Yeah, I have a hard time getting excited for NW, Rutgers, Wisconsin, Iowa, PSU, Minnesota this year but DON’T SLEEP on Nebraska. 
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As usual I have a hard time seeing OSU that high, but Holtmann usually has them at least decent, no matter what I think. I still have more faith in MSU, and I might even put Maryland higher than OSU too. A 3 seed would be pretty good for them I think.
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Even without Banton? I liked the roster with him, but I’m not sure how good it is without him.
I think that is too low on Indiana and way too high on Iowa
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I think Indiana is undervalued there. Not saying they are a top 5 seed but I could see them being a 7 seed. Depending on what 10 seed they are that could be a difference of 9-11 teams.
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Dang. Illinois would become a top 10 team and B1G and national contender
Things are going way too well for Illinois right now
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they also just got a top-60 CG in 22. a very good week for them
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Checks out with me, he’s a game changing presence for them. I’m thinking Omar Payne is not feeling good today though. He was recruited by Antigua I think and know he’s losing 15-20 MPG
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if he left now he’d have to sit a year right?
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Yep either he plays less or they try the clunky two big lineup like they tried two years ago with Giorgi that went very poorly. Odds are they won’t so he can’t be thrilled about it
Kofi back would absolutely make Illinois a Big Ten contender…
Belo-Frazier-Williams-Grandison-Cockburn
Bench: plummer, Payne
Pretty good IMO.
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Not afraid. Good team but not scary.
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It certainly time for us to beat them. But I don’t think that game is predictive of much. After all, they were playing for a banner.
one way to think about it is to work backward from KenPom Adjusted Efficiency Margin. a truly great KenPom team w/ stars everywhere is 35 points per 100 possessions better than an average D1 team, so 1 star playing typical minutes is worth ~35/5 = 7 points per 100.
how good were Illinois’ bigs going to be? B1G replacement level? maybe a little better? the worst B1G teams of the last few years seem to bottom out between 0 and 5 AdjEM, so let’s say they were 1 point per 100 better than average.
7 - 1 = 6 points of AdjEM added. Torvik says Kofi adds 1.3 from D and 4.8 from O to get 6.1
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The team that crushed us is basically the team that is coming back. The worst player for them in that game was Adam Miller, who has now departed. I would easily pick Illinois over Michigan in the league standings as of today and I think we will lose the head-to-head by 45 points.
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I feel attacked
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For me, I dislike MSU, Indiana, and Illinois before OSU when it comes to basketball. In other sports with OSU, I don’t care about rivalry, and I cared more about MSU than other B1G teams.
I get your point, but if every year we say that we shouldn’t overreact to small sample sizes in the NCAA tournament the same applies here.
Illinois was a great team last year, and if you look at their team this year with Kofi coming back it projects to be really good again. It’s basically the entirely same team, and most of the personnel changes seem to be pretty even. You can nitpick but IMO:
Payne (2022) = or < Giorgi (2021)
Plummer (2022) = Miller (2021)
Curbelo (2022) >> Curbelo (2021)
Every other rotation player is a senior or Kofi, who all seem to have reached their ceiling as college players. But the obvious piece I left out above is:
Ayo (2021) >>>>>> whatever Illinois will do to replace him.
Now obviously you can say that Curbelo is the replacement, but even if you do it that way I’d still put it as:
Ayo (2021) >> Curbelo (2022)
Curbelo (2021) >> His replacement (2022).
This team is still going to be a good one for Illinois, and possibly better than Michigan considering how many unknowns we have. But I still think this team is definitely worse than last year’s edition, and doesn’t have the same ceiling as a team like Michigan does.
If anything this team gives me 2020 Michigan vibes. Great pass first PG who is a limited shooter, giant paint bound 7 footer to run the P&R with the previously mentioned PG, and a bunch shooter who are limited in every other sense surrounding them. That’s a really good team, but we saw that Michigan was much more of a top 25 team than a top 5 team.
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