Illinois Hoops Recruiting Thread

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Dan

Admin
Welcome to the Illinois Hoops Recruiting Thread :illinois:


2025 Recruiting
1) Keaton Wagler (2025 G) committed on September 18th, 2024.
2) Brandon Lee (2025 G) committed on September 25th, 2024.
 
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In the other thread, BashCtIllini wrote:
“And actually, I personally don't know if all these transfers is a great idea. This year will go a long way to tell the story. In 22-23, the team didn't mesh. There was enough talent to win a lot of games, but the season was a disappointment to most. Last year was obviously great, but how much of that was due to 5th year Terrence Shannon? I think we have more talent on paper this year than any other year. What will happen? Does it take a more than 1 season to really get great? Does it take an AA? Or are we going to be able to bring in 3-5 new starters every year and sustain success? We'll have a much better answer to those questions in March.”

It will be an interesting two-year experiment with this group. Will they mesh in Year 1? Will everyone leave or transfer out? Will 4-5 guys with multiple years of eligibility stick around as a great core, to which we add a couple high-level freshman, a couple high-level transfers and a couple multi-year transfers to build for the following year? We have to find what the equilibrium model is where you’re not starting from scratch every year, but you are able to pivot quickly.
 
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In the other thread, BashCtIllini wrote:
“And actually, I personally don't know if all these transfers is a great idea. This year will go a long way to tell the story. In 22-23, the team didn't mesh. There was enough talent to win a lot of games, but the season was a disappointment to most. Last year was obviously great, but how much of that was due to 5th year Terrence Shannon? I think we have more talent on paper this year than any other year. What will happen? Does it take a more than 1 season to really get great? Does it take an AA? Or are we going to be able to bring in 3-5 new starters every year and sustain success? We'll have a much better answer to those questions in March.”

It will be an interesting two-year experiment with this group. Will they mesh in Year 1? Will everyone leave or transfer out? Will 4-5 guys with multiple years of eligibility stick around as a great core, to which we add a couple high-level freshman, a couple high-level transfers and a couple multi-year transfers to build for the following year? We have to find what the equilibrium model is where you’re not starting from scratch every year, but you are able to pivot quickly.


Last year's final 4:

UConn's top 2 scorers last year were transfers.
Alabama's top 3 scorers (and 5 of their top 6) were transfers.
NC State's top 7 scorers were ALL transfers.
Purdue had the most continuity, but can't forget Lance Jones (SIU).

I think now that everyone can just transfer around whenever/wherever they please, this is going to be the norm. The being able to transfer at the drop of a hat isn't really my cup of tea, but I am happy players are paid now.
 
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Last year's final 4:

UConn's top 2 scorers last year were transfers.
Alabama's top 3 scorers (and 5 of their top 6) were transfers.
NC State's top 7 scorers were ALL transfers.
Purdue had the most continuity, but can't forget Lance Jones (SIU).

I think now that everyone can just transfer around whenever/wherever they please, this is going to be the norm. The being able to transfer at the drop of a hat isn't really my cup of tea, but I am happy players are paid now.
Yeah, it may be a year to year, case by case situation. If you’re able to get 5 clearly better starters via portal, but they will all be gone after 1 year, you probably still do it. Otherwise, you might give bonus points to a guy who will have two years left, over maybe a slightly better guy with only 1 year. Some years I’m guessing we’ll sacrifice long range continuity for an all-star roster.
 
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Last year's final 4:

UConn's top 2 scorers last year were transfers.
Alabama's top 3 scorers (and 5 of their top 6) were transfers.
NC State's top 7 scorers were ALL transfers.
Purdue had the most continuity, but can't forget Lance Jones (SIU).

I think now that everyone can just transfer around whenever/wherever they please, this is going to be the norm. The being able to transfer at the drop of a hat isn't really my cup of tea, but I am happy players are paid now.
These are great statistics and the staff learned from the 22-23 experience. They know the type of player they’re looking for and have been more selective. IIRC, they use a questionnaire to make sure guys are a good culture fit.

Hopefully the questionnaire asks about daily consumption of Monster and any history of energy drink benders.
 
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Well..

Only one of UConn's top 5 scorers was a transfer last year. They returned 40% of their minutes.

Alabama's top scorer last year was a returning player. Two of their top five scorers were returners. But Alabama is one of the few examples of a team having really high level success without much continuity.

