paint ….a good
example is towards the end of last season when Dain bailed our you know what during the B1G tournament when those shots wasn’t falling.
Now we’ve became one dimensional and easy to guard especially when our 3 point shooting sucks.
Ok fair points but still haven’t been impressed that much…and btw it’s close between KJ and Riley. I would give the edge to Riley right now.
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Is he another 17 or 18 year old that would be a freshman?
He'll be 19 at the beginning of next season.
I think part of the problem is we exceeded expectations in Nov/Dec, and have come back down to earth and are now probably about where we realistically should be or somewhat underperforming. I'm all about enjoying the growth this year and looking forward to next year. That's my orange glasses, glass half full take.
Buuuuuuuuuuuuuut, this coaching staff is a train wreck outside of OA and Geoff on several fronts.
- Roster management - if you want to have everyone transfer/graduate same year and you think you can flip the entire roster and be successful then fine, do it, but don't keep doing it when the results prove you're not actually able to succeed w/that approach. That's on BU.
- The IL ACs (in title) that should be grad assistants/film splicers, coffee getters. They have way too much responsibility and just are not all boy wonders a la Grant Udinski the 29 y.o. newly hired OC for the Jags.
-subpoint to the above, but worthy of it's own - NEPOTISM - I liked Tyler as essentially a plus walk-on plus player, and I'm ok having him on staff in some capacity for an extra body in practice and so he can learn the profession but there's just no way he should be an AC.
BU has shown the capacity to learn from mistakes in the past, and let's face it, he's not going anywhere. I hope JW has a very earnest convo w/him in the offseason and we drop the 3 ACs not named OA/Geoff and bring in some more experienced and qualified people. Sorry for the rant.
Doesn't it seem like we'd be going down a similar path as we are this year? Who are we running off and whose spot would he take?
I'm sure that he's amazing, but right now, we have a major cohesiveness issue because we're asking human beings to be on the same page from the jump. The formula, to establish culture, is to keep a group of guys together for at least two years. These results can't be unexpected. You can't control illness or injury, which definitely play a part.
It seems to me that Brad tried selling a system that mirrors the NBA, which is the freedoms to shoot the three point shot and pushing it. 1)It most definitely helps recruiting, but 2)it doesn't fit his personality and 3)this team doesn't fit what's made him successful in his career.
This is a coach who, at the core, doesn't love playing freshmen. Now, he's got four carrying the bulk of the minutes.
I, personally, think that we have to focus on getting "old" again and that can only be done by keeping our core in tact and adding players that are more experienced and fit his personality. Not sure that going overseas for another inexperienced(at the college level) kid is the ticket unless we have our culture and his(Brad's) comfort level is back
He hasn't been the same coach this year. Seems like he's trying to soften up because maybe his kids don't handle a heavy hand we'll? There's just no leader.
Illwinsagain
- Cary, IL
His history at UI would show differently. Sure, last year he didn't, but previous years, he had started freshman. It didn't always work out, but he did it.
My understanding of Sarr is that he's more of an athlete than pretty much anyone we have on our current roster.
As far as whose spot he's taking, well, there are going to be spots. I am as much of a "roster continuity is important" guy as anyone on this board, but there is zero chance that everyone comes back next season. I really hope we bring back 5 or 6 guys. That would be great. And if we do that there are rotation spots that will need to be filled. KJ will be in the draft, and there's a good chance Riley will too. That's two spots. It doesn't seem like Booth or Ben are going to be back. That's one rotation spot and one non-rotation roster spot available.
Just because we bring in a few new people doesn't mean cohesiveness won't be there. We had new players last season too, and some of them were huge contributors. We just have to have some decent amount of returning players.
JJB
- Chicago, IL
He went to an NAIA school, which is in the same bucket as a JUCO re: recent court rulings.
Was debating whether to post this in the Rutgers postgame thread or here, but probably more fitting here.
After watching almost every game, following recruiting news, etc in the BU era...it seems pretty clear to me that BU went through a drastic philosophy change after our loss to Houston in '22. Even though we had just come off a B1G reg season title (something we haven't achieved since), it was clear that BU felt that we didn't have the right horses to compete nationally in March and that his roster construction philosophy at that time might be more suited for regular season conference success than in the NCAAT.
All we heard from that point onward was how we're going to fill our roster with positional size that can shoot, as that was what the staff felt like would be the perfect recipe to compete in March. IMO this is a great plan *in theory* but once you realize that tall guys for their positions that can shoot above avg. from three are extremely rare especially at the college level.....really the only way to stack your roster this way is to just pull portal players from other P5 teams as much as you can, because getting kids out of HS and hoping that you can develop them into this "positional size + shooting" archetype is a crapshoot.
NIL booming right at that exact moment was a perfect storm as it allowed us to scour the country for older guys that fit "our type" and cast off guys that "weren't EDG/Culture fit" or to be more honest "guys that can't shoot or bring positional mismatches"....i.e Sencire, Amani, Ty, Jeremy Fears, Jase Butler etc.
