Now what? Thoughts on the 2007-08 men’s basketball team and beyond
It was right there for them to take.
The season that was whispered to be a disaster could have been relinquished on one made basket. Anyone could have stepped up. Rich McBride could have came back from injury and put a dagger in the hearts of Virgina Tech with a long three. Warren Carter could have sunk a baseline jumper just like he did in the opening minutes. Brian Randle could have found another momentum changing dunk in his back pocket. Just one basket in that five-minute stretch and we would have all remembered why Bruce is in charge–he knows how to win when it counts.
But McBride didn’t find his stroke, Carter did more to fuel the fire than put it out and Randle sunk back into his shell. And Bruce, well, Illini nation could be calling for him to leave the program if another disappointing season follows.
So the question must be asked: Will next year’s team repeat this year’s semi-disasterpiece?
All signs point to … maybe?
Illinois returns three starters next season. Shaun Pruitt could be the premiere center in the Big Ten if he continues his progression and if Illinois guards can find a way to get him the ball more. Against Virginia Tech, he was almost always double covered because Illinois’ motion offense doesn’t include the penetrate and pass.
Randle could be the best player in the country if he stops getting tic-tac fouls and plays at the level he’s capable of. But sometimes it seems like he’s held back because he’s a step ahead of his teammates. He’ll send an amazing pass that will clunk off the hands of one of our big guys and skip out of bounds. That has to be frustrating. The team has to have more of a feel for each other if they want to succeed. Starting together for three seasons with Pruitt should bring the familiarity needed to bring the game to a new level.
Chester Frazier, as great as his defense skills have become, is a liability on offense. Keep in mind that Deron Williams didn’t break out as a scoring point guard until his junior season. Still, I don’t think Frazier has that talent, despite having the heart. And, he’ll most likely be replaced by incoming freshman Demetri McCamey who actually does look like he could be the second coming of Williams and joins a draft class sprinkled with mid-major talent. But McCamey is a (rare) solid recruit who’s limelight was stolen by the Eric Gordon circus and might already be better than Frazier. It’s sad to say that about Frazier when he puts 110% on the court, but you can’t win basketball games with guards that can’t score.
Unfortunately for the Illini next season, their X-factor could be in prison, or at least dismissed from the team. Jamar Smith had the ability to turn into one of the Big Ten’s top shooters and step in as a reliable guard. Instead, it looks as though Calvin Brock will be a starter, who hussles and can make plays, but doesn’t have a big-time shot.
Which brings us to Bruce. The orange blazer isn’t the only thing getting old on the Illini’s sideline. People are starting to get sick of Weber’s “good guy” reputation. As much as I like him as a coach and as a person, his recruiting has been par at best, his substitutions boggle my mind and his motion offense looks like a bunch of confused third graders running around at recess.
Next year will be Weber’s toughest coaching assignment as he tries to motivate a team littered with small-conference transfers and three-star talent. The schedule will be much more difficult than D-II programs as we try to compete at the illustrious Mauii Invite. If the Illini get half the distractions they had this season, they will plummet to the bottom of the Big Ten. If that does happen, I think the team needs to part ways with Weber. It would be best for both sides. Maybe the Big Ten was too big for Weber. Maybe he’s best throwing X’s and O’s at kids who have nothing to lose on the court. You can only teach a player so much at this level before they’re just a really good role player, unless they have the raw talent to begin with. If Bruce had this team in any mid-major conference, they would run over everyone. But in the Big Ten, 9-7 is the best they will ever do.
Next season will make or break not only Weber, but Athletic Director Ron Guenther and the entire Illini basketball program. Two year’s removed from a near national championship, this team should not be heading for the gutter, not in college basketball, not when you’re Illinois and not when you have the entire Chicagoland area to recruit from. But it is. And next season, Weber will be playing every game like it’s his job (and it is) and his team will play tight, systematic basketball (because that’s all they will know). I don’t think we have to worry about next year’s basketball team being a repeat of this year’s in terms of disappointment. Nope, I think we’re looking at a much larger skid than that. Next year’s team isn’t fighting for a tournament spot, its fighting for a winning record.
March 17th, 2007 at 11:30 pm
I know Weber cant recruit at all, but we got to at least think that maybe, just maybe, DMcCamey and QWat can make some kind of impact, even if they are Freshman, these are real guards.
