Illinois Hoops Recruiting Thread

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#701      
the juiceman cometh
Fly Illini Fly! said:
For this roster, I think I'd take Carey Booth over Williams, Brown, Zens, or Harris.

He has the shooting Williams and Harris don't have. He has the athleticism Brown and Zens don't have.

Plus, the clear path to fringe minutes with our roster is the backup 4.

.....

He averaged 10.7 points and 5.6 rebounds on a decent Colorado State team.

Our team in 2025 was really deep -- may be the deepest team Brad has had. Booth just got buried.
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Should have predicted pro-Carey Booth revisionism would eventually be a thing, yet I really did not see it coming lol.

He played well, but inconsistently, at a mid-major. Imagine he's some Mountain West guy with the same numbers who never played for the Illini. Would you ever devote a post to saying we should transfer that guy in? In fact, let's say he's Boise St.'s Andrew Meadow, a guy who had arguably a better season than Booth. Meadow was ranked as the #193 guy in the portal and ended up transferring to Oregon, a team that's expected to end up near the bottom of the conference. I don't recall a ton of people on here clamoring for that one, and I kinda feel like we'd have been a bit underwhelmed by it. But I'd much rather have him than Booth, so why are we talking about Booth again?

Also, what did he ever do while here that showed he deserved more playing time? Hearken back to the Chicago St. game as an example. Extremely weak opponent. Booth gets 11 minutes. He is the only Illini not to score a single point. Even AJ Redd and Keaton Kutcher got on the board (in just 3 minutes each). Booth did however manage to lead the team in one category - turnovers (tied with WR, though Riley played more minutes so tiebreaker to Booth).
 
#705      
BalloonsTheElephant
Fly Illini Fly! said:
It's pretty much a guarantee that somebody claims this every off-season.
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Every season: The deepest team EVER!

By game three: We have no shooting depth and we need to tighten the rotation to six players, people want Nico Moretti playing 35 minutes a game.

I feel like our depth as a team this year is different. Our overall talent is obviously great, but every guy on the bench can fill the primary role of the guy in front of them and also add something of their own. I think except for Vaaks, that is. We have no other primary ball handler, but have guys that can fill in and provide different looks.
 
#706      
Fly Illini Fly!
the juiceman cometh said:
He played well, but inconsistently, at a mid-major. Imagine he's some Mountain West guy with the same numbers who never played for the Illini. Would you ever devote a post to saying we should transfer that guy in? In fact, let's say he's Boise St.'s Andrew Meadow, a guy who had arguably a better season than Booth. Meadow was ranked as the #193 guy in the portal and ended up transferring to Oregon, a team that's expected to end up near the bottom of the conference. I don't recall a ton of people on here clamoring for that one, and I kinda feel like we'd have been a bit underwhelmed by it. But I'd much rather have him than Booth, so why are we talking about Booth again?
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When did I say we should've transferred Booth back? Clearly things didn't work out here, so no.
the juiceman cometh said:
But I'd much rather have him than Booth, so why are we talking about Booth again?
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Because he was a former player. Sencire Harris became the talking point for that very reason -- he was a former player.
the juiceman cometh said:
Also, what did he ever do while here that showed he deserved more playing time? Hearken back to the Chicago St. game as an example. Extremely weak opponent. Booth gets 11 minutes. He is the only Illini not to score a single point. Even AJ Redd and Keaton Kutcher got on the board (in just 3 minutes each). Booth did however manage to lead the team in one category - turnovers (tied with WR, though Riley played more minutes so tiebreaker to Booth).
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I never said Booth deserved more minutes.

My point was that TEAM was very deep. Because we were so deep, somebody had to be buried. It just became Booth.

He's not as much of a dud as some think, given he had a fairly solid year on a good mid major team.

Sencire Harris who people DO want to transfer back, shot 11% from three last season. Booth was at 41%.
 
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#710      
JKR
Every season: The deepest team EVER!
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Typically by fans who believe that Illini basketball began with the Flying Illini.
 
#711      
ImGonnaBeILL
Why isn't Sencire's jersey in the rafters yet?

Booth would be the missing piece for this year's squad!!! Everything I saw his first go around here screamed "Big 10 caliber big man". He made tremendous strides at Colorado Poly Tech State University last season.

Jesus, put down the pipe
 
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#713      
EmeraldCityIllini
WhereDoWeStandWithStorr? said:
Too many people here aren't seeing DEPTH as a part of roster evaluation. Adding someone like Sencire would stabilize our depth, without taking away reps from Vaaks, Coleman, other starters.

Right now it's a question mark between 3 very low ranked freshman. Sencire is a much more proven piece.
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Proven at bricking shots?

Edit… that’s mean to Sencire. I actually liked him a lot and know his value isn’t merely tied to shooting.

Just think we play a lot different now and Brad wants everyone to be able to space
 
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#717      
EmeraldCityIllini
Fly Illini Fly! said:
It's pretty much a guarantee that somebody claims this every off-season.
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Doesn’t that make sense though? As a thought exercise, I’d ask what underwood/groce teams here you thought were deeper than this one.

I’d say it’s been about as linear growth as can be over 9 years of Underwood when it comes to talent level.

Depth isn’t as black and white as “Brad played freshmen year Sencire, he trusted Sencire. He didn’t play Lee or Petro, he didn’t trust them.” A large reason Sencire played is because we didn’t have guards NEARLY as good as Boswell + Keaton + Stoj/Davis

Our overall talent level is much higher, therefore our depth is better. I unequivocally believe Petro is better than Jaylon Tate
 
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#718      
ChiIllini75
EmeraldCityIllini said:
Doesn’t that make sense though? As a thought exercise, I’d ask what underwood/groce teams here you thought were deeper than this one.

I’d say it’s been about as linear growth as can be over 9 years of Underwood when it comes to talent level.

Depth isn’t as black and white as “Brad played freshmen year Sencire, he trusted Sencire. He didn’t play Lee or Petro, he didn’t trust them.” A large reason Sencire played is because we didn’t have guards NEARLY as good as Boswell + Keaton + Stoj/Davis

Our overall talent level is much higher, therefore our depth is better. I unequivocally believe Petro is better than Jaylon Tate
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Nuance when discussing our depth?!?!? How dare you!
 
#719      
RollChief
illiniwil said:
stop it with the depth thing. this team has more depth than any illini team EVER!
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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.

1785524523821.png


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).

1785525296617.png


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.
 
#724      
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
 
#725      
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.
 
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