Illinois Hoops Recruiting Thread

#651      
NarrowJ
RollChief said:
I tend to agree with you about the quality of Illinois' depth this year but honestly think this shouldn't really be argued about, mostly because it's statistically irrelevant for elite teams. The roster as it stands is a top-10 team at worst, likely a top-5 team, and potentially a top-3 team. In all reality, having a lot of depth or utilizing your deep bench (9th+, etc.) as a core part of your scheme doesn't have anything to do with Championship basketball, at least according to data from the last 5 seasons.

I got a bit of time to take a look at this statistically, and depth (for which I'll use bench usage) has a weak-to-negative correlation with a team's success.

If you look at the top ten teams from each year's bench usage, each year it's less than the bench usage for all teams in D-1. Most elite teams float around the 200-250 rank, and the table below shows the difference between top-10 teams and all teams in terms of % bench usage.

View attachment 51037

Further, you'll find the same correlation between the top 10 overall programs (average KP rank over the past 5 years) vs their bench usage over the past 5 years. The Pearson correlation between overall rank and bench usage is r=0.165 (happy to share the data set if anyone is interested in digging into it more).

View attachment 51039

We have awesome bench pieces for what we need them for, no matter how good any of the Freshmen are. If they're really good, we have a great problem, if most aren't B1G caliber, also great, because we have a elite-level top 7 or 8 already, which statistics show is what you need to win a championship (not 9 or 10). I hope this helps end this one, because at the end of the day, we're an Underwood-level team having Groce-level arguments.
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Well Done Reaction GIF
 
#652      
jimbo72
Wow, quite a few of you are looney tunes. We are loaded to included freshmen. Sencire and Booth. 🤣 🤣 our freshman are going to push for minutes and our upper classes are studs. Enough, enjoy the ride and this season. It will be special, with what we have.
 
#655      
wc_illini
RollChief said:
I tend to agree with you about the quality of Illinois' depth this year but honestly think this shouldn't really be argued about, mostly because it's statistically irrelevant for elite teams. The roster as it stands is a top-10 team at worst, likely a top-5 team, and potentially a top-3 team. In all reality, having a lot of depth or utilizing your deep bench (9th+, etc.) as a core part of your scheme doesn't have anything to do with Championship basketball, at least according to data from the last 5 seasons.

I got a bit of time to take a look at this statistically, and depth (for which I'll use bench usage) has a weak-to-negative correlation with a team's success.

If you look at the top ten teams from each year's bench usage, each year it's less than the bench usage for all teams in D-1. Most elite teams float around the 200-250 rank, and the table below shows the difference between top-10 teams and all teams in terms of % bench usage.

View attachment 51037

Further, you'll find the same correlation between the top 10 overall programs (average KP rank over the past 5 years) vs their bench usage over the past 5 years. The Pearson correlation between overall rank and bench usage is r=0.165 (happy to share the data set if anyone is interested in digging into it more).

View attachment 51039

We have awesome bench pieces for what we need them for, no matter how good any of the Freshmen are. If they're really good, we have a great problem, if most aren't B1G caliber, also great, because we have a elite-level top 7 or 8 already, which statistics show is what you need to win a championship (not 9 or 10). I hope this helps end this one, because at the end of the day, we're an Underwood-level team having Groce-level arguments.
Click to expand...
This is really interesting- thanks for doing this analysis. I'd love to see the data (and where did you get it from?).
 
#657      
PasadenaIllini
AnnaMay said:
It's hilarious reading all your posts referring to player ranks as a value to this team after Keaton Wagler just did what he did.
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What's hilarious is reading a post implying that the author can somehow foresee the value our incoming freshman will bring to our team based upon a once in a generation phenom we happened to be fortunate enough to recruit for our roster last season. How many other Keaton Waglers have there been in NCAA history let alone Illinois history? The guys who've gone top 10 in the draft after their freshman years have pretty always been McDonalds All American level players. Other than Keaton, how many exceptions have there ever been to that rule?

It's always fun to see how incoming freshmen with some hype behind them do their first year here. But counting our incoming freshmen as birds in the hand is a recipe for surefire disappointment. We may take some serious lumps along the way during this upcoming season given how much we are relying on players with little to no NCAA experience and also some players with quite a bit of injury history. Or we might not, and things might go swimmingly. My point is, anyone claiming that our success is somehow in the bag this upcoming season is guzzling far too much orange Kool-Aid.

Relax, sit back, and enjoy the ride, wherever it may bring us.
 
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