March 18th, 2007 at 8:53 am
The U of I needs to clean up the entire campus and then maybe someone that has talent and true character, would come and play on our team. When I read, that, they hoped that they could have Brian Carlwell back for the Big Ten Tournament, I was almost in shock. My thoughts at the time were; what is the message here? Are we going to sacrifice one, to save the other? Is the 19 year-old drunk some kind of angel here or just easier to save because he wasn’t driving? From the top to the bottom, does anyone at Illinois have integrity? I don’t expect any coach to be a father or mother to their players. I expect them to be more like a general and command their programs with respect, discipline, integrity and honor. Any athlete, that can’t play a game and display these qualities, needs to be somewhere else. This should be started at the earliest levels of competitive sports, in grade school. Then, by the time they enter a college program, they will be prepared. Somebody, somewhere, please set a higher standard. Look where we are going. If we think winning is great, imagine, how it feels to know you helped mold a young mind full of confusion into a pillar of integrity and you sent them off into the world and they maintained it.
March 18th, 2007 at 9:07 am
Wow, could you have published a more depressing article?
March 18th, 2007 at 3:46 pm
At least 4 of Weber’s recruits just advanced to the Sweet 16. Go Salukis!!!
March 18th, 2007 at 8:23 pm
Wow. Let’s just throw the whole team under the bus with the Chief. Why does everyone suddenly think Weber can’t coach and the team can’t play?
Think about it. Bill Self lost opening round games in multiple years at Kansas with talent we lamented we did not get. If Self never left, the final four team would probably have lost in the second round - Brian Cook was no longer around to bail him out.
Gene Keady won a whole lot of Big Ten titles with the motion offense. Weber took the offense to SIU, where he took a wreck left by Rich Herrin and turned the program into one of the premier non-BCS teams in the country. Chris Lowery is still running a version of the offense, although his players are probably not as talented as the ones Weber recruited to SIU. And the Salukis are just as good as they were under Weber.
But I’m not sure that Weber can run the offense the same way next year; his talent next year will not fit the motion offense very well. Why? We are going to get bigger, and a guard oriented offense will probably not work very well. Think about it: the roster will include this:
Mike Tisdale 7′0″ freshman
Brian Carlwell 6′11″sophmore
Shawn Pruitt 6′10″ senior
Bill Cole 6′9″ freshman
Rich Semrau 6′9″ redshirt freshman
CJ Jackson 6′8″ redshirt sophmore (who maybe should play football)
Brian Randle 6′8″ redshirt senior
I don’t see more than two guards starting, whether they might be Frazier, Meachem, Smith, Brock or the freshmen. Pruitt and Randle are proven, we know what they can do. But this seems clear: the other big starting probably cannot do what Warren Carter has been doing with ballhandling and outside shooting. We are going to have to run an offense which focuses on getting the ball into the middle first and quit playing around the three point line. SIU did it with Rolen Roberts when Weber was there. Purdue ran lots of plays for the Big Dog, who led the country in scoring. Weber knows how to do this, so let him.
And it appears that Weber knows he needs to change things up next year. I’ve already read comments from him that maybe we will play a lot more zone next year because we will be so big (I’d be frightened by the concept of Carlwell and/or Pruitt chasing around a quick little 6′8″ forward trying to play man-to-man). Let him adapt the system to the talent rather than hope for a return to the past players.
Look at the post-Flying Illini years as a comparison. Lou Henson crashed to a losing season a couple of years later. A few years later, Lon Kruger went from first to worst. Despite the injuries and off-court problems that happened with the players this year, we won 23 games and made the NCAA. We should be lauding Weber’s coaching with this team.
March 19th, 2007 at 5:03 am
Great article and unfortunately too true! The Illini are sinking like a rock in water in the Big 10. Hopefully their football program will be resurrected so there’s at least something to cheer about. Understand, I’m as orange & blue as they come but our b’ball program is not burning so brightly these days. Consider I’ve lived in OH for a number of years and it’s really disheartening to see the Buckeyes compete for the national program in BOTH football & b’ball while the Illini are heading nowhere! (Even the Buckeyes coach is an IL boy.) ANd don’t forget their b’ball program had its issues as recently as a couple years ago w/the NCAA. We’re clean and still get beat by newbies such as Thad Motta & now Sampson’s recruiting talents at IU.
