Sometimes through chance, life presents itself with natural experiments. This isn't a pure experiment as there's no actual control--the only control is the history of most other years and the expectation of this year's team.
The experiment is such: What if you take a team that is struggling, failing to live up to expectations, and remove their best player for most of the year, and then bring the best player back for the playoffs.
At the time of the injury, Illinois was 10-5. They lost two games, Oregon and Michigan, that they had no business losing. Win those two games and they would have been 12-3 on track for a solid NCAA seed. Lose those two and they're on the bubble. Again, this was all with Rice, by far their best player.
So what happens when you take away Rice for 5 weeks?
Common sense dictates that if you take away your best component of anything, the overall product gets worse. This viewpoint can be seen at the end of the Rice injury article on ESPN: "Rice's injury is a major blow to an Illinois team that is 10-5 and likely will struggle to get into the NCAA tournament."
But common sense may be wrong in this case. It's at least possible for another outcome. By giving more game experience to our young/struggling player, maybe they will improve. And then when it's time for the tournament, you add Rice back in to the fold to a bunch of improved players.
Again, there's no guarantee that this will help the team in the long run. But it is an interesting experiment.
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