John Groce’s Hypothetical Season
The “what-ifs” are endless, but let’s go through the experiment
The loss on Thursday to Ohio State should be soul-crushing. It should have hurt me a bit more. For several reasons, it was just a brush-off game. I bleed orange and blue but this is where I’m at right now. I would say I’m in the upper-ten percent of Illini basketball fandoms. There are a large amount of crazies out there who devote their life even more than someone who bought a URL to write about the team. It’s the other 90 percent of the fan base I worry about. This portion of the fan base which has put the Illini on the pay-no-mind list and the number is rising.
It’s not a hopeless situation. I do believe some day the University of Illinois basketball program will return to greatness. It’s only been a decade of this and the state has too much talent; the university has too much history, to be able to say they won’t get there. The question everyone has to ask is how and how long until it can be done. The first question which has to be answered before those is what to do about Coach John Groce.
The AD situation is a much larger problem, big picture. Nothing can be done — one would think, nothing was done to the football program — until a new AD is hired. The status of John Groce will ultimately be his or her decision. My ramblings here will be laying down the reasons why or why not to keep Groce. I hope the new AD appreciates my efforts.
Let’s set things straight: Groce did not sink this program. We have Bruce Weber to thank for that. However, at best, Groce has kept it at the same level. Mike Thomas brought in Groce to fix the wrongs Weber created and through many different reasons, no one has seen any progress. Yes, Groce took Weber’s team, who Weber had lost, and was able to make the NCAA tournament and get very close to winning two games. Since then however, it’s been many goals not achieved. I wouldn’t imagine the AD would be making a decision without diligent research, but on the ground level, the results are not present for Groce to keep his job.
On the flip side, Groce has a file cabinet full of excuses. I was fairly shocked at the response to my tweet after the Ohio State loss when I stated Groce has to have multiple 2017 recruits by the end of THIS season to be able to keep his job. From the people I follow on Twitter and listening to the ESPN CU broadcast, I thought it was a consensus the fan base wanted Groce out.
The pro-Groce mafia came after me in regards to the tweet. The injuries are the majority of the ammo Groce-supporters go to. I don’t even want to start on the people who bring up his past tournament success; that was a long time ago, people.
It’s very hard to argue the injury point. There’s no one who can deny Groce hasn’t been dealt a horrible hand in his time here. Any coach who has to deal with injuries, suspensions, removals from the program and some unfortunate recruiting happenstances would have trouble succeeding. There is a question on how much Groce is to blame. He has not brought in the greatest depth and has not been able to succeed through adversity.
The best way to look at this is to start with a question I was asked on Twitter Sunday morning.
What if Coach Groce had his full team this season? This is ignoring last season, or the one before, or the one before that. Let’s just try to look in the crystal ball and give him the benefit of the doubt and go with the team he had constructed before any bad luck.
First off, Tracy Abrams does not get injured. That would mean Khalid Lewis is not brought in and Abrams is the starting point guard and Jaylon Tate is his backup.
We’ll go ahead and pretend Jalen Coleman-Lands didn’t get injured and got the full European trip under his belt.
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We’ll also say Kendrick Nunn didn’t miss any games to start the season.
Mike Thorne, Jr and Leron Black — no knee injuries — we’ll give them strong ligaments all season.
I’ll even throw in since the team has Abrams’ on-court leadership, Darius Paul doesn’t do childish things (yes, I’m being facetious) in Europe and does not get suspended and is still with the team.
Where does that leave the team and the rotation? The starting five is Abrams, Nunn, Malcolm Hill, Black and Thorne. They would even be able to go ten deep with a bench five of Tate, JCL, Paul, Michael Finke, and Maverick Morgan. Aaron Jordan and D.J. Williams both probably red shirt and can sit and learn behind a veteran team.
