The 2015-16 Illini basketball season of dreck is now FINALLY over! Huzzah!
Let’s try and forget what was the worst season in Illini basketball history since pre-Lou Henson era. I understand why so many compared this year to 1999 and 2008, but this was even worse. So let’s move on from the debates about whether or not John Groce is the guy. It doesn’t matter right now because Stone Cold Josh Whitman has spoken, and we’re all true believers is what Whitman has got going on right now.
(UPDATE: Junior Guard Jaylon Tate becomes the third Illinois basketball player to get arrested this season. Tate is now in a club of dubious distinction with sophomore power forward Leron Black (facing felony charges for pulling a knife on a bouncer) and Darius Paul (kicked off the team after his second indefinite suspension for public intoxication and disorderly conduct on a preseason trip in France).
Jaylon Tate, who is facing a misdemeanor domestic battery charge, joins Black in being indefinitely suspended from the program. It’s safe to say that Illini basketball is now pretty much as awful off-the-court as they were on it this season.
Even in spite of the Tate news, and what it further demonstrates about a program in utter and complete peril, for now, Groce is CEO of the Illini basketball corporation. We must respect him as that. He might not be a year from now, but that’s another discussion for another time.
There’s no need to “throw shade” on John Groce anymore.
Or like the castle lord at the wedding said in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, “let’s not bicker and argue about who killed who.”
Let’s all move forward together. To do that, we must also get past the tired, pointless “hey, there were injuries” discussion.
This was just a bad team; healthy or not. Do they have talent? Absolutely. Is there a lot of potential? No question. Were there a lot of guys hurt? Certainly. However, Tracy Abrams, Darius Paul and Mike Thorne don’t make this team good. At best, it’s a ninth place team at full strength.
And if you had to rely that heavily on Abrams, Thorne, Paul (and now we can throw Leron Black in there), you weren’t close to NCAA Tournament material to begin with.
Expect another retooling year in 2016-17, before Whitman gets the arrow pointing up again. Eventually, Whitman will get this house fire extinguished. Who knows, maybe he’s got a basketball Lovie already in the works this summer.
Following yet another ridiculous humiliation in front of a national audience on ESPN, this time at the hands of Purdue, Groce didn’t say much about next season. Why anyone still wanted to talk about the complete annihilation by the Boilermakers at the time, or even about this season any more for that reason, is beyond me.
Here’s what he said about the Big Ten Tournament:
COACH GROCE: “The next season, we have a lot of barriers to cross before I know fully what that is going to look like. We have a lot different things, recruiting. So I can’t give you the exact picture right now, Shannon, and just peg it because there’s still a lot of variables.”
Groce did say @sryantribune Shannon's name 4 different times in that session tho, fwiw. In case you need an #Illini presser drinking game
— Paul M. Banks (@PaulMBanks) March 11, 2016
of course, if you do watch Illini pressers on television and play drinking games to them… it's time to take a long, hard look at your life
— Paul M. Banks (@PaulMBanks) March 11, 2016
Groce sometimes mentions Shannon’s name and also references her questions when answering other reporter questions. It’s one of his consistent idiosyncrasies.
However, he totally evaded her question about Thorne and Black. Quite often, the news value of Groce’s news conferences are right about on par with the entertainment value of all those Illini basketball games televised on ESPN this past year.
Who’s gone:
This is the good news, no one’s leaving except for Khalid Lewis. Illini basketball can only get better from here as they’ll have everybody relevant returning. Unless Malcolm Hill declares early for the NBA Draft, a topic that we covered in detail already.
Who’s returning:
Everybody, if Hill stays, and Tracy Abrams. Be cautious with your Abrams expectations; he hasn’t played in over two years and is coming off two extremely serious injuries. What he’ll be able to provide, beyond leadership and intangibles, is a mystery right now. We don’t know officially about Black, but you can safely assume that he’d done. With Thorne, it’s still all up in the air, but at the end of the day…he’s not Deyonta Davis or Diamond Stone.
He’s not even close to being a Biggie Swanigan. In other words, he’s not that huge of a difference maker.
Who’s coming:
Te’Jon Lucas will be the first true Big Ten caliber point guard of the Groce era. Abrams is a lot of things, but he’s not a genuine, bonafide power five team point guard. Lucas, a four star prospect, might be. Again, be patient.
Unfortunately, he’s also the entire next Illini basketball recruiting class all by himself. If John had a bigger and better incoming freshmen class, we’d probably have a different viewpoint on his job performance.
Possible rotations:
Hill, Nunn and Jalen Coleman-Lands are locks to be in the starting five. Maverick Morgan or Michael Finke will likely start too as they’ll have to put at least one experienced big out there. Neither is a top 6 or 7 team in the Big Ten level starting forward, but they have their good qualities. Finke was decent until he got hurt. Mav had a nice positive trajectory.
Everyone is playing three guards in college basketball these days, and some are even playing four. Lucas and Abrams sharing duties running the point comprises your fifth member of the starting five.
If JCL continues developing, you have a nice piece accompanying Hill and Nunn. However, this program needs D.J. Williams and Aaron Jordan to live up to their recruiting ranking hype in order to see some real progress.
Very early outlook:
Illini basketball can’t be any worse than this 2015-16 atrocity, so you know the arrow’s pointing up. Illinois bringing everybody back while the rest of the Big Ten suffers their usual attrition means the arrow is significantly up.
Don’t be thinking NCAA Tournament though- it’s a long shot at best. 2016-17 will be considered “a win” if they can get back to that first round of the Big Ten Tournament #8 vs #9 mediocre tedium we’ve watched every year from 2012 until this year.
That persistent middling banality actually seems pleasant compared to right now.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net, partnered with FOX Sports Engage Network. and News Now. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times, currently contributes regularly to the Chicago Tribune’s RedEye publication and Bold Global.
He also consistently appears on numerous talk shows all across the country. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram