Illinois Hoops Recruiting Thread

[Emerson Bigguns]

Not much talk about the shift from Europe. Obviously there are some (ongoing) legal conversations but our pivot this years seems notable and a topic of conversation. What are folks thinking?

We were ahead of the curve over there, but I think the secret is out. It’s less of a value proposition to spend a bunch of time over there than it was.
I’d guess a combo of increased competition for those players, and increased resources at home to land big time American kids.
I’m not sure it’s necessarily a pivot… The strategy has always been to get the best players you can, whether they are home or abroad.
Having recent post-season success gets you into living rooms you wouldn’t have been invited into previously.

 

[wc_illini]

Note: the below ignores overtime

They played 100 minutes together and were +45. They played the most against Wisconsin (+6 in 22min), Nebraska (+8 in 12min), and MSU (+/- 0 in 10.5min). Michigan (-9 in 2:49) and Rutgers (-5 in 1:41) were their only bad games.

View attachment 51285

I couldn't get another edit in before it locked. They played 2 more minutes together in overtime and were -1 in those, but that doesn't really change the analysis.

 

[March2TheArch]

I couldn't get another edit in before it locked. They played 2 more minutes together in overtime and were -1 in those, but that doesn't really change the analysis.

All I want for Xmas is a healthy Mirk.

 

[NarrowJ]

Note: the below ignores overtime

They played 100 minutes together and were +45. They played the most against Wisconsin (+6 in 22min), Nebraska (+8 in 12min), and MSU (+/- 0 in 10.5min). Michigan (-9 in 2:49) and Rutgers (-5 in 1:41) were their only bad games.

View attachment 51285

Appreciate you grabbing this, I'm hoping we can figure out how to play them together more this year so this is cool to look at.

So that's +18 per 40 minutes?

Noting that +13 vs Jackson St means vs power conf teams we're talking +32 in 90 minutes which is more like +14 per 40 minutes.

Michigan and Rutgers wasn't having it, it appears.

Seems they actually did pretty well vs two teams that spread you out / everybody's a shooter.

All small sample sizes here but I still have fun overanalyzing it lol.

 

[DICKnaggie]

We were ahead of the curve over there, but I think the secret is out. It’s less of a value proposition to spend a bunch of time over there than it was.
I’d guess a combo of increased competition for those players, and increased resources at home to land big time American kids.
I’m not sure it’s necessarily a pivot… The strategy has always been to get the best players you can, whether they are home or abroad.
Having recent post-season success gets you into living rooms you wouldn’t have been invited into previously.

This makes sense. It just occurred to me that we had this great model, and seemed to move away from it with little conversation on the board while we discussed 9th men and cottage cheese ad nauseum, lol!

 

[EmeraldCityIllini]

Not much talk about the shift from Europe. Obviously there are some (ongoing) legal conversations but our pivot this years seems notable and a topic of conversation. What are folks thinking?

With the retention this year, I think it was a lack of a need. I think if either Ivisic left, Suigo is here. And Vaaks is kinda* an overseas guy

I’m not sure, im not looking too much into it yet. I personally think our next center is a European.

What I do think is here to stay though, is Brad looking to fill his role players and depth (it’s true, we have it) with the hs kids

 

[PasadenaIllini]

We were ahead of the curve over there, but I think the secret is out. It’s less of a value proposition to spend a bunch of time over there than it was.
I’d guess a combo of increased competition for those players, and increased resources at home to land big time American kids.
I’m not sure it’s necessarily a pivot… The strategy has always been to get the best players you can, whether they are home or abroad.
Having recent post-season success gets you into living rooms you wouldn’t have been invited into previously.

Post season success will get coaches into living rooms, but as we saw after 2004-5, coaches still need the salesmanship and savvy to close deals. Brad, Orlando, and company undoubtedly have these ingredients in spades.

 

[the juiceman cometh]

With the retention this year, I think it was a lack of a need. I think if either Ivisic left, Suigo is here. And Vaaks is kinda* an overseas guy

I’m not sure, im not looking too much into it yet. I personally think our next center is a European.