This team looks much better than what is currently on the floor. How much better though? Abrams, without a doubt, would have helped the defense. With him, North Florida doesn’t shoot 51.5 percent from 3 nor does Chattanooga shoot 40 percent. Does the offense really improve much? Tate and Lewis have done enough as far as not turning the ball over. Abrams is more of a threat to shoot — but isn’t a great shooter — and there would be more turnovers.
Thorne and Black would solve one of the biggest problems for the current Illini team — rebounding. There would actually be a chance to win the boards battles with those two in. The second chance points in the Ohio State game would have been drastically limited.
We still haven’t gotten a great look at Thorne. Thorne was a 10 and 7 guy last year at Charlotte, a far cry from the Big Ten. He was very good in the non-conference portion before getting injured, but he was the biggest player on the floor by far, against lesser competition. The biggest game he was healthy for was Providence and he couldn’t stay on the floor, accruing five fouls in 13 minutes. He was having a good game against the other top competition, Iowa State, but unfortunately that’s where the injury occurred. He has only played one Big Ten game, the blowout game against Indiana, and he looked good. He went nine and nine but a portion was played after the game was out of the question.
Black hasn’t looked right all season so it’s hard to say what he would have looked like in this hypothetical situation I’m describing. The fouling issue which plagued him in his freshman year did not seem to be corrected and who knows how much time Black would have given each game, healthy or not.
If Black and/or Thorne would have gotten themselves into foul trouble, Finke and Morgan would have been able to come off the bench. Having them as more situational players may have made them much more successful instead of being forced to play almost every minute between them. It would be very likely Finke wouldn’t have found the success he has found this season.
With all of those scenarios listed, let’s take a look at the schedule. I do believe the North Florida game would have still been a toss-up. The actual on-ball defense does not get as big of an upgrade and it’s possible North Florida could have had just as hot of a shooting night. I do not believe they would have had an issue against Chattanooga so there is at least one win added. They probably do get at least one of Providence, Iowa State or Notre Dame. It’s easy to say the Providence game would be the one they take due to it only being a one point game but it was as close to a full lineup as they’ve had this season. Notre Dame may have been the more likely win but that one also came down to defense and a hot shooting performance from the Irish.
The 2–6 record in Big Ten play would certainly be improved, but do Abrams, Thorne and Black make up the difference in 25+ point losses to Michigan State and Indiana? Hard to believe. The Michigan game, both Ohio State games and the Nebraska game are all more in question and if you give the team three more wins it puts them at 5–3 which is good for seventh in the Big Ten. I think that is about right. The Big Ten is stronger than most believed they would be this year as Iowa and Indiana have surprised. Seventh or eighth in the Big Ten is not good enough to make the tournament right now so the team is back to where it’s been the last several years — on the bubble — which is at least a lot better than the current status.
The injuries are certainly an excuse but one also has to consider you can only put five guys on the floor at a time in basketball. The team is currently missing three of the five would-be starters but they are not All-Big Ten players and their backups have been serviceable. The bigger excuse is with a fully healthy team, the team would have more able bodies. Instead of subbing out a Kendrick Nunn for a Jalen Coleman-Lands, Groce has to sub out a Kendrick Nunn for a walk-on in Alex Austin. The starters did look to burn out a little bit after the comeback against Ohio State. Groce said the team could have gone another forty minutes, but that’s not what I saw — they looked gassed — rightfully so. The other missed opportunity in this scenario is it would have been great to be able to red-shirt Jordan and Williams, as they do not appear to be Big Ten-ready this season.
My conclusion is this team would still be short of its goals as things presently stand. The team would still be in need of probably ten wins in the Big Ten season so they’d still be looking for five more wins. I can come back to this article after the season, but right now, the team needs to show they are just a few pieces short of reaching their goal with the actual team they have.
This game today (home vs Wisconsin) would almost have to be one of those five wins. If the team doesn’t get this one, the new AD can take a look at this article by Paul Banks — that will be the more pertinent one as this one has already covered all excuses.
