Good Morning, Illini Nation: Projections for the 2023-24 season
May 25—Welcome to "Good Morning, Illini Nation," your daily dose of college basketball news from Illini beat writer and AP Top 25 voter Scott Richey. He'll offer up insights every morning on Brad Underwood's team:
If you're a regular listener to the "Inside Illini Basketball" podcast (above, if you want to start), you'll know the reference to BartTorvik.com — a college basketball analytics website. Like KenPom, but slightly different.
The "slightly different" aspect unique to Torvik are his projections for the next season. It's all based on statistics for teams as they stand now. So any projections for Illinois, right now at least, don't include Terrence Shannon Jr. and Coleman Hawkins in the calculation. Should they decide to come back, the numbers will change (positively for the Illini).
But here's a few tidbits to tide you over until those decisions are made (one week and counting):
— Illinois is currently projected as the 50th best team in the country. That puts the Illini behind No. 6 Michigan State, No. 23 Purdue, No. 25 Indiana, No. 27 Wisconsin, No. 28 Northwestern, No. 41 Ohio State, No. 44 Iowa and No. 46 Nebraska. Long story short, that puts Illinois ninth in the Big Ten. The projected record? Try 18-13 overall and 9-11 in the conference.
— Why would that be you might ask? As the roster currently stands, Illinois is set to bring back 31.3 percent of the minutes played in 2022-23. That puts teh Illini toward the bottom of the country. At the top is Northern Iowa, which will return 100 percent of its minutes played from last season. At the bottom is New Mexico State, which will return 0 percent of its minutes played.
— So what would Shannon and Hawkins deciding to return mean? The answers to that lie in Torvik's RosterCast where you can add — or subtract — players from the roster. The Illinois roster as currently constructed has SIU transfer Marcus Domask topping the list of a projected 10-man rotation with Dain Dainja next and then Oregon transfer Quincy Guerrier and Utah Valley transfer Justin Harmon next.
Simply adding Shannon would bump the Illini from No. 50 in the preseason projection to No. 30 with nearly all of the improvement coming on the offensive end. Makes sense. Shannon was the team's leading scorer in 2022-23.
A return from Hawkins, but not Shannon, doesn't provide much of an increase, with Illinois going from 50th to 47th with a slight improvement in the defensive numbers. Bring them both back, and Illinois is once again a preseason top 25-caliber team based on the numbers.
That doesn't solve the point guard issue, of course. The right point guard addition changes Illinois' projection in an even more positive way. Shannon, Hawkins and RayJ Dennis? That's a top 20 team. It might be time to start looking beyond Dennis, however, given the uncertainty of his situation when it comes to actually landing in Champaign.