Two of NC State's top five scorers were returners. They returned over 40% of their minutes.

And then obviously Purdue returned over 80% of their minutes.

I don't think anyone is saying not to add transfers. Theoretically you could have a team of nothing but transfers and still have really good continuity.
 
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In the other thread, BashCtIllini wrote:
“And actually, I personally don't know if all these transfers is a great idea. This year will go a long way to tell the story. In 22-23, the team didn't mesh. There was enough talent to win a lot of games, but the season was a disappointment to most. Last year was obviously great, but how much of that was due to 5th year Terrence Shannon? I think we have more talent on paper this year than any other year. What will happen? Does it take a more than 1 season to really get great? Does it take an AA? Or are we going to be able to bring in 3-5 new starters every year and sustain success? We'll have a much better answer to those questions in March.”

It will be an interesting two-year experiment with this group. Will they mesh in Year 1? Will everyone leave or transfer out? Will 4-5 guys with multiple years of eligibility stick around as a great core, to which we add a couple high-level freshman, a couple high-level transfers and a couple multi-year transfers to build for the following year? We have to find what the equilibrium model is where you’re not starting from scratch every year, but you are able to pivot quickly.
* Who was also a transfer
* We became the number 1 offense in the country while he was out thanks to another transfer who we changed the offense to revolve around the rest of the season.
-Yes continuity is good but coaches want guys who have been in a college weight program and played college ball. They know what it takes at this level. We will also have continuity after this year, we aren't going to bring in 9 new guys every season.
 
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Well..

Only one of UConn's top 5 scorers was a transfer last year. They returned 40% of their minutes.

Alabama's top scorer last year was a returning player. Two of their top five scorers were returners. But Alabama is one of the few examples of a team having really high level success without much continuity.

Two of NC State's top five scorers were returners. They returned over 40% of their minutes.

And then obviously Purdue returned over 80% of their minutes.

I don't think anyone is saying not to add transfers. Theoretically you could have a team of nothing but transfers and still have really good continuity.

You are narrowing this to 'they were a transfer in that one specific season' which, yes, obviously if you have several transfers in ONE SINGLE SEASON its a bit different. But, its not like we've experienced that either.

NC State and Alabama - their entire teams were transfers sans one guy. The juggernaut National Champions top 2 scorers were transfers.

We cannot point to 2022-23 as being ruined by transfers. We only had 3 transfers that season, one of them was our best player and the other two we would have been worse without them, no doubt. We actually had more transfers last season and made the elite 8.

It's going to be a part of college basketball, everyone needs to get used to it.
 
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I think a lot of people are also comparing this roster construction to the wrong thing. The alternative is not some world in which we managed to retain everyone we could from last season. That's just not a thing in the current college basketball landscape. (Nor is it necessarily preferable - we lost a lot of production from TSJ, Domask, and Guerrier that would not have been made up from the players who transferred out)

The alternative is filling the roster out with prep recruits. Could you imagine if, we'd just relied on recruiting more high schoolers prep players instead of transfers? We'd probably be talking about this as a rebuilding year a la 2018-2019.
 
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I think a lot of people are also comparing this roster construction to the wrong thing. The alternative is not some world in which we managed to retain everyone we could from last season. That's just not a thing in the current college basketball landscape. (Nor is it necessarily preferable - we lost a lot of production from TSJ, Domask, and Guerrier that would not have been made up from the players who transferred out)

The alternative is filling the roster out with prep recruits. Could you imagine if, we'd just relied on recruiting more high schoolers prep players instead of transfers? We'd probably be talking about this as a rebuilding year a la 2018-2019.
I don't think anyone is suggesting that we had some alternative to this. But the ideal will always be to have as many good moving to great holdover minutes that you can get. We did what we had to do to be successful this year. How successful remains to be seen.

I find it interesting that we already have people (some insders) talking about how good next year can be. So obviously they are putting stock in that notion as well.
You are narrowing this to 'they were a transfer in that one specific season' which, yes, obviously if you have several transfers in ONE SINGLE SEASON its a bit different. But, its not like we've experienced that either.

NC State and Alabama - their entire teams were transfers sans one guy. The juggernaut National Champions top 2 scorers were transfers.

We cannot point to 2022-23 as being ruined by transfers. We only had 3 transfers that season, one of them was our best player and the other two we would have been worse without them, no doubt. We actually had more transfers last season and made the elite 8.

