Fighting Illini Basketball End Of Year Assessment: Where Is Illinois' Place In College Basketball?

Last night Arizona advanced to the Elite Eight by beating the Duke Blue Devils. This is the same program that Deron Williams and the Fighting Illini took down in 2005 to advance to the Final Four. In that Final Four Illinois was joined by Louisville, North Carolina and Michigan State. Since then Michigan State and North Carolina have advanced to two Final Fours, each. Louisville has been to two Elite Eights. Kansas, the team for which Bill Self left Illinois has gone won a national championship.

In the last six years, all of these programs that we could consider "elite' have more or less maintained their level of performance in college basketball, while Illinois has won just two games in the NCAA tournament since. You can overachieve, or you can underachieve, but how "achieving" is defined is dictated by larger factors than simply who is on your team.

Now that the basketball season is in the books, a class of seniors is departing and the coaching carousel is in full motion, I want to take a deep serious assessment of the University of Illinois and its place in the basketball pantheon. Are we under achieving? Should we expect more? Is this the best we can do? Is there anything we can actually do about it? Hopefully with the fog of a basketball now lifted we can answer these questions honestly and without  reservation.

From 1996 to 2011, Illinois has had five conference regular season Big Ten Championships, made the tournament twelve times, had a Final Four season, an Elite Eight Season and two Sweet Sixteen appearances. For a fifteen year period I'd say that is pretty good, even if it is front loaded on the first nine seasons. I can think of two programs that have done better during that same period though, even in our own conference.  Michigan State has six Final Four appearances over the same period, including a national title, and Ohio State, which (counting vacated seasons) has won six conference titles, been to two Final Fours, and is likely well on their way to a national title this year.

Tables via Wikipedia

Illinois has obviously been a quality program over the last decade and a half, that cannot be argued with, the Illini won 20 games or more in 13 of those 15 years. But Illinois has been not reached the levels of Duke, North Carolina, Kansas, UCONN or Louisville.

Compare that then to the previous 15 seasons, from 1980 to 1995, the high period of Lou Henson's tenure in Champaign.

Number of Final Four appearances, one in 1989, along with an Elite Eight appearance in 1984 and two more Sweet Sixteen appearances, during this time as well Henson won or shared just one Big Ten regular season title (in the middle of a Big Ten era that included Gene Keady, Bob Knight, Jud Heathcote and the  Frieder/Fischer Michigan teams, so I think we wont begrudge him that.)

During this period also, Henson had ten 20 win or more seasons, all without the benefit of a conference tournament to give his final resume that extra boost.

Over fifteen year period, Illinois seems to be fairly consistent in its production, as the combined effort from  Kruger/Self/Weber seems to be more or less close to what we saw with Henson in the 80's. That seems to present a strong argument, "you are what you are" not matter what.

Our perception of the program and where it stands in the basketball landscape is what defines our expectations for the teams, year to year and our coaches over longer periods. The Illinois fan base is a loyal one, but as seen by the empty seats in the Assembly Hall at the end of this season and last season. (Compare that to Indiana, who actually outdrew Illinois last year, despite having another terrible season.)

Illinois' athletic department will spend money on the program, and has donors that will help foot the bill, but in the end, Weber is still only the sixth or seventh highest paid coach in the Big Ten, based on annual pay. (IU not included on the USA Today list, but compensation is over 2 mil.) Paying a head coach a lot of money doesn't guarantee that coach will be a good one,  it sure as hell goes a long way in retaining a good one. The bottom line is, in terms of money, when both Lon Kruger and Bill Self left Illinois for the NBA and Kansas respectively, they weren't necessarily only leaving just to coach better teams, they were also leaving for significant pay raises.

Illinois is the flagship university in a basketball state, whose instate recruiting rivals include only two major conference teams, Depaul and Northwestern, who have exactly two total tournament appearances over the last dozen years. There are many years when Illinois will get the best players in Illinois, but most years it will get some of the best, losing  the highest tier players from Chicago to national basketball powers. (This year is a great example of this, where Illinois' top players No. 1-6 are all going out of state to places like Kentucky and Louisville, but players  7-10 are all headed to the Illini. Really good recruiting, but no full on blue chips.)

This is what we are, or at least what we have been over the last 30 years. The coaching carousel is already in full rotation, and lots of people are talking about trading up on the coaching staff "before it deteriorates anymore." It isn't a simple thing to fire a coach, and that decision should not be made without at least understanding the facts of college basketball, as they apply to your school. Illinois can attract top coaching talent it is true, but the last two coaches left for what they thought were better opportunities. Simply wanting  and demanding a successful basketball program isn't good enough to actually get it. Firing and hiring coaches until you hit a program defining name is no way to really go about it either. To some extent, you are what you are and you have to work around that.

But is basketball a caste system? Can a program latch onto a great coach and hope he brings the whole thing up with him? In the next part of this series, we will examine if Illinois can change what it is, and make itself a Kansas or a Duke or a UCONN. Or whether we should all simply be satisfied with the basketball we have more or less gotten tor three straight decades.