Meanwhile, did you notice that Bill Self has Kansas right where he wants them and the Kansas program didn’t skip a beat when Roy Williams departed for N Carolina? Did you notice Guenther even has the Runnin’ Rebels of UNLV in the sweet 16? Illinois was probably lucky to even get in the NCAA tournament.
Admittedly Weber did a good job with the gift he was given from Self with the ‘05 Illini. Unfortunately his pipeline is about to run dry while other Big 10 programs already have top recruits for the 2008 season we’ve got….hummm….not much. Probably good the Chief was retired to the reservation. Tks Bruce!
March 19th, 2007 at 10:37 am
you know… i think it would be interesting to see how many of our games were lost by less points that missed free throws.
though i agree that the team doesn’t look the same as it did in the previous two years, i also understand that not every team will give the appearance of such great teamwork and selflessness. this years team was talented, worked together, and triumphed in many ways, but in the end, it’s simple fundamentals that bit them.
there is no excuse for shooting free throws the way we did. if it were up to me, the team would be stuck in practice, running drills until every one of them could go 10 for 10 on free throws regularly. giving up more than 10 free points a game at any point in a season is unacceptable.
the teamwork and talent is there, the skills and experience will come, but no matter how good they are, other teams will take advantage of missed opportunities and use them to beat us!
March 21st, 2007 at 8:37 am
I agree with David90..Everybody seems to be thinking the Illini program is in doomsday mode. However, we must not forget that Illinois lost more practice time due to injuries and off court issues than any other DI school this year. I guarantee you that Bill Self, Thad Motta, Lon Kruger, or any other coach would have been able to do a better coaching job than Bruce did this year. To get a team that couldn’t practice together all year to 23 wins and almost beat the best team in the ACC in the first round (don’t forget that VT beat UNC twice and also won the conference) shows a lot about how good of a coach Bruce really is. I don’t care that he doesn’t get the top talent in recruiting, because top talent doesn’t beat a good team that plays great defense. And Bruce Weber knows how to create teamwork and how to get his teams to play great defense. Everyone thinks that Bruce got the 05 team to the finals because he had unbelievable offensive talent, which they were…but they got to the championship because Weber got them to do something that Bill Self could never get his teams to do, play great defense!! Bruce proved at SIU, and will conitnue to prove at UofI that you don’t need the best to be a perennial top program. All he needs for next year is a healthier team and more practice time for the team to gel and they will do much better than this year. SIU continues to be a really good team because of what Bruce Weber did there. We shouldn’t let one year rittled with injuries and issues distract us from seeing how good of a coach Bruce Weber is and how Illinois basketball is still in good shape. Give him a break and a chance to recover next year.
March 21st, 2007 at 8:38 am
Sorry,
I had a few grammatical errors in my last post…I meant to say that no other coach could have done as good a job as Bruce.
and I also meant to say that VT almost won the conference, not also won the conference.
Thanks!!
March 21st, 2007 at 10:56 am
That 2005 team learned defense from Bruce, yes, I will agree with that 100%. But it’s much more difficult to teach scoring than it is to teach defense. A natural shot and an instinct to score is inbred within a player. Those are the kinds of recruits that are special. The best recruiters can go coast to coast and find those kinds of athletes and then coach their players around the talent. When you don’t have the talent to begin with, it’s difficult to function.
Most of you who disagree with me are saying the same thing: all teams have their down years. But when was the last time in the last 10 years or so that we didn’t have at least one oustanding player? Frank Williams, Brian Cook to the entire 2005 team. It’s not like we have some outstanding talent to look forward to in the next few years.
College basketball coaches have three jobs: Be a mentor, be a coach and be a recruiter. Weber is above everyone else at being a mentor. I used to have more faith in him as a coach, but recently it has faltered. And as a recruiter, I don’t think anyone can say that he’s done his job. It’s not that he’s not trying, he’s just not doing it right. He thinks that ILLINOIS is a big enough name that people should want to play there. He thinks saying, “Look, I almost won in 2005″ is a good enough reason for people to come. Even the best like Coach K aren’t naiive enough to think that. They go to all the high school basketball games and press hard on the players. He needs to connect with the players like Ron Zook does. He needs to make promises about playing time, bash other coaches and get the top talent in the country, not just in Chicago (although there’s plenty there that he’s missed). If he can’t do that, then he’s probably best suited as a mid-major coach.