I'm going even one step further and saying that the focus on getting everybody as yoked as possible is possibly interfering with their natural inclination when it comes to things like shooting the basketball.
Yup. The bulkiness and stiffness that naturally develops as a result of powerlifting is actively harmful to basketball ability. That's what makes guys like LeBron James so extraordinary, that they're able to carry that amount of muscle mass while retaining the balletic fluidity needed to play the game at that level.
Fletch gets guys motivated to put work and max effort in at the gym, and at the college level that's half the battle. And posting guys having new squat and bench maxes makes for good social media fodder. But that is not what the focus should be in basketball strength and conditioning training.
I would say it's been less a matter of our being out-athleted and more a matter of us being out-skilled. Over the last 10 years, almost regardless of competition, how many times have we been able to say with conviction that we have the best shooter on the floor? Best dribbler? Best passer? It's rare. And that speaks not just to who we are recruiting but what we are doing with them once they get here.
It's kinda both, right? And I couldn't agree more that it's what we're doing with them when they get here. You look at the post-Dee era and ask yourself how many guys really became fully realized basketball players who could impose themselves on games at Illinois and it's an excruciatingly short list. Warren Carter for one year. Chester Frazier for one year. Meyers Leonard for one year. Leron Black for one year. Definitely Malcolm Hill. Ray Rice is arguable, Brandon Paul was inconsistently that guy throughout his career. McCamey (and anyone who disagrees is wrong). Mike Davis wasn't dominant but he was pretty complete in that way.
The theme at Illinois on the other hand has been frustrating enigmas like Brian Randle or Mike Tisdale or Michael Finke who obviously had abilities that others lack, but whose careers were totally defined by their weaknesses.
Programs like Michigan and Purdue and Wisconsin have an endless supply of Mike Davis' yet rarely a Brian Randle.
And you look back at previous eras at Illinois and there were obviously megawatt talents like Frankie and Dee and whatnot, but those teams were great because guys like Archibald and Bradford and Powell developed into complete, well-rounded guys that could dominate a game but also never took things off the table.
The older I get and the more college basketball I watch, the more consequential and determinative this kind of stuff appears relative to the recruiting hysteria.