What boggles the mind is how about half of those didn't turn out to have much of a career at UI. Either the rating services are not that accurate or we have done a poor job at player development/utilization or both.
Rating services are devised to get clicks and interest....we all do this very well to see who will be our next "great" player or fail? We also do this to lament how bad our misfortunes can be or have been. But riddle me this....who would have taken these players previously?
2014 Illini recruited #4 Alexander and we got #41 Black, I think we did well there? Ratings weren't 100% here.
2015 Illini recruited #19 Evans and we got #35 JCL, I think we obviously lost this one...Ratings were still not 100% because Evans was way better!
2016 Illini recruited #105 Moore and we got #230 Lucas, I would argue we definately got the better here.
2017 Illini recruited #46 Goodwin and we got #147 Smith and #149 Frazier....I would argue we WON both of those so far! Love Frazier!
2018 Illini recruited #30 Ayo and got him, would anyone on any other player take # 10-11-12-13 from this year based solely on rankings? Many would and you would have gotten Simons, Garland, Hagans or Grimes? I will take our #30 over these guys.
I tried to pick a player of same basic position and our highest ranked player for that year. At least what I could find anyways. So many clamored for the "whiff" players and when it was all said and done, the ILLINI fared well, just not well enough as a team.
The point is the services have a bunch of armchair experts, just like most of us and evaluators who place certain rankings on players based on their subjective viewpoints. Rankings are numbers and that is all, that said we need to keep getting some lower numbers for sure, but I am not disappointed in what we got, WHEN we got them. We had nothing to sale any player other than PT basically and even that as always is not a given.