I'm actually a big Groce fan, I know he is a tireless recruiter, we all do. However, if he wants to stay, he may have to make changes at the assistant level. What Groce has trouble with is sealing the deal with the top recruits. Obviously we all have one name in mind for that assistant, however, that individual would be more of a recruiter, not X's and O's.
John Groce at Illinois
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I'm actually a big Groce fan, I know he is a tireless recruiter, we all do. However, if he wants to stay, he may have to make changes at the assistant level. What Groce has trouble with is sealing the deal with the top recruits. Obviously we all have one name in mind for that assistant, however, that individual would be more of a recruiter, not X's and O's.
I really wish Brandon Miller could come back
Dee?
ILL in IA
- Iowa City
Plus all those miles he put on that Ford Taurus. Its a hard life
Yep!
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The PU game was, IMO, a good example of the Xs and Os working well - both O and D had a good scheme. Watch the O if you can see the game again and you'll see a pretty good pattern that worked well against PU. The swarming D against their bigs worked pretty well too.
We just don't have a PG that can penetrate and get us some easy dumps or layups so we're limited in that regard and have to play more of a perimeter game since we also don't have a C for inside/out - so our Xs are limited by our capability.
On PU...I think JG had a great gameplan that worked. If we had MT and TA, I'm not sure we use this plan and we may not have been as effective. Regardless, can't wait to get one or both back.
With all the debates about our bball coaching, I thought it'd be good context to look at where the program is historically so I pulled down some numbers.
It was easiest to look at win percentage and I used a 4-year trailing average to smooth it out so its not so jagged due to swings from year-to-year. The red line is our historical win pct from 1908 through last year which is .646. The big takeaway I have here is that yes, there's decline happening under Groce but it's not as dramatic as people make it out to be. FWIW Weber's win pct was .707 overall and .596 in the last 3 years. Groce is .573 to-date.
The bad news is that if the season ended right now, it would be the worst in 37 years. Consolation prize there is the last time it was worse than right now was in Henson's 4th year.
Conference standing or BTT finish could be good to look at, too.
It was easiest to look at win percentage and I used a 4-year trailing average to smooth it out so its not so jagged due to swings from year-to-year. The red line is our historical win pct from 1908 through last year which is .646. The big takeaway I have here is that yes, there's decline happening under Groce but it's not as dramatic as people make it out to be. FWIW Weber's win pct was .707 overall and .596 in the last 3 years. Groce is .573 to-date.
The bad news is that if the season ended right now, it would be the worst in 37 years. Consolation prize there is the last time it was worse than right now was in Henson's 4th year.
Conference standing or BTT finish could be good to look at, too.
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Make Dee an assistant and the Illini recruiting woes would probably turn over a new leaf pretty quickly.
Even Lon was a tireless recruiter. Does not mean that he enjoyed it, but he did work extremely hard on the recruiting trail. Weber as well. Unfortunately, success in recruiting is not about just working very hard. If that was the case, most coaches would be excellent recruiters. It is about ability to close on players' recruitment.
It is also about having something attractive to sell. Our product on the court hasn't been attractive enough for the most part to recruit the top players. Selling vision can only go so far.
No matter what happens this year, I hope we don't let go of Groce. JG, to me, is a work in progress to be a great coach. He's got the personality. Players like him a lot. He can coach and his coaching will only get better. Even this year, he is proving that he can work with whatever cards he's dealt with. If anyone thinks dealing with loss of TA, LB, MT, and DP at the beginning of the season or during it should be easier, they are not looking at things logically or objectively. Certainly there are games he may look out-coached. This is B10. Do we think other coaches in B10 teams are chumps? JG is going against top college basketball head coaches!! He will improve and his team will improve. I hope he stays here for a long time. I hope he stays here like Izzo at MSU (since 1983).
I truly think this year would not have been a decline had injuries not ravaged it. It is a faux decline year because we played a walk on high minutes early in the season and relied on freshmen who were lost on D.
If we had been completely healthy I don't think we would still be in a decline. The trade off is that our freshman would have gotten less minutes but I would have been okay with that if we were winning.
Most posters want to see a healthy John Groce team perform so we can see if it is real decline or real improvement. Hopefully next year is that year.
Just as an aside, I made a prediction to my brother and nobody else that we wouldn't be good again until all Bruce Weber players were gone and maybe not even until guys that played with Upperclassmen BW players were gone as well. (If that makes sense) It just takes a lot of time to change the culture of an organization all the way.
Tracy Abrams has made that prediction last longer than I thought. (Though I love the guy and am proud he wears the O and B!)
If we had been completely healthy I don't think we would still be in a decline. The trade off is that our freshman would have gotten less minutes but I would have been okay with that if we were winning.
Most posters want to see a healthy John Groce team perform so we can see if it is real decline or real improvement. Hopefully next year is that year.
