Pregame: Illinois vs Penn, Thursday, March 19th, 8:25pm CT, TNT
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Their best player is TJ power. He shoots well over 40% from 3pt and he's taken more 3s than any player we have other than Keaton Wagler. Their second best player is Ethan Roberts (Hersey) but he has been out (twice) owing to concussions. Michael Zanoni is the third 3pt shooter and he takes 4.5 3pt shots per game.
Without Roberts they have 2 players who will take at least 4-5 three pointers. The rest of the team and minutes - are divided up amongst players who aren't notable 3 pt shooters. If Roberts were playing regularly (when he was playing regularly) Penn shoots 23 three pointers a game.
Roberts has only missed 2 games so I'd say that isn't a large enough sample to explain it
One of the games he missed they only shot 20 threes
They're shooting a higher percentage (43.8%) with him out than they did with him in (38.3%)
But, again, the sample size
Directed at nobody in particular... guys, please just try to relax and enjoy the ride. This game will not be close. The games after this one will provide some challenges and be much tougher. But all of the angst for this one is misplaced. 
Big Jack
- Decatur
Directed at nobody in particular... guys, please just try to relax and enjoy the ride. This game will not be close. The games after this one will provide some challenges and be much tougher. But all of the angst for this one is misplaced.
The team is about to pass just East of the Knoxville area. Should land in about 30. Yes, slow day at work.
I remember that being a Friday lunch game and watching from Legends
On AdjO and AdjD plots, better is down and to the right. If you want to see who is best according to net efficiency (Off minus Def), you'd draw a diagonal line with a slope of 1:
That shows us very slightly behind Florida and Houston.
Technically, Torvik uses expected winning % instead of net efficiency, which works out to ranking by Off divided by Def, and that does shift things slightly in favor of better defense, but not by a lot (still 6th either way).
EvanMiya adds another twist: he first determines whether teams do better or worse against good/bad teams, and ranks them according to how they do against teams similar to themselves. Since we're ranked highly, but performed less well against other top teams, we are bumped down to 9th.
Betting markets have us around 7th, and that's probably the best guess (barring lots of dumb money moving the odds, but I don't see signs of that).
Who knows what the people seeding teams are looking at. It usually resembles the efficiency rankings, but sometimes not at all
???? Roberts has appeared in 23 games (was injured in 2 of them) Penn has played 29 games.
Where are you getting your information?
Oh, you’re correct.. he missed 4 games earlier in the season as well
They shot a ton when he was out in a couple games, 33 in one game and 26 in another, but right on their season average in the other two
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My point is that Penn really only have 3 top three point threats. One is hurt, one is their top rebounder. Taking Power away from the basket probably won't help much.
Noblesville Illini
- Nappanee, IN
I swear that Penn player at 15s was 43 years old
For comparison, what was the average 3pt defense ranking of a P4 team in 2025?
Down for Thursday, still debating on buying Saturday tickets now vs waiting to see if they get any more reasonable. I've heard the best way may be to pay the cheapest get-in price and then move around in the arena. Best case scenario we play second Saturday and all the Duke fans leave after their loss.
If anyone is near SJ and plans to watch the game, DM me. Both for this game and in general. My default for Thurs will be Zone 8, the restaurant at the M8trix; its decent food, big servings, relatively cheap (for SJ), and tons of TVs.
[Dan, if this type of post isn't allowed, please delete, or maybe consider a long living "Find Illini fans near me (non-CU area) thread.". Thanks.]
[Dan, if this type of post isn't allowed, please delete, or maybe consider a long living "Find Illini fans near me (non-CU area) thread.". Thanks.]
Average rank: 151
Average 3pt%D: 33.4%
Our win @Nebraska is on BTN right now.
The offense looks so much different after Boswell came back. When you watch this game, the Purdue game, etc… it’s Keaton’s team. Now it doesn’t feel or look quite the same.
I don’t think it’s for the better as our efficiency has gone down. Other than Michigan State, Keaton was fantastic throughout. Every game.
Since that time teams have started loading up against Keaton - i.e. Lendeborg from Michigan. He was still a little bit of an unknown until the Purdue game. The scouting report is now in and they are going after him, and doubling when he drives past the foul line as he rarely passes out (would like to see more oops to Z and going off two feet once he gets in there instead of going up in traffic and not getting the foul call).
Perhaps playing out of the B1G will be a big advantage since scouting and game planning for him will be different (and we will have referees that might actually be qualified to ref higher than an 8th grade game).
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