Yeah, they hit Florida hard this year with 7 recruits after not having any from there in 2019 class (but 8 from FL in 2018 class). They've had a pretty good run of recruiting classes lately especially last 2 or 3 years. Though I'm partial to their 2017 class because their top 3 recruits that year are now playing for Oregon State, including the Beavers leading tackler this year and their likely starting QB next year.
Illinois Football Recruiting Thread
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Yeah, they hit Florida hard this year with 7 recruits after not having any from there in 2019 class (but 8 from FL in 2018 class). They've had a pretty good run of recruiting classes lately especially last 2 or 3 years. Though I'm partial to their 2017 class because their top 3 recruits that year are now playing for Oregon State, including the Beavers leading tackler this year and their likely starting QB next year.
It's not necessarily a Midwest thing....as far as border states go last I saw there were only three top 300 recruits in the state of Oklahoma. Where does Oklahoma get their top players? Just sayin...
he’s not arguing that only the Midwest compres border states recruits. Rather he’s saying that many states don’t have enough in state recruits, so rather than looking at how we blank in Illinois, notice how well we do in Missouri. As long as we are pulling substantially from neighbor states. We will be ok. Same with other schools not in Texas, California, Florida, Ohio, etc
Deleted member 654622
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Not sure when we move on from this years cycle and start talking about 2021, but I agree that if we are really going to start making legit progress for sustained success that we need to start moving the needle to at least middle of the pack in B1G recruiting rankings
Not sure how realistic Travion Ford is, but I am hoping all that work we put into Doyle will help some
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This.
I’m referencing the Midwest specifically for obvious reasons: We are Illinois. We play in the Big Ten Conference. The Midwest is the area relevant to us. Oklahoma is not. We don’t play is the same space as Lincoln Riley.
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Just looking at 2021 and interesting that Fleck has three commits, all from IL
2 of which are quarterbacks and a pretty average receiver. Also ones a soft commit. I think recruiting Illinois is super overrated. Sorta like what twangers said. Hell the university isn’t even attracting Illinois students. That’s something we should be talking about more.
FT35
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It is and it isn't. It really depends on who you are referring to. I would like to see us land more instate OL. Our starting OL the last couple of years was made up of guys from Illinois with the exception of Petitbon.
Marcus Harper was committed here and Kevo Wesley was close to committing to us. Guys like these are realistic gets for us and the kind of guys we need to start landing if we want to keep up with the rest of the conference in terms of recruiting.
Lovie himself has said that recruiting starts at home and they've clearly made an effort to land instate recruits. We'll see if that pays off this year.
I know 2021 kids like Justin Johnson, Markiese Irving, Willie Shaw, Pat Coogan, Dominic Lovett, Keontez Lewis, Tyler McLaurin, etc. have all been offered and they all have been on campus at least once. It's clear that the staff wants these guys and there is at least some interest from these recruits since they've taken the time to visit or camp with us. I don't think it's unrealistic to hope that we can close the deal with three or four of these guys.
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Welcome to the athletes that signed today.
Guess there were no "surprises".
Now on to the portal watch. We should do very well there.
Guess there were no "surprises".
Now on to the portal watch. We should do very well there.
I agree to a sense but the state has never been great to us. Trust me on that, high school coaches have been iffy on sending their kids here. And then they cry out when there aren’t any offers at the end of the process- see ESTL
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I think to an extent this is a state pride problem as much as it's a problem with the program. Few players want to stay and represent their home state compared to other schools around the country. Its not uncommon for players from Missouri to grow up dreaming of playing for Mizzou. Not so much in Illinois.
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I'm not even talking about football. I'm not sure I've ever heard anyone talk highly of Illinois as a state. The program being awful for as long as they have has done nothing to help though
You’re never going to consistently sign enough higher end kids from Texas and Florida to develop your program. It’s a mere year by year dart game and you’re only throwing them at arbitrage kids like Casey Washington with lower rates of projectability. You own the border and then you supplement down south, not the other way around. If you can’t do that, you can’t win at a University with no national foot print.