It's going to be a part of college basketball, everyone needs to get used to it.
I don't think it's a "bit different". I think it's a lot different. The question isn't about transfers but about experience within the program. I'm not going to take the time to research the years within the program that each of those transfers had. I think pretty much no one believes that we're moving forward without a lot of transfers. I think people with sense believe that the longer people play for Brad Underwood the better they'll be in his system and the more successful the team will be.

* Who was also a transfer
* We became the number 1 offense in the country while he was out thanks to another transfer who we changed the offense to revolve around the rest of the season.
-Yes continuity is good but coaches want guys who have been in a college weight program and played college ball. They know what it takes at this level. We will also have continuity after this year, we aren't going to bring in 9 new guys every season.
I think Shannon grew from his first year with us to his second year. There might be just a little bit to the continuity. As you said, it's a good thing. You do what you have to do and lots outside of the coach's control. But people on here tend to minimize the issue. I'm not sure why. I think the lack of experience in the program was a factor in '23. We're just one season removed from that.
 
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You are narrowing this to 'they were a transfer in that one specific season' which, yes, obviously if you have several transfers in ONE SINGLE SEASON its a bit different. But, its not like we've experienced that either.

NC and Alabama - their entire teams were transfers sans one guy. The juggernaut National Champions top 2 scorers were transfers.

Everyone points to 2022-23 as being ruined by transfers. We only had 3 transfers that season, one of them was our best player and the other two we would have been worse without them, no doubt. We had more transfers in last season and made the elite 8.
I wasn't trying to move the goal posts or anything. Continuity is an actual metric that is tracked and it doesn't take into account where a player played two years ago, only where he played last year. So, if you're having a discussion about whether or not continuity is important, it's not really relevant to talk about where a player played beyond the previous year.

People's concern (whether or not they've articulated it as such) is that the 2022 team and this year's team both had to replace about 85% of their minutes either with freshman or transfers.

Again, I don't think anyone is saying to only recruit freshman. If they are, they're wrong.
 
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I wasn't trying to move the goal posts or anything. Continuity is an actual metric that is tracked and it doesn't take into account where a player played two years ago, only where he played last year. So, if you're having a discussion about whether or not continuity is important, it's not really relevant to talk about where a player played beyond the previous year.

People's concern (whether or not they've articulated it as such) is that the 2022 team and this year's team both had to replace about 85% of their minutes either with freshman or transfers.

Again, I don't think anyone is saying to only recruit freshman. If they are, they're wrong.

Yes, absolutely. Continuity is a top 3 thing in college basketball even in the current landscape imo (1: personnel/talent, 2: experience, 3: roster continuity if you asked me to rank what's important) and then I'd say coaching is 4th behind those things, not sure really.

The original comment that spurred discussion was someone questioning bringing in this many transfers. We all certainly agree (I hope, anyway) that roster continuity is crucial.
 
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I don't think anyone is suggesting that we had some alternative to this. But the ideal will always be to have as many good moving to great holdover minutes that you can get. We did what we had to do to be successful this year. How successful remains to be seen.

I find it interesting that we already have people (some insders) talking about how good next year can be. So obviously they are putting stock in that notion as well.

I don't think it's a "bit different". I think it's a lot different. The question isn't about transfers but about experience within the program. I'm not going to take the time to research the years within the program that each of those transfers had. I think pretty much no one believes that we're moving forward without a lot of transfers. I think people with sense believe that the longer people play for Brad Underwood the better they'll be in his system and the more successful the team will be.


I think Shannon grew from his first year with us to his second year. There might be just a little bit to the continuity. As you said, it's a good thing. You do what you have to do and lots outside of the coach's control. But people on here tend to minimize the issue. I'm not sure why. I think the lack of experience in the program was a factor in '23. We're just one season removed from that.
Wasn't '23 the sky/ epps roster chaos?
 
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* Who was also a transfer
* We became the number 1 offense in the country while he was out thanks to another transfer who we changed the offense to revolve around the rest of the season.
-Yes continuity is good but coaches want guys who have been in a college weight program and played college ball. They know what it takes at this level. We will also have continuity after this year, we aren't going to bring in 9 new guys every season.
For me, no questions we need to use the portal, and a lot. My only question is whether we can mesh all these new comers well in their 1st year here or it won't until the 2nd year. We will find out soon enough.
 
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