I'd like to add Bloomington Central Catholic's Cole Certa, probably the best distance shooter in IL and beyond. It's well known where I live that he wants to play for Illinois. I'm hoping for a commitment from him soon. I know Underwood and Alexander have watched his games many times.
Illinois Hoops Recruiting Thread
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I’ve seen a handful of mentions but most call him Amari and not Amani lolAmani Hansberry borderline top 50 recruit and mostly no one on here says anything about him
MDchicago
- Lake Norman NC
pruman91
- Paducah, Ky
Gordo: Free-agent frenzy has college basketball coaches scrambling for talent
College basketball players are flying into the transfer portal again this spring, forcing coaches to scramble for talent with fast-paced recruiting.
Jeff Gordon
While the Final Four teams prepare for Saturday’s semifinals, the other 358 NCAA Division I men’s basketball programs are fixating on the transfer portal.
Missouri made an early score with Colorado State transfer John Tonje. SLU is looking to add several players and start over. Illinois’ shopping list got longer Tuesday when freshman guard Jayden Epps announced his plan to leave.
Almost every program will lose or force players into the portal. Some are suffering massive losses — and St. Francis (Brooklyn) lost its entire program after the school dropped athletics.
Almost every program will add experienced transfers to fill needs. Coaches must analyze potential targets as they hit the portal and decide whether to woo them.
“This is like speed dating,” Miami coach Jim Larrañaga told reporters during his team’s run toward the Final Four. “It’s like going on Match.com.”
Knecht is taller, longer, and significantly smoother and more athletic. And that’s obvious watching just 2 minutes of highlight film.
Lots of people.
ChiefGritty
- Chicago, IL
I say this with enthusiasm because I think it was a mostly a cover story for an ill-constructed roster last year: "positionless basketball" is over.
That would be much less surprising than Epps leaving, or frankly the possibility of Shannon staying.
When RJ committed he was the fifth Caribbean guy in the program (Antigua, Kofi, Curbelo, and walk-on Edgar Padilla) with Feliz before him then Plummer came afterwards. He's the last one left. It's 35 degrees right now in Champaign and cornfields as far as the eye can see.
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I wish Underwood would stay out of the transfer portal. I don't like renting players for 1 year, look what happened this year with the 3 "MY BALL GUYS" Just recruit good players and build a cohesive team from day 1. It may take a couple of years to build a contender again but you will also be building a team culture too.
That’s not how it works anymore.
ChiefGritty
- Chicago, IL
Honestly I agree with this in a lot of ways.
I think if you're going to get 1-and-done rentals, it needs to be players who want to be here, and ones that are complimentary to the existing roster, not just installed over it.
RayJ Dennis convinces me because he's an IL kid getting a chance to step up to major conference basketball and he's a PG, something the roster is currently missing.
I am much less interested in some rental big guy to take minutes away from Dainja and Hansberry. Pay those guys the NIL money!
We are very much in the "medieval alchemy" part of the NIL/Portal era, still far from the "modern science" part. I don't think we fully know how it works yet.
If the right move is always buying rentals to bury your freshmen (which it might be), then allocating tons of resources to recruiting freshmen probably isn't the right move.
I understand that's not how it works today. I think the transfer portal is ruining college basketball, it is like everything else in life "It's all about the money". Tom Izzo didn't dip into the transfer portal and with good coaching and smart recruiting took the only BIG TEN team past the round of 32. Perhaps just wishful thinking on my part.
ChiefGritty
- Chicago, IL
MSU's top two scorers were both transfers. However, they were multi-year transfers who had been on MSU's team the prior year and were seniors. There's more than one approach.
Miami literally had an agent threaten to pull a player if they didn't match the NIL deal of an incoming transfer. They're in the Final 4.
Get rid of NIL and a transfer rule that doesn't require you to sit a year has made your wish almost impossible. We live in an era of the need for instant gratification. If there's ANYTHING that a kid doesn't like, instead of putting in the work, they'd rather leave.....and get paid for it. NCAA off-seasons are the amateur ( I use that VERY loosely) free agency period.
This may be the most important part of it. Unless you're completely rebuilding the roster every year because of a large amount of turnover, those coming in have to fit not only with those that have been here but with the coaching staff and the mentality or identity of the program. I think it's easy to lose sight of that.
Big Jack
- Decatur
Lots of people.
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