Illinois-Missouri tonight

[Biggus Piggus]

Missouri, 9-1, has moved into the bottom of the top 25.  Illinois, 10-1, has not.

Eh?

Mizzou's best win was a blowout over Cal, which rates highly in RPI and is coached by the excellent Mike Montgomery.  Also beat Southern Cal in a Puerto Rico tournament.  The Tigers have six wins over teams with losing records, and a close loss at Xavier.

Funny Mizzou, after blowing out Stetson, would get ranked the week after Xavier got blown out at Duke.

Illinois has a lone loss to Clemson, which happens to be 12-0.  The Fighting Illini won at Vanderbilt and at Kent State.  Just four of their wins have been against teams with losing records.

Illinois has a 7-1 center, a bunch of good 3-pt shooters, and tons of guards.  Their last two wins came by 39 and 31.  They beat Georgia by 34 points.

The Illini have a lot better RPI and a lot better schedule strength.  If Mike Anderson pulls this one off, I'll be impressed, and the Tigers may deserve their ranking.

[The Hogfather]

I think Missouri wins this game.

[hawgsav1]

Illinois' recruiting has been horrible since the Illini's championship game appearance in 2005.  You'd think a high finish like that could get you further with recruits, but Weber hasn't done well.  Bill Self signed the core of the 2005 tournament run team in 2002 (with Deron Williams, Dee Brown, and James Augustine), and had his classes at Illinois ranked 19th in 2003.  In 2004 he didn't have too much room to sign players. 

Bruce Weber has signed only 2 **** players in his entire Illinois career, and it has showed.  Despite going 37-2 in his second year, 26-7 his third, 23-11 after, and 16-19 last year.  He's started off 10-1 and has an RPI of 19, but we'll see if Weber can get by on not getting much talent.   

[UltimateHog]

Missouri is horrible.

This thing isn't even close.

Poor Mike.

[hawgsav1]

Wow...looks like I was wrong. 

[3kgthog]

I didn't think  Mike "The Savior" Anderson could ever lose a game!

[hawgsav1]

Mizzou is getting nothing from outside and Illinois is getting everything they want. 

[ErieHog]

Did Missouri at least get lube for this?

[Biggus Piggus]

Illinois' recruiting has been horrible since the Illini's championship game appearance in 2005.  You'd think a high finish like that could get you further with recruits, but Weber hasn't done well.  Bill Self signed the core of the 2005 tournament run team in 2002 (with Deron Williams, Dee Brown, and James Augustine), and had his classes at Illinois ranked 19th in 2003.  In 2004 he didn't have too much room to sign players. 

Bruce Weber has signed only 2 **** players in his entire Illinois career, and it has showed.  Despite going 37-2 in his first year, 26-7 his second, 23-11, and 16-19 last year.  He's started off 10-1 and has an RPI of 19, but we'll see if Weber can get by on not getting much talent.  

Giggle.

[hawgsav1]

Giggle.

Yeah...looks like i'm eating crow for dinner tonight...

[hawgsav1]

Despite my heavy diet of crow, I do honestly wonder about Weber's ability as a coach.  From 2005, his record has steadily worsened, bottoming out with a 16-19 record last year.  He's shown he can turn it around, but can he sustain the high level of success he reached earlier in his Illini career?

[Razorod]

Despite my heavy diet of crow, I do honestly wonder about Weber's ability as a coach.  From 2005, his record has steadily worsened, bottoming out with a 16-19 record last year.  He's shown he can turn it around, but can he sustain the high level of success he reached earlier in his Illini career?

depends on what you mean by coach. x's and o's--he's pretty respected. convincing top tier talent to come and play for him, may be another matter. but the guy can coach the game.

[hawgsav1]

depends on what you mean by coach. x's and o's--he's pretty respected. convincing top tier talent to come and play for him, may be another matter. but the guy can coach the game.

I will give Weber that, but part of being a great coach is the ability to get talent to come and play for you (In the past 10 years,  not a single NCAA basketball championship has been won by a team without a McDonald's All American).  Is that a fair assessment of coaching ability?  Probably not, but in the college game (both in football and basketball), you can be a great X's and O's guy but you probably won't win unless you have the talent to go with it.  There are a lot of coaches who are considered great simply because of their ability to get talent in both football and basketball (John Calipari, Pete Carroll, Mack Brown, Roy Williams, Bill Self, etc.).  Some are considered great despite their lack of ability to pull talent (John Chaney, etc.), but they are few in number.  The 'greatest' coach in college basketball history, John Wooden, was by his own admission an 'mediocre' X's and O's guy.  However, look at the players he coached:
Kareem Abdul Jabbar
Gail Goodrich
Bill Walton
Sidney Wicks
Marques Johnson
Walt Hazzard
...and much more

My point is, while recruiting isn't everything, it seems like the likely culprit of the declining levels of success the Illini have gone through the past few years.  While Weber had Bill Self's old players for his first few years, the success was there.  Despite the aberration of this year, the Illini have steadily declined since 2005.  We'll see if Weber can maintain his current level of success. 

[Razorod]

I pretty much agree with you. great coaches tend to attract/convince great players to come and play and play for them. Weber has done a bit better with regard to recruiting for the 09 and 10 classes.