The fact that we have these discussions every year and not one person mentions the Indianapolis metro area is a problem.
Agree..know a coach at 6A Indy program...has never seen Illinois....Iowa gets players from Indy... obviously Indiana, Purdue...only 2 hours to Champaign.. don't get it.
if an Illinois kid is excused for not signing with Illinois because Illinois has been awful, then why expect a similar or higher ranked kid from any other state to come, as some have? Conversely, if our staff can attract some top-notch kids from other states to attend Illinois, then what's up with Illinois kids?
I have not looked into it, but I wonder how many top kids from Illinois came to Illinois during the Mike White era. It is possible White did not want Illinois kids too.
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Pretty good chance they (Iowa) pull the kid Montomery, a significantly stronger player as a junior than Wesley Bailey is as a senior and we’re conceding him. That’s egregious.
FT35
- Naperville
It's not talked about because it isn't realistic for us to recruit that area and hope to land multiple P5 guys. Cory Patterson was the staff recruiter for Indianapolis but they gave up on that area because they couldn't gain any traction there. His secondary area is now in Georgia.
Indiana has three P5 schools and many B1G East schools have easy access to Indianapolis. It's very over-recruited and we're not going to breakthrough there in the near future.
Missouri is the ONLY border school in which we can realistically hope to land multiple P5 guys in each class. We aren't getting P5 recruits from Iowa and Wisconsin. We've had minimal success recruiting Kentucky (Louisville) but that state has two P5 schools and Brohm has obvious ties to Louisville.
The first part of your post is spot on and it's why it's important for us to recruit Illinois better. A kid like Beason is a unicorn. Almost every other kid in his situation is not coming to a school like Illinois.
Recruiting should always start here in Illinois. The state produces 20-30 P5 guys in each cycle and it should not be unrealistic for us to be able to land 7+ of these guys in each cycle. If we can't do that then it's going to be very hard for us to move our program forward through conventional recruiting.
So, are we a bowl game school with 6 wins for sure, possibly 7 and just-may-be 8? That is what it sounds like. The day we do very well other schools will double their efforts the next year and we are back to square one.
I live in Indy. Zero Illini buzz here. Indiana actually has in-state pride unlike Illinois. I am all for the Texas and Florida efforts. Having also lived for a long time in Houston, HS football up here in Indy is a bit different. So much talent to go around down in Texas. U of H can compete at a P5 level just from recruiting local kids, and they have to compete against UT, TT, A&M, and most of the B12 and SEC. We need to keep focusing on this areas.
POWURR
- From Downtown
Not sure if this was posted..
The Mike White Bowl article.
https://www.news-gazette.com/sports...7927a0dd4c.html#tncms-source=article-nav-prev
Deleted member 4960
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Mike white pulled a lot of California kids and started with Jucos
Thanks! That is a 2-day o;d article on White coaching at both Cal and UoI (related to Red Box Bowl). Dreams.
We are a bowl game team with 6 wins.
To me, we absolutely need to upgrade our staff, so that we recruit better quality.
Yup. The above article says 39 of them.
The admissions office complained.
I was interested in Illinois ids. Coach White states that Chicago kids were more interested in Basketball.
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I think Illinois needs to build the way they have thru Missouri and Florida. When success can be seen on the field (which it looks like it’s starting to) then we can start making it cool to play for Illinois again. I think we are in a much better situation within the state then we were last year. In fact their are some instate 2021 kids I know are close to commitments.
Deleted member 649710
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We pulled some fantastic players from Indiana in the 80s and 90s — Jeff George, Moe Gardner, Jim Juriga, Darrick Brownlow, Ken Dilger, Kevin Hardy and some dude named Josh Whitman. I don’t know how or why we lost that connection, but it sure would be nice to get it back.
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