Projecting Illinois Basketball, 2009-10

Today I am taking a break from my ongoing Illinois football preview and looking way ahead - to basketball. I was prompted to do this thanks to an interesting post over at Vegas Watch. Using Vegas Watch's projection system, I wanted to take a look at what we can expect from the 2010 Illini squad as well as how they performed against their projections in the past.

Year	Prev Pyth	% Return	Projection	Actual	Diff
2005	.953	92.0	.979	.982	.003
2006	.982	40.9	.882	.940	.058
2007	.940	65.7	.913	.932	.019
2008	.932	57.9	.891	.900	.009
2009	.900	67.8	.894	.911	.017
2010	.911	57.0	.876	???	???

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.


I think this is pretty interesting stuff. The success of the 2005 Illini turns out to have been predictable, as they returned 92% of their minutes from a team that was already very good. The simplicity of the system shows up in the 2006 projection, which really undersold that team since it only returned 40.9% of minutes, but couldn't see that it was bringing back 2 excellent players in Dee Brown and James Augustine. Otherwise, the projections for the past 3 years have been more on the mark, albeit with a consistent trend of over-performance by the Illini. I am a big Bruce Weber fan, so I will speculate that Illinois' consistent ability to exceed their projections is attributable to his coaching skills.

So what can we expect in 2010? Probably a little bit of decline from last year, as Illinois returns just 57% of its 2009 minutes. The system projects a Pythagorean win percentage of .876, which last year would have put the Illini squarely on the NCAA bubble. However, even if you throw out 2006, where the projection for Illinois was clearly way too low, Illinois has out performed their prediction by .012 points per year (.021 if 2006 is included). Taking into account that bump puts their projection at .888, which would put them more squarely in the tournament, although they probably wouldn't be seeded as well as last year. Ultimately, it will depend on how quickly the highly touted freshman class can develop.

For Illini fans, the season to look forward to is 2011, where the team will likely return over 90% of its minutes. Even if their Pomeroy rating is a disappointing .888 this year, returning 92% of minutes (a la 2005) would result in a .941 projection for 2011. Giving that projection the same Bruce Weber bump yields a projection of .953, the same rating as this year's national runner-up, Michigan State. It's my job to be an optimist, but I think Illinois will return to the NCAAs next year and then be a legitimate Final Four contender in 2011.