Good Morning, Illini Nation: Historically, this is a big team

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Sign up for our daily basketball newsletter here Welcome to Good Morning, Illini Nation, your daily dose of college basketball news from Illini beat writer and AP Top 25 voter Scott Richey.

Hell offer up insights every morning on Brad Underwoods team and college basketball at large: I wrote yesterday morning, having seen the 2024-25 Illinois basketball team in person the night before, that Brad Underwood wasn't exaggerating when he mentioned how much positional size this year's group possessed.

No cap, as the kids say.

But how big is this team really? Where does it stack up in the Underwood era? Or any era of Illinois basketball for that matter? So I did the math, looking at the average height of the scholarship players this millenium.

These Illini are the tallest Illini.

Just two players shorter than 6-foot-6 certainly skewed the results.

The average height of this year's team is 6-7 3/4, with 6-1 guard Dra Gibbs-Lawhorn at one end of the spectrum and 7-1 center Tomislav Ivisic at the other.

This Illinois team averages out at a full inch taller than Underwood's previous tallest.

That was the 2020-21 team that had a pair of 7-footers in Kofi Cockburn and Brandon Lieb.

And only one of Underwood's teams averaged out at shorter than 6-6 the one he mostly inherited from John Groce.

Groce had the shortest Illini teams of the last two-plus decades, with only one averaging taller than 6-6.

And that was the one he inherited in 2012-13.

Bruce Weber actually had some rosters that could have at least challenged the current team in the height department.

The 2009-10 and 2010-11 teams checked in at 6-7, with the latter boasting 7-1 Mike Tisdale and 7-1 Meyers Leonard.

Going deeper into Illinois' history didn't yield any big teams.

Jarrod Gee and Rich Beyers (6-8) were the tallest players on the 1997-98 Big Ten championship team.

Marcus Liberty (6-8) was the tallest of the Flyin' Illini.

Notable big men Skip Thoren, Bill Burwell and John Kerr were all 6-9, which was, in fact, tall in the 1950s and 1960s.

Whether or not this tallest Illinois team in program history winds up as one of the most successful teams in program history is obviously to be determined.

But Underwood has mentioned multiple times in the past month that this team's ceiling is as high as any he's had.

Good thing, too, given how tall they are..

This article has been shared from the original article on newsgazette, here is the link to the original article:

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