With the college basketball season tipping off next Friday, this is your Illini State basketball “starting five,” the five biggest things you need to know/the five most pressing questions.
As it’s the preseason, there are no “knowns.” There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say there are things that we now know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we do not know we don’t know. Sorry for getting Donald Rumsfeldian on you, here’s your Illini basketball starting five.
1. Which loss hurts Illini basketball more: Darius Paul or Tracy Abrams?
Paul without a doubt. This team is long on off-the-ball guards, and short on rebounders and big men. If there’s ever a year for a horrible thing to happen to Abrams and the Illini basketball program, this is that year. Here’s more on what Abrams’ loss means to the 2014-15 team. I don’t want to get too much into the whole “leadership” and “intangibles” talk because that’s the kind of stuff coaches love to run their mouths about but fans don’t care about. Media are the same way, we don’t care to hear about topics that no one is interested in reading about.
So whenever any coach in any sport starts discussing “leadership councils” and things like that I totally tune out.
2. How will John Groce distribute the playing time among the guards and wings to keep everybody happy?
This is the million dollar question and it’s what will determine the answers to all the other Illini basketball top five questions. Your depth chart probably looks like this among the three positions that will be up for grabs (Rice and Egwu are locked into the starting lineup)
PG Starks/Tate
WG Cosby/Nunn/Hill
F Hill/Black/Finke
This is all highly subject to change. Leron Black had 15 and 8 in the exhibition (a very nice debut) so he’s going to push for playing time. Hill led the exhibition in scoring with 20, so he might be the team’s third piece this year. Or it could be Nunn. What’s most important is that this Illini basketball team now has outside shooters to open up the driving lanes for Rice. They shot 48% in exhibition with the bench putting up a 83% FG. Of course, take those numbers with a huge truckload of salt, let alone a grain of salt.
3. Are the upgrades enough to get them to the big dance?
Absolutely.
Not to get too Tim Beckman-y on you but if you take away the three inexcusable losses (at Northwestern, Purdue, at Georgia Tech) and this Illini basketball team is in the NCAAs. While Beckman’s “if you take away x, then y” statements are outrageous, in this case Illinois didn’t end up too far off making the tourney. Had Abrams’ runner gone in versus Michigan in the Big Ten Tournament, and then Illinois won the next round, and then…well, who knows. The point is the Big Ten will be the second best league in the country this year; behind the ACC.
So it will be tough, but their will also be plenty of good signature wins to be had. Nnanna will be this year’s most important player (more on that here). Rayvonte will be the team’s best player, and it’s heart and soul (more on that here).
4. What’s the starting five?
Nnanna Egwu is locked in at the five, Rayvonte Rice is locked in at the two. Because this team is so small they will have to go with three guards. Everything else is up for grabs. Malcolm Hill and Kendrick Nunn deserve starting spots given their solid rookie campaigns, but Hill is more likely to crack the starting five because he’s 6’6″. Hill is not a four, but he’ll start in the front line alongside Egwu.
The 6’3″ Nunn is actually ahead of Hill in developing thus far, but there’s a logjam at guard; as we pointed out. I would guess senior transfer Ahmad Starks will run the point and the last starting guard spot falls to Aaron Cosby.
By the way, if you want to know why Groce didn’t start the freshmen earlier last season. You can see the very honest answer that he just gave on that a couple weeks ago here.
5. Will people ever shut up with the “how come the top Chicago kids don’t stay home to play their college basketball” narrative?
No. Sorry. This played out storyline will continue thriving as long as the teams in the state keep letting top tier talent go play across the country. At this point, the blame isn’t on any of the teams in the state of Illinois, it’s on the media. The Chicago sports media is pretty awful at their jobs to begin with, and those that cover college sports are especially bad, so that’s why we keep hearing the same headline over and over again ever college hoops and college basketball recruiting season.
First off, we all (myself included) care way too much about recruiting than we should.
Secondly, all of these shopworn narratives hinge on high school kids. We were all whimsical and immature in prep school, why should we expect this generation to be more sensible? In most cases, we’re also talking about prep school kids who have spent a good portion of their lives being told by desperate hangers-on that they’re the next basketball Messiah. So we’re supposed to be make predictions and interpret their actions with logic and reasoning? Please. Just drop the idea of trying to extrapolate greater meaning from their actions and move on.
Everything recruiting related can be summated in the chicken-or-the-egg problem. College basketball in Illinois needs to be consistently solid in order to get better players. They’ll become better when they land those better prospects. So the chicken or the egg?
Then again, Kendrick Nunn is from the Chicago public league. And Malcolm Hill is from in-state too. So this narrative should start going away when it comes to Illini basketball.
Paul M. Banks owns, operates and very often writes The Sports Bank.net ,which is partners with Fox Sports. Read his features stories in the Chicago Tribune RedEye edition. Listen to him on 1620 The Zone. Follow him on Twitter (@paulmbanks). His work has been featured in hundreds of media outlets including The Washington Post and ESPN 2