Good points and great insight as well.
The way the staff handled offers and recruiting instate during their first year was puzzling.
The recruitment of Kendrick Green is a good example of this. Kendrick camped with Illinois in June of 2016 and the staff passed on him. Kendrick, at the time, had offers from Minnesota and Syracuse. Kendrick went on to have a monster Senior season on the DL which got him an Iowa offer. The staff still waited until November to offer him. This was an obvious P5 talent in their own back yard that they slow played.
I remember a couple of instate kids were joking on twitter about how Illinois "offered" 10 year-old Bunchie Young. However, there were a number of obvious P5 kids who weren't even getting courtesy offers.
I think they've done a better job of offering and prioritizing instate recruits since then. I can see how instate coaches are reluctant to be forgiving because of the initial missteps, however.
I think the more Lovie can personally sit down with certain schools, the better the in state recruiting will go. Letting Love go to NIU shows that there is still work to do. He is absolutely a kid you take a risk on simply because of the respect he has with other in state kids as well as coaches. Not to mention he is really good. The only difference between him and his brother at ND is height. Coaches get puzzled by an offer to Bryce who is no where close to Love as a high school athlete. These type of actions make coaches wonder what is going on. The guy who can help change the perception in the Chicago land is AJ Henning from LWE. If Lovie can recruit him that will be big for the Chicagoland.