Ultimately Brad pretty much decided to become the bizzaro-world 2010s era Calipari where you fill your roster out with with 1 and dones and 2 and dones (Brad just did it with older portal guys vs. top ten HS guys like Cal). The problem is that this strategy is absolutely contingent on having a stable staff (culture buy in) and above average talent evaluators who can identify not only talent, but how pieces will fit together.
With this year shaping up to be 22'-23' redux, it's pretty clear that BU's strategy is failing. For every success we've had with this strategy (KJ,Ivisic, Domask, TSJ), we've had absolute, complete failures with others (MMeyer, Skyy, Booth, Humrichous, etc) that end up derailing/exposing fatal flaws in our team.
Brad and co need to figure out what is going wrong in their evaluation, and culture building process because I have a feeling the NIL spigot will not be there forever. Sure we have a top ten NIL in the country *now* but 2 out of the last 3 years we've had a high NIL $$$ team that is completely underperfoming expectations, if this continues how many donors will be willing to keep opening their checkbooks if the possibilities are just more Ben's and Skyys and Meyers? And then we're really screwed...
I don't know what the right balance is between using NIL to your full advantage and going old school and getting mostly HS kids to buy in and develop, but what our staff is doing right now is obviously not working.
Sorry for the long post!
After watching almost every game, following recruiting news, etc in the BU era...it seems pretty clear to me that BU went through a drastic philosophy change after our loss to Houston in '22. Even though we had just come off a B1G reg season title (something we haven't achieved since), it was clear that BU felt that we didn't have the right horses to compete nationally in March and that his roster construction philosophy at that time might be more suited for regular season conference success than in the NCAAT.
All we heard from that point onward was how we're going to fill our roster with positional size that can shoot, as that was what the staff felt like would be the perfect recipe to compete in March. IMO this is a great plan *in theory* but once you realize that tall guys for their positions that can shoot above avg. from three are extremely rare especially at the college level.....really the only way to stack your roster this way is to just pull portal players from other P5 teams as much as you can, because getting kids out of HS and hoping that you can develop them into this "positional size + shooting" archetype is a crapshoot.
NIL booming right at that exact moment was a perfect storm as it allowed us to scour the country for older guys that fit "our type" and cast off guys that "weren't EDG/Culture fit" or to be more honest "guys that can't shoot or bring positional mismatches"....i.e Sencire, Amani, Ty, Jeremy Fears, Jase Butler etc.
Ultimately Brad pretty much decided to become the bizzaro-world 2010s era Calipari where you fill your roster out with with 1 and dones and 2 and dones (Brad just did it with older portal guys vs. top ten HS guys like Cal). The problem is that this strategy is absolutely contingent on having a stable staff (culture buy in) and above average talent evaluators who can identify not only talent, but how pieces will fit together.
With this year shaping up to be 22'-23' redux, it's pretty clear that BU's strategy is failing. For every success we've had with this strategy (KJ,Ivisic, Domask, TSJ), we've had absolute, complete failures with others (MMeyer, Skyy, Booth, Humrichous, etc) that end up derailing/exposing fatal flaws in our team.
Brad and co need to figure out what is going wrong in their evaluation, and culture building process because I have a feeling the NIL spigot will not be there forever. Sure we have a top ten NIL in the country *now* but 2 out of the last 3 years we've had a high NIL $$$ team that is completely underperfoming expectations, if this continues how many donors will be willing to keep opening their checkbooks if the possibilities are just more Ben's and Skyys and Meyers? And then we're really screwed...
I don't know what the right balance is between using NIL to your full advantage and going old school and getting mostly HS kids to buy in and develop, but what our staff is doing right now is obviously not working.
Sorry for the long post!
I don’t know enough to say whether the assistants are incompetent. I guess they’re easy enough to blame when 20 year olds hit a rough spot. The injuries haven’t helped, either. When you have the inevitable shooting droughts, you need someone that can break down the defense and create. The one player they had last year that was the hardest to replace IMHO, was TSJ , because he could get to the basket and get easy points . No one currently on the roster is really good at that. Not even KJ. As far as some blaming roster composition, the NIL pot is not bottomless.
Just wondering why he was playing so many minutes if this is how the staff feels???
It hasn’t worked out for both sides this year … Ben is not very happy that he’s been coming off the bench …
He wants more shots as well … 10+ shots a game every game and he’s not been getting that here consistently …
AyoDos11
- Southern Illinois
He wants...more shots?
I agree with you about the absence of a high-functioning superstar on this roster: KJ is a tremendous talent but it's early in his career yet, and there is nothing like an Ayo or Kofi or TSJ (or Marcus) on the roster. Brad has shown a real knack for developing superstars and then running a system, of one sort or another, that allows that star to carry the team to major successes. So this year is very different.
I don't think NIL is the source of the problem here. Instead, it appears that it takes more than a single season to develop a star and the team around him. The cases of Ayo and TSJ fit this hypothesis (Kofi developed on Ayo's team and then took over the next year, I guess I'd say).
Gotta beat that rim into submission
Illini2010-11
- Sugar Grove
I would be fine with him taking 10 shots if 75% of them are not 3's.
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