Projecting Illinois Basketball, Part 2

About a month ago, I ran a post projecting how Illinois basketball might rank in the Pomeroy Ratings in the upcoming season. To my delight, Vegas Watch has updated his regression model to take into account incoming recruit ratings. This addition is relevant to Illinois given that we are bringing in a touted recruiting class this year.

First, a table of past projections based on this regression model and how the Illini have actually performed:

Year	Prev Pyth	% Return	Projection	Actual	Diff
2005	.953	92.0	.976	.982	.006
2006	.982	40.9	.828	.940	.112
2007	.940	65.7	.887	.932	.045
2008	.932	57.9	.896	.900	.004
2009	.900	67.8	.875	.911	.036
2010	.911	57.0	.865	???	???

Key:
Prev Pyth = Previous season's Pythagorean Win Percentage. Check out Ken Pomeroy's website for more info.
% Return = Percentage of previous season's minutes returning to the team.

As I noted last time, Illinois has outperformed its projection every single season. I credited this to the coaching of Bruce Weber, and he actually looks even better this time around, because Illinois' projections are generally lower after taking recruiting ratings into account.

Of course, recruiting is part of the coach's job too, and Weber has in the past not really delivered the way a coach at a top program should. Illinois has brought in at least one four-star prospect every year listed in the table (counting Calvin Brock as a recruit for 2006 because he took a redshirt year, and adding Alex Legion as a transfer last year), but no five-star prospects, and only one year with more than one four-star prospect (2008 - with Demetri McCamey, Mike Tisdale, and Rodney Alexander - not coincidentally, if you sub in Mike Davis for Alexander, the foundation of the current team). Thus Illini fans have become very excited about this year and next year's highly touted recruiting classes as indicators of a sea change in Illinois recruiting.

That said, by the Scout.com ratings, Illinois is actually only bringing in two four-star prospects this year (DJ Richardson and Brandon Paul), as Tyler Griffey and Joseph Bertrand rate as three-star prospects. Thus Illinois has a comparably low projection of .865 for the coming season. I have seen Griffey rated as a four-star prospect by other sources, so if I include him at four-stars, the team's projection would increase to .884. Either way, this projection is lower than that of the previous two seasons.

The good news is that even if Illinois posts a relatively disappointing Pomeroy rating of .865 this year, likely leaving them on the NCAA bubble, they project to bring back 90%+ of minutes and also add a 5-star and two 4-star recruits for the following season. With hypothetically, 92% of minutes returning in 2011, Illinois projects at .946 for next year, which would be by far their highest projection since 2005, when they were projected to be one of the premier national championship contenders. And that's a conservative estimate, considering that the team has outperformed their projection by an average of 2.6% each year under Bruce Weber, even throwing out the 2006 projection which was way too low. Obviously I want to be optimistic about my team, but although Illinois may appear to tread water this season, they will be stacked and likely a Top 10 team in 2011. Now that's what better recruiting can do for you.