Illinois Hoops Recruiting Thread (October 2017)

[mattcoldagelli]

This sucks. I have a feeling if we hadn't landed Mark Smith, this board would be in complete meltdown mode in response to our current misses.

I mean, yeah, but if your aunt had a....

 

[PlayAZ]

So with the Elias kid next week? 6'5" scorer?

Who knows...what is left for 2018 as far as linked to us, Ayo-THT-Finke-Petrusev-and 3 stars who could blow up and available?

Valtonen, Petrusev, and THT with Ayo...I mean really unless a 2-3 star blows up this winter/spring? Who's left... we will see what kind of recruiting skills this staff has after all it seems. Easy to recruit when we win...anyone can do that, get the train going down the tracks is the hard part.

https://247sports.com/Season/2018-B...d=True&RecruitInterests.Institution.Key=24039

 

[bert1991]

Going from an unproven, bad coach to a proven, good coach is a very valid reason for optimism.

Perfectly said. Love this. I actually am very excited for this season. I think we are going to surprise a lot of folks. I think BU is even surprised with the talent level and effort so far.

 

[IlliniJim20]

Dow futures are down. It's raining. I stubbed my toe on the coffee table this morning. Landers eliminates us from his bracket. I knew I should have stayed in a freaking Holiday Inn Express last night.

Hey I AM staying at a holiday inn express this weekend. If only Nolley postponed his announcement

Anyone I can channel to commit besides Ayo?

 

[Adnarel]

Winning will cure what ails us. BU is in the business of winning.

 

[westcoastillini]

Remaining targets

Hey... Ayo and THT still in the board. There's that.

As much as we have bashed the crystal balls, for our recruits they have been pretty accurate to date.

 

[robjilla]

Roy Schmidt tweeted "So much for the credibility of that Rivals goof after all the crap he spewed" talking about Jake. I'm dying laughing. He did talk like he knew something.

 

[sacraig]

Don't know that Zion was really a top target. Staff wanted Conditt' but isu connections were too strong.

Not pulling the afraid of competition with Conditt, but maybe he also felt he wasn't a Big Ten type big?

Why is it other coaches like Holtmann can land a solid class without recruits having seen OSU play? Same with Miller and IU? It's not like Underwood was an assistant with no video to show recruits. He has plenty to show from days at SFA and ok st, not to mention days with Martin.

I am not going to jump off the ledge, but this really is getting disappointing.

Well, with Holtmann, he has a longer high major record to point to, OSU hasn't had it's name dragged through the mud for a decade like UI has, and he isn't connected to any of the coaches named by the FBI in any way.

In other words, Underwood started with a weaker hand, and caught a bad flop with the FBI investigation

 

[IndyILL]

IMHO the issue at hand is not whether we get all of our recruiting targets but whether BU can coach and develop players. Successful recruiting at the top tier doesn't guarantee anything (See C. Martin) I like our chances with this coach.

 

[sacraig]

Roy Schmidt tweeted "So much for the credibility of that Rivals goof after all the crap he spewed" talking about Jake. I'm dying laughing. He did talk like he knew something.

Well the guy did say that we would get at least one of the two. People on this board just seemed to all assume Nolley was the guaranteed one. However, given what he said, he would still be correct if we land Ayo.

 

[Dvick217]

Crushed

 

[foby]

Winning and name clearing will go a long towards future recruiting success. In the meantime some of you may want to do a search for sales on cups and kleenex.

 

[robjilla]

Well the guy did say that we would get at least one of the two. People on this board just seemed to all assume Nolley was the guaranteed one. However, given what he said, he would still be correct if we land Ayo.

Yes sir. True statement. Ayo will be much harder to get though. He keeps hinting and saying we will get Ayo. If we don't he won't live it down. Disappointing morning on the Nolley front, that's for sure.

 

[tambo]

Recruiting thoughts from an utmost optimist...

No current recruit needs Dakich or anyone else in their ears to make them feel iffy on choosing to commit to Underwood. We have a coach that left a power 5 program after one year and almost immediately upon coming to Illinois his former assistant was found to be as shady as shady can be in the recruiting game.

Underwood is guilty by association to parents and recruits until proven otherwise. That is how opposing coaches are recruiting against us everyday with every recruit. At any moment these recruits know it could come to light that Underwood knew of the illegal ongoings of his assistant coach Evans. We are in between a rock and hard place with recruits now and the foreseeable future.

I don't believe Ayo is coming and I don't believe THT is coming here and I doubt any top 100 recruit wants a piece of our program this year and possibly for a few years. I hate that it came to this. I really would not be surprised if Underwood is here for one season and gone. Whether it's on his own accord or not.

TLDNR me all day and maybe I'm just venting but I don't see a bright spot when it comes to recruiting now or in the future...let's hope we can win some games though!! All we can do is support the staff and our players and university and HOPE we have a clean coaching staff.

 

[spillini]

We're going to be fine. BU needs a year to show what he can do with the tools we have and that will help tremendously to sell the program going forward. A slow recruiting year in year 1 of tenure is the norm, not the exception. Sure, missing targets sucks, but we're still moving in the right direction as a program. Big picture, folks, big picture.

