Definitely hurts us, and moves us from a borderline top 10 team with him (we all saw the Illini’s 3-game stretch without Ayo) to a borderline top 25 team optimistically and closer to top 40 pessimistically, depending on one’s view of the Illini/biases.
Our backcourt will still be near the top of the Big Ten, with Curbelo a year older, Frazier/Williams/Grandison back and a few good (if not elite) additions. Even though Miller was a good player and had great potential, his production is replaceable ... part of the reason he transferred is that by the end of the season he was getting a ceremonial start and then not getting “enough” minutes in crunch time. However, our front court is a huge hole. Williams and Grandison could cover the 4 and we can play smaller (Kofi and Giorgi actually rarely played at the same time), but it won’t be as effective without Kofi’s presence. Illini fans can prefer to think optimistically that Payne will have an equal-or-better year to what he had at UF last year (sans attitude issues, hopefully) or that we sign Mitchell, but for now our front court is an issue.
I think our backcourt is top 3-4 in the B1G, but our front court might be top 10, lol ... so, I say we’re sitting at 6-7?
