I don't follow the football recruiting very closely, but just looking at the Illini's recruiting ranking it looks like we are only ranked ahead of Rutgers in the conference for 2018 by most people/groups that rank classes. I understand the optimism of a lot of the posters here, heck you have to be an optimist in general to still be a fan of the Illini. But what are people really getting excited about? Does Lovie have some kind of pixie dust he will sprinkle over these players to make them better? I want to be excited as much as the next fan but I just don't see it.
People are excited about several things. First and foremost the team is getting much improved talent. Although this is not a great class for the BIG, we haven't been competing in the BIG consistently since I can remember. Recruiting-wise, we compared to a team in the MAC.
Also, it seems, Lovie has guys that will work in his system. This is, from what I gather, what is key about what he has recruited to date. Players that fit the system will play better than their rankings. We have also found some diamonds in the rough last year and there are some people that may surprise us again this year. Overall, the talent is going up and the team will be better in a year that the state of Illinois was light on P5 talent, this is a great class, to me. Plus add some experience with solid guys that can work in the system, with knowledge of the system, we can start to see out of the deep, darkness our program has been in. A lot of players that provide the base for a solid team. Next year, if we can add a few stars, which many people expect, we will be in a solid position moving into 2020 with a solid foundation.
Lovie has been recruiting for less than 2 years. But even moreso, he was new to recruiting as he had spent most of his career in the NFL. We created inroads to important programs and states. To date, Lovie closed several strong Missouri kids and Florida kids, began pipelines to CA and TX. Now that he is making in roads to great programs and with great coaches, we can start to see the program taking shape.
Overall, I think these are all reasons to be optimistic about the direction of the program. Is this the ideal situation? No. We still need experience and depth at most positions. But we didn't have anything close to this when he started. Last year he had a similarly rated class and 11 of the students received honors. If this class can do similar, we will be in a strong position. I like to think that this points to loving being good at coaching up players and so a lower rated class would perform better than a higher-rated class with a lesser coach.
I know nothing about recruiting, but this is my takeaway