Just as an aside, I made a prediction to my brother and nobody else that we wouldn't be good again until all Bruce Weber players were gone and maybe not even until guys that played with Upperclassmen BW players were gone as well. (If that makes sense) It just takes a lot of time to change the culture of an organization all the way.
Tracy Abrams has made that prediction last longer than I thought. (Though I love the guy and am proud he wears the O and B!)
This is why I think it is important for the new AD to make a judgment call this year. If we keep Groce, we should commit to him for at least 3+ years. We need a contract extension so recruits don't view him as a dead man walking. If we make the tournament next year, we're certainly not firing him after that so we are giving him another year and possibly a year after that regardless of results.
The Purdue win is giving me some hope, but we still need to finish this season with at least 16 wins and have some solid recruiting prospects in order for me (and not that I have any control) to buy into the idea of 3 more years of Groce. If we fall apart and finish something like 5-13 in the B1G for a record of 13-18 overall going into the BTT and no commits for 17 then I think it's clear we need to move in another direction.
For some reason, this culture-based argument doesn't hold traction on this board. "I'm tired of hearing the BW excuse!" is their cry.
With that said, I don't think Tracy carries any of the negative characteristics that BW seemed to impart upon other players of his. I love Tracy's attitude, and I always have.
lstewart53x3
- Scottsdale, Arizona
Sure. You can set arbitrary standards and ignore all context, but that may not be the wisest way to make decisions.
Agree with most of your post, I think unacceptable part about injuries maybe 1 or 2 but not to the degree that they have happned
Not only that, pretty easy to get out coached when a lot of your team is missing, the other coaches don't care who your missing yurt win baby
frozenrope9190
- Aurora, IL
And I wouldn't say we've declined for 4 straight years. We started at a pretty low point, overachieved in year 1, performed to our expectations in year 2, and underachieved in year 3. Year 4 is a wash.
I'm sick of the 'no excuses' schtick. Sometimes excuses are completely appropriate. When you lose games because you don't have many--or even most--of the players you were counting on for significant minutes, that's a GOOD excuse.
People who say 'NO EXCUSES' are living in a dream world, one in which outcomes are not expected to be influenced by uncontrollable outside events.
Not that my opinion matters at all, but I am going to wait until the end of the season and see what the results look like at the end of the year. Are we playing like we did early in the year or like we did against PU? What does 17 recruiting look like? I feel that four years of coaching and a rough outlook of recruiting is enough to determine whether or not he deserves another year.
It's not the 4th year of decline. Year one was improvement--we made the tourney and played well in it.
This year is not necessarily 'decline', either. We won't know that until this year is over...or at least until we're almost done with our season.
Let's say the team continues to play close to the level at which we played against Purdue and OSU. If that happens, we win quite a few games in conference, maybe make the tourney....all with 3 pre-season starters ON THE BENCH! That would be a resounding endorsement of Groce's coaching ability.
That may not happen, but it sure as hell could, and it's not even all that unlikely (EDIT: I mean it's not all that unlikely that we can keep playing with the energy we've seen @OSU and vs Pur. Chances of us making the tourney are unlikely, but possible.)
You're just flat out wrong about Groce's first year being 'decline', and you have apparently written off this season when it's barely halfway over and we're coming off a win over a ranked team.
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Tevo
- Wilmette, IL
Just out of curiosity, how will he get better? Simply by trying things and seeing if they succeed or fail? By watching other guys? I'm not really psyched about having the head coach have to learn how to be good while coaching our team. Yes, I expect everyone learns from experience, but I'd prefer he already be very good to start with and then hone his craft.
This is really the issue, right? That even as he is improving, so is everyone else. And just as our players are improving, so are everyone else's. And many of the opposing coaches are starting out ahead of Groce in terms of experience and proven player development and team success.
I know, you need to take chances on new and young coaches sometimes, and hope you find the diamond. And I know someone is thinking "Coach K!" right now as the poster child for starting out slowly and then becoming great, but he is not the rule. Far more often, by about year 4 (or 8) of a head coaching career, the trajectory for a coach is starting to become clear. I just don't understand the thinking of "Well, our players will improve" and "our coach will improve." He (and they) will have to improve MORE and FASTER than everyone else who is also really trying hard to improve. Why should we expect that our coach(es) and players, in the current situation, will do that?
I would say we over-performed in year 2 also.
I would expect all good coaches,...even more seasoned great ones, will tell you they are learning and continuously trying to get better.
No one is "psyched" about our circumstances, but I've seen enough of JG in the last 3 years to believe that he can get us back to success. Impatience could thwart that possibility, obviously.
I admit, I am a patient optimist.
I agree. Overachieved in year one. Overachieved in year two. Underachieved last year although the best player missed 9 games in the middle. But definitely should have been better.
This year, it is hard to say. Definitely have not overachieved. But underachieved? Probably leans more that way, but it is hard to say for sure with the number of injuries that have destroyed the starting lineup and the depth.
I do think he gets another year, and that will be his win or else year.
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