Yes, this is what other, winning programs do all the time. And Mookie Cooper was a Top 100 player who had a direct connection to Corey Patterson. That's a unique case. I'm not saying Illinois should be going for Top 100 players consistently (unless it's a situation like Mookie), but there are over 300 seniors ranked as 4* in the 2021 247 Composite Rankings. Three hundred. Illinois: 7, Missouri: 3, Indiana: 3, Wisconsin: 2, Michigan: 9, Ohio: 9, Minnesota: 2, Iowa: 3. These are 38 of them all in Illinois' back yard. The staff can't identify a few of these guys and land at least one of them?
But Lovie doesn't want to get mixed up in a ton of high profile recruiting battles... C'mon now. They got two 4* players in 2018, two of them in 2019 (both Top-60 classes). This should be the baseline moving forward if the program wants to get where the fanbase is expecting them to be.