 

[Deleted member 10676]

Michael O'Brien from the Chicago Sun Times reported that. Nolley denied it saying he doesn't talk to anyone at Curie. Stunning turn of events. No one is perfect and I don't think O'Brien would be considered a "recruiting analyst" but he is at games all over the city and around the schools on a regular basis.

Yeah, amazing that Mike reported that the day he was at Curie for a football game and talked to Mike Oliver. I said then what you're saying now and everybody chose to believe the Swami who was up in arms about it and immediately contacted Nolley who said I don't talk to anybody at Cure. Yeah right.
I get that people on here don't like Mike, and he'll take a poke at Illinois now and then but he doesn't make stuff up to do it. He also said kids will tell people what they want to hear. We have seen that play out over and over but we still believe the kids when they blow smoke.

 

[drewillini89]

We're going to be fine. BU needs a year to show what he can do with the tools we have and that will help tremendously to sell the program going forward. A slow recruiting year in year 1 of tenure is the norm, not the exception. Sure, missing targets sucks, but we're still moving in the right direction as a program. Big picture, folks, big picture.

Watch what our players do on the court:

• We'll have our first competent offense arguably since Meyers Leonard went pro.
• Mark Smith is still a bigger get than anyone who turned us down this week
• We all feel great about the current roster but more importantly the coaches and the players themselves are excited for this year and feel good about winning.

The only real place we need to fill this year's class is a recruit to fill in the place on the roster for Mark Alstork (not even replace Alstork, but replace the spot on the bench for whomever we currently have on the team that develops into the position to replace Alstork)


And if you still don't feel good, we can still land Ayo. We can still land THT. We can still land a late-riser in the spring.

 

[illinifan87]

If there's one thing I've learned from recruiting and rumors. Believe smoke. Should have seen this coming after the Michael O'Brien report a few weeks ago.

Sent from my LG-H811 using Tapatalk

 

[bleedsorangenblue]

This is a rebuild and we have to be patient...and for pete's sake, we need to stop being so thirsty following 17 year old kids every move and word.
I'm looking forward to seeing the product on the court. Let's get out and support BU and the team - and make AH a revered place to play in again. I'd rather see our fans put their efforts into making AH a home court advantage again than tweeting and drooling over recruits that seem to use us for our enthusiasm and then toss us to the curb.

This makes way too much sense :shakehands:

 

[Obelix]

This board is the best at being consistently wrong I have ever seen

That's because Illinois has been consistently bad at recruiting for a long time. Once we become better (hopefully soon), a new breed of "insiders" will emerge that would seem more reliable, whereas in reality would be of the same quality.

It does not take much to understand recruiting. If you take your emotions out, there is a totally different vibe going into a Mark Smith announcement or a Nunn announcement than going into a Castleton or Nolley announcement.

 

[JDHalfrack]

I gotta be honest, I don't post in this thread hardly at all because by the time I get done reading a page, there's 3 more that a have filled up.

But, by my quick perusing, it seems like we're getting our panties in a bunch because we couldn't sign literally like every player on our wish list. If I'm reading everything right, we have 3 spots open for next year, and we still have targets on at least 5 or 6 guys that are pretty damn good.

It seems, reading through this thread, that we were hoping to take our 3 spots and sign 6 guys all in the top 50 in the country. The demands of this thread are so astronomically ridiculous that it makes the "we're gonna turn some heads this year when we go 8-4" guys in the football thread look sane.

Everyone needs to take a chill pill an relax. We finally have a decent coach who should be able to get more out of this team than the previous two could. Let's watch the team on the court this year and be glad we have them for at least the next couple years.

Let's all agree on one thing: at least we're not Louisville.

 

[IlliniDent]

Yeah, amazing that Mike reported that the day he was at Curie for a football game and talked to Mike Oliver. I said then what you're saying now and everybody chose to believe the Swami who was up in arms about it and immediately contacted Nolley who said I don't talk to anybody at Cure. Yeah right.
I get that people on here don't like Mike, and he'll take a poke at Illinois now and then but he doesn't make stuff up to do it. He also said kids will tell people what they want to hear. We have seen that play out over and over but we still believe the kids when they blow smoke.

+1

 

[TownieMatt]

Can you imagine if this staff hadn't landed Mark Smith? Holy...

 

[Dan]

Four-star wing Elias Valtonen schedules two visits
https://scout.com/college/illinois/...-schedules-visits-with-Arizona-Stat-108490602

 

[robjilla]

Yeah, amazing that Mike reported that the day he was at Curie for a football game and talked to Mike Oliver. I said then what you're saying now and everybody chose to believe the Swami who was up in arms about it and immediately contacted Nolley who said I don't talk to anybody at Cure. Yeah right.
I get that people on here don't like Mike, and he'll take a poke at Illinois now and then but he doesn't make stuff up to do it. He also said kids will tell people what they want to hear. We have seen that play out over and over but we still believe the kids when they blow smoke.

Yeah, we have people who post things on social media. Some credible and have been doing it for years, some not so much. This guy actually writes for a newspaper and has been for years. I was taken back a little when he spoke about Nolley out of the blue, but it seems to be true. He is a decent guy. He speaks when I see him and he is one of the few that actually responds to questions I ask him on social media (Swami would be another one). I asked him what the heck was going on with Kezo Brown and later on there was an article explaining the circumstances.