Illinois Hoops Recruiting Thread

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#2,877      
Correct movie. Many good scenes. Eddie digging up money that he collected from selling his body parts, the "cheap" Vegas games (War, guess number, etc.), and Wayne Newton.
The budget buffet with the incorrectly labeled and unidentifiable trays of blue and yellow makes me laugh every time.
 
#2,881      
YOU CAN TALK ABOUT HIS SHOOTING BUT...

and not guard anybody. guards go right around him and bigs
push him out of bounds. how does a 6-10 kid have those miserable
rebound numbers? look, he didn't rebound or defend in the valley.
 
#2,883      
Agreed, but he has a top 3 offense last year.

This year, top 15... but could've been better if we shot less 3s

The solution is to fire him?
Insiders have straight up said they ran no offense for TJ. I have no idea what went down to keep the offense humming while TJ was out, but it can’t be ignored that he was the driver of that success for a large portion of the season.
 
#2,884      
So help me out here. When you say “here we are again with our main targets who want to be drafted in a year”. I guess I’ve never seen that here before. Can you elaborate?

And where die that “fans would DESTROY Brad if he didn’t bring in a top 15 class with NBA prospects?
I think that a bunch of !!!!. I as a fan couldn’t disagree more. I’m a real fan. Been watching since the early 70s. Start naming all the top 15 classes we’ve had with NBA prospects.
No sir. We fans have been thru it all and never destroyed one coach.
 
#2,886      
Are there certain things that cannot be said here if they are critical of the mbb program in specific ways? I saw a post earlier today that may have bought up some valid thoughts that's no longer visible.
 
#2,888      
I disagree with those who say Morez's decision was all about the Benjamins. Allow me to explain why most players leave despite the influence of NIL. Draw the x and y axis of a graph. Then draw a line that slowly rises to the right. Above that, draw another line that rises at a faster rate. The top line is the expectations the player has for development, playing time and impact. The lower line is what actually occurred. The bigger the gap between the two, the more likely the player is to transfer out to somewhere he thinks he'll realize his expectations. Believe it or not, this is far more important than the dollars except in certain situations like Coleman's.

I see this every day in the professional (non-sports) world too. Rising stars who feel like they are heard and will get the respect they deserve to accomplish what they think they are capable of, will stay around though they get offers every month to move on for more money. From the basketball side, I'm a parent experiencing this very situation with one of our sons right now. Though he was a frosh and got playing time (and many would argue should be patient), he knows he wasn't used anywhere near his potential because he was played at the 5 instead of his natural position as a 4. In Illinois' case, we didn't use and develop Morez the way we could have. He had to get what he could off rebounds and putbacks. Look for plays where we ran an offense that intentionally ran through Morez and you won't find them.

Now some of you will say "Run the offense through an inexperienced freshman, are you crazy?" It didn't have to be our primary offense and he didn't have to start, but he has so much talent and potential that we should have seen what else he could do (and I'm not talking about 3's). It would have been better than jackin' up 3's all day that we weren't making. Hate to see Morez go because I can envision what he could have done next year and the year after, but if the coaching staff wasn't capable of seeing his true potential, his "gap" was too big. Bret is obviously doing a better job of being fully aware of the gap, or inverting it.
 
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#2,890      
Insiders have straight up said they ran no offense for TJ. I have no idea what went down to keep the offense humming while TJ was out, but it can’t be ignored that he was the driver of that success for a large portion of the season.
I'm not defending our offensive schemes, but last year's team was more mature. They could identify mismatches quicker to expose defenses.
 
#2,891      
How many 5 star recruits does Matt Painter have on his roster. He's a believer in system recruits and development. Our fans here would want to DESTROY Brad if he didn't bring in a top 15 class with NBA prospects.

Izzo does the same thing. You don't see MSU chasing one and dones. He's a system guy that is only interested in guys who commit to the program and not the NBA after one year.

Our fans wouldn't accept that style of recruiting. This off-season is a great example. Here we are again with our main targets who want to be drafted in a year. What do you expect is going to happen?

How many players off of Purdue are going to be drafted? They'll be back for year four because they committed to the program, not the NBA.

Our fans would absolutely lose their minds with an off-season like that. They have coaches that don't believe in the portal and lean on development.

That's not us. We're chasing Dame Sarr and are trying to come up with 7 figures to bring other transfers in.
You realize that "guys committed to the program" will no longer be committed to the program when they see players like Ben H playing in front of them.
 
#2,892      
If sarr goes somewhere else I'm blowing up state farm center

Animated GIF


Might I suggest playing the Jump to Conclusions game and sitting this offseason out? It may provide you with some solace.
 
#2,893      
Insiders have straight up said they ran no offense for TJ. I have no idea what went down to keep the offense humming while TJ was out, but it can’t be ignored that he was the driver of that success for a large portion of the season.

So success doesn't count unless you have subpar roster?
 
#2,894      
Does this not feel like the deflating years after 2005 for Bruce though? We realized he wasn't adapting, at the time I was a long term hold on Bruce, maybe too long. Now I see programs like Louisville move quickly and improve quickly. With the resources available to us, and in Josh I trust. We should be able to have more program stability.
When Illinois had the greatest season in the history of the program and followed it up with a Richard Semaru commit I knew we were cooked.
 
#2,896      
our offense was only possible because our rebounding was dominant. Our best rebounder was Morez Johnson. KJ was a great rebounding guard, and Tre White was our #4 rebounder.

So we better shoot a whole hell of a lot better than 31% from 3 if we aren't going to be #2 in the nation in rebounding.
Yes I the thought occurred to me myself. If we were hitting our threes our rebounds would go down and if we were missing our offensive rebounding usually went up. They kinda offset each other. When that was happening we usually still had a shot at winning. The thing is when we are missing them you have to get multiple offensive rebounds to make up for it. The games we weren't getting those rebounds we usually got beat.
 
#2,899      
I never said I want one and domes. However how’d that work out at Kentucky under Calipari.
Stop with the bull!!!!
 
#2,900      
I saw Scheyer on the sidelines and cringed. Brought back memories of the Scheyer versus Bruce arguments and meltdowns.
 
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