Illinois Hoops Recruiting Thread
ChiefGritty
- Chicago, IL
I'm workshopping a theory of head coaches in the NIL era:
A football coach is like hiring a CEO of a Fortune 500 multinational corporation. A massive infrastructure already exists in terms of finances and personnel and the job is fundamentally about choosing the people to lead those departments and managing and orienting them in a way that fits together and leads the whole enterprise to success.
A basketball coach is like a startup founder. They're working much more intimately with a much smaller group of people and being able to sell a compelling vision for the project internally and externally is how the resources and infrastructure get built and sustain.
Whoa.....lets not go down that path.....kind of like cutting the arm off at the elbow to save a finger
Very cool analogy and on point.
While this absolutely true, I’d argue Frazier was the first real building block of the current program from a player perspective, with Frazier essentially becoming the first extension of Brad on the court. Not only was the Underwood-Frazier pairing critical to establishing the foundation, but it also had an almost destined feel to it since Underwood offered Frazier at SFA.
If Frazier had gone elsewhere in 2017, I think it’s fair to say we’d probably be in a similar spot today for two reasons: 1) Brad is that good, and 2) Ayo and Kofi were that good. So those dudes deservedly get their flowers, especially Ayo. But those ‘20-‘22 teams wouldn’t have been nearly as good without Frazier. We don’t win conference titles and experience the program resurgence we did without the ultimate Robin to Ayo’s Batman. Forever 1.
ChiefGritty
- Chicago, IL
I tend to agree with the perspective that during the dark times we had a number of Frazier's (including one named Frazier!) that were great players with a team-first culture building attitude, but ultimately that didn't lead anywhere because we didn't have an Ayo.
The only thing I would add is, don't underrate what Kofi meant to our turnaround. Both in the excellence of his play individually, and also triggering the change in our playing style that made us a much better team overnight.
The losingest team in the history of the program had both Trent and Ayo on it, but Kofi went 44-16 in the B1G with two (legitimate) titles in his three years here.
On the day Ayo committed, Brad Underwood was a flashy new hire who hadn't coached a game here yet.
On the day Kofi committed, Underwood was 18-29 (4-18) and was playing a style that couldn't accommodate a Kofi-style center.
Pretty easy to argue that Kofi took a bigger chance on us than Ayo did.
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Kofi was just such an absurd matchup problem for basically every nearly every other team in college that he immediately raised the floor of the program the second he was on campus(the 2022 team that won the big10 title wasn't even really that good imo). Honestly if he stuck around one more year Kofi paired with Mayer and Shannon would have been a problem.
When you look at the recruiting lists for both it's pretty easy to say Kofi took a bigger chance. (Though I think him working with Fletch actually might have helped him improve more than anything Illinois did for Ayo.)
Kofi chose Illinois on a paired down list that included Kansas and UConn. Ayo ended up choosing between Wake Forest and Illinois while Wake Forest was in a pretty similar spot to Illinois. Honestly, Xavier with Chris Mack was the best program in Ayo's final four.
Agree. I've long said the most important job of a head football coach is to hire and develop assistant coaches. We are seeing this play out in real time with Dabo Swinney
ChiefGritty
- Chicago, IL
My lasting memory of Kofi will always be those games against lesser Big Ten opponents, especially those that lacked size, where you knew after about three possessions the game was over because the opponent's plan for defending him just stood no chance of working over 40 minutes.
That guy rocked.
My lasting memory is Kofi punching a ref in the face
Ha, and he's such a sweet guy that he was immediately mortified that he accidentally connected. For me, Kofi was a guy that other programs land. It seemed like we were often making do at center, and getting a unicorn that would absolutely dominate for 3 years....what a luxury.
This stood out to me in games at Wisconsin. I think we won a couple in a row up there after not winning there in forever. They had no idea how to plan for Kofi.
ChiefGritty
- Chicago, IL
I remember one of those bad early Fred Hoiberg Nebraska teams having their 6'8" center trying to front him on every possession and it was like "sir, don't be silly"
Poor Kofi ws born in the wrong generation to make it to the league! If he would have been in college 15-20 years earlier, he could have really had quite a career. His problem was his inability to shoot from more than 6-8 feet from the basket. Just think how many points he would have scored if he could have shot above 60% from the line?