CHAMPAIGN — At long last, Illini men's basketball will finally have its full roster together when classes begin on Monday for the start of the fall semester.
Brad Underwood and his staff have assembled a very talented group for the upcoming season. The Illini head man told reporters last week that he believes this team has a ceiling that is "maybe as high as any team we've had". The excitement has been palpable, and every highlight clip that surfaced from the eight weeks of summer workouts seemed to amplify that even more.
That said, the Illini haven't been completely whole as a team quite yet. Highly-touted Illini freshman Kasparas Jakucionis was on campus for two weeks before then returning to Europe to gear up for the FIBA U18 Eurobasket in Finland. Jakucionis was in and out of Ubben before Illinois' other potential one-and-done first-rounder Will Riley showed up in early July. A few weeks later, 7-foot-1 Croatian big man Tomislav Ivisic finally made it to campus.
Underwood said that the team will likely begin practicing sometime next weekend. They will start with individual workouts and small groups for the first two weeks, while also mixing in a few days of team. The guys will immediately get back to work with strength & conditioning coach Adam Fletcher as well.
As for on the court, what will Underwood be looking for now that his full roster is about to come together for the first time?
"Familiarity for one, for me. We haven't seen KJ and Will together. (Kylan) Boswell with KJ has been very minimal. You start looking at Tomislav with those guys. Tomislav spent no time in any situation with KJ," Underwood told Illini Inquirer. "You just want familiarity. You want comfort. You want to see how guys play and react to each other. You want to see different lineups that KJ being gone here in July didn't give us the luxury of seeing this summer. There are a lot of things out there that we're really excited to look at from a lineup standpoint and see how they interact."
Developing that on-court chemistry is important, as the Illini have almost an entirely new roster with 10 of their 12 scholarship players being newcomers. Obviously, this team doesn't have much of any collective experience outside of those who were together during the summer. There's not a ton of high-major experience on the roster either, as Kylan Boswell, Ty Rodgers, Tre White and Carey Booth are the only ones who have played significant minutes at this level.
The Illini are on opposite ends of the spectrum when you evaluate their experience and their talent level. According to Bart Torvik's projections, Georgetown is the only high-major team with a lower 'effective experience' score than Illinois heading into the upcoming season. Granted, Duke has the third-lowest score in that category among high-majors and the Blue Devils are a projected top-10 team. The likes of Arkansas, Purdue, Michigan State and Rutgers — all opponents on Illinois' schedule — aren't far off on the experience side of things either.
As for the talent angle, Torvik has Illinois second in the country (only behind UCONN) in 'effective talent' score. The Illini have multiple guys who are garnering attention from the NBA, namely Jakucionis and Riley but others are getting looks from that level as well. Underwood told Illini Inquirer that his staff made a concerted effort to increase the NBA talent on the roster, even if it meant pivoting away from being one of the older teams out there.
"Part of it is you look at next-level projections, to be very honest, and guys the next level likes. It's nice to see us have some of those guys," Underwood said. "Walking off the court after the UCONN game, I felt that was an area (that was different). We were old. That group was tremendous. We were a Final Four team last year that just happened to catch them in the Elite Eight… Setting out and getting more action guys, more guys who could do things and stay within the flux of our positional size and shooting. I think we're in a really good spot there. I feel good about our talent. I just like the fact we've got a lot of versatility with size."
There should be a lot of depth as well. With that, there will be a number of intriguing battles within the roster as guys jockey for roles and playing time. This is probably as interesting of a preseason as any for Underwood's program, and now that all of the pieces are about to be present, the Illini can take that next step in putting it all together.