What I do think is here to stay though, is Brad looking to fill his role players and depth (it’s true, we have it) with the hs kids

Not even kinda. He straight up is, we just didn't get him year 1 but I don't think that makes him less of a Euro.

And in the current atmosphere retention = recruitment so we re-recruited Mirk, Tomi, and Z which means we kept up our good relationship with their agent, which has been one of the key drivers of our Euro recruiting.

 

[ugottabjoshinme]

Eh, would rather Morillo or Big Z eat those minutes. JT and Morillo are about the same size anyway. If you just want a guy to come in for 3-5 minutes and rebound, I'm not sure that's a role JT wants (he played 28mpg last year).

Big Z won't even be here next year. A lot of guys probably won't be here next year, so they are going to need to look at all levels of the portal anyway.

 

[NarrowJ]

Big Z won't even be here next year. A lot of guys probably won't be here next year, so they are going to need to look at all levels of the portal anyway.

Correct, and I'm hoping we can shoot a tad higher than 3rd team MVC players.

But for the 100th time, if it gets Brady here, you take him.

 

[goillini30]

Not even kinda. He straight up is, we just didn't get him year 1 but I don't think that makes him less of a Euro.

And in the current atmosphere retention = recruitment so we re-recruited Mirk, Tomi, and Z which means we kept up our good relationship with their agent, which has been one of the key drivers of our Euro recruiting.

And it was probably an advantage to get Vaaks in year 2 so he could be here all summer (except FIBA) working out with the team instead of dealing with paperwork/visa issues

 

[wc_illini]

Correct, and I'm hoping we can shoot a tad higher than 3rd team MVC players.

But for the 100th time, if it gets Brady here, you take him.

I'd also prefer to see Brad bring in higher rated talent (he's done well finding diamonds in the rough, but I assume he could find even more/bigger diamonds in the fairway), but I was surprised that Torvik rated him a highly as it did last year. The avg of his PRPG! and DPRPG, which I'm pretty sure are adjusted for opponent rating, would've been just behind Z for 9th on our team.

Aside from his rebounding rates, I think it's because Torvik assumes shooting efficiency scales down with high usage. I'm not personally convinced it always works that way, or at least it can be hard to change a chucker, but it must be true on average.

 

[mysterio2525]

Post season success will get coaches into living rooms, but as we saw after 2004-5, coaches still need the salesmanship and savvy to close deals. Brad, Orlando, and company undoubtedly have these ingredients in spades.

this is such an underrated aspect of being a good well rounded coach. building momentum is one thing... keeping that momentum is another. webber did the first not the latter. Brad and company are much better suited for both

 

[Fish1960]

Not much talk about the shift from Europe. Obviously there are some (ongoing) legal conversations but our pivot this years seems notable and a topic of conversation. What are folks thinking?

I just think we have never had this much interest from 5 stars so we are going to take some swings. We are still heavily in Europe. I heard one recruiting guy in the last couple of days say he saw a list of top European players and Illinois was at the top for numbers 1,2,10and 11th ranked players. I heard underwood on radio what 7 weeks ago. Everyone was out recruiting except him. He said Orlando and Alexander were in Istanbul. I’d be surprised if we don’t have a couple overseas guys on next years roster.

 

[EmeraldCityIllini]

Not even kinda. He straight up is, we just didn't get him year 1 but I don't think that makes him less of a Euro.

And in the current atmosphere retention = recruitment so we re-recruited Mirk, Tomi, and Z which means we kept up our good relationship with their agent, which has been one of the key drivers of our Euro recruiting.

Oh I totally agree. It’s clear our overseas contacts translated to Vaaks too - insiders like DB were all over his interest well before the season ended.

I just took the question to mean euros who hadn’t been seen in college ball yet. My guess is the going price for Vaaks was akin to other portal players instead of Euor’s who haven’t played yet - non superstars like the UCLA kid whose lighting his career on fire

Which even then, I have no idea how close the correlation lol.

 

[Joel Goodson]

he's pretty good:

https://twitter.com/x/status/2092654706963210252

 

[March2TheArch]

he's pretty good:

https://twitter.com/x/status/2092654706963210252

Little Cam Boozer in there. I like what I see.

 

[Joel Goodson]

https://twitter.com/x/status/2092774260880138598