Is Blake still on the team?Welcome to the Illinois Hoops Recruiting Thread
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IL Returnees
David Mirkovic
Tomislav Ivisic
Zvonimir Ivisic
Jake Davis
Andrej Stojakovic
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New IL Signees
Zavier Zens (2026 F) committed & signed on April 17th.
Quentin Coleman (2026 G) committed on April 3rd, signed on April 19th.
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New IL Unsigned Commits
Stefan Vaaks (Providence transfer guard) committed on April 12th.
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2026 Recruiting (early signing period)
Ethan Brown (2026 G) committed on July 30th, 2025, signed on November 15th, 2025.
Landon Davis (2026 F) committed on August 6th, 2025, signed on November 12th, 2025.
Lucas Morillo (2026 G) committed on October 24th, 2025, signed on November 19th, 2025.
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Unofficial Illinois Loyalty Portal Tracker by soupy17
B1G Roster Tracker by NarrowJ
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IL players who entered name into NBA Draft
Keaton Wagler declared for NBA Draft on April 11th.
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IL players who entered transfer portal
Mihailo Petrovic entered transfer portal on April 11th.
Toni Bilic entered transfer portal on April 11th.
Ty Rodgers entered transfer portal on April 16th.
Brandon Lee entered transfer portal on April 19th.
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2027 Recruiting
Quinton Kitt (2027 F) committed on November 27th, 2025.
Mason Martin (2027 G) committed on January 16th, 2026.
Illinois Hoops Recruiting Thread
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Happy 4/20, Pru!
In fairness, our expectations should be high for this team - Brad himself says that when the goal is not to win a NC is when he's going to retire. When the head coach himself is saying every year should be a NC or bust mentality, you can't blame the fan base for raising their bar as well. This is also a unique time in Illinois' history when coming off the last two Final Fours we knew it would be a step down the following year when Nick declared for the draft and when DWill went pro, there was simply no way we weren't going to take a step back. Now with the portal and money to spend we can reload every year
I don't blame fans for having opinions on how we should go about the reloading - it's part of being a fan. Particularly when the staff executes #theretention perfectly and gets everyone back and we know we have money to spend this year, why can't we be the big fish and get another top portal player in addition to Vaaks and be in that preseason #1 conversation - it's reasonable to want that. So when we hear "the staff thinks we're good with the current roster" and UConn, Duke, Louisville, Florida and others are stacking additional top portal players while we sit back, I think it's human nature to want to improve our team even more
I would like to announce the winners of yesterday's Cottage Cheese Extravaganza...
co-Gold Medals go to the proponents of Catalina and/or Western salad dressings as CCA (Cottage Cheese Accoutrements).
Congratulations!
co-Gold Medals go to the proponents of Catalina and/or Western salad dressings as CCA (Cottage Cheese Accoutrements).
Congratulations!
Did Dusty May and Michigan say it’s only one ball with their National Championship team. Typical Illinois fans attitude. You get as many good players as you can. You’re only a couple of injuries away from your whole season going down the tubes. Last season we got lucky on the injury side
chrisRunner7
- San Diego
The only potential downside-- and I have struggled with this conundrum for several days-- is you see a bunch of exasperated posts in response to people you've previously ignored, and I then find myself really tempted to click "Show" and see what sort of crazy thing was posted, lol
blackdog
- Champaign
Because the players we brought back would be top 10-20 portal additions for most other teams which means we had to invest a lot to keep them. Then we add another top 20 transfer, then the #8 ranked recruiting class (which back in the day would have made everyone lose their minds by itself). Look at what those other teams have to replace. They HAVE to bring in big name guys if they want to compete with us
Feel like what people would like to see is a lead guard off the bench. That isn’t that crazy a request.
Sure there’s some unrealistic expectations that if we don’t pursue and get Christian Anderson we ought to be shamed.
However, just getting a guard who’d play the Harmon role of 15-20 minutes of the bench would satisfy most people (including me). There’s really no reason that role shouldn’t be attractive for someone looking to jump from the mid majors.
We need depth. The top-end of the roster is good enough.
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pruman91
- interviewing new NL's daily....I really really am
Not adding Mr. Blackwell could be a blessing in disguise........we have a tight well connected base of returning players who took us where we hadn't been in 25 years and everyone except KW and Bam have returned from our major tick players.....to blend in a transfer ( Vaaks ) and an excellent 5 man recruit class seems very doable and seamless , based on the personalities of said retention returnees............our strength should be our TEAM personna and nothing against Mr. Blackwell but we have many players who each could lead on any given game.....expecting Mr. Blackwell to be the Alpha on a team already full of Alpha's might cause some friction with the core EDG's ,mentality,,,,,,,,,,
After careful reflection I believe we will be better off in the course of the season to play the players who gleefully said " I'm back " , not someone chasing the Benjamins.....as BU said , these guys play for the name on the front of the uni , not the back name......
JMHO......................
After careful reflection I believe we will be better off in the course of the season to play the players who gleefully said " I'm back " , not someone chasing the Benjamins.....as BU said , these guys play for the name on the front of the uni , not the back name......
JMHO......................
Zens makes 13.
Imagine what this place would have been like in 05
We only had two lead guards on the team this past season, and they played on the court a lot together. Both those guys could also play an off-ball/wing role, so KB essentially was the backup "PG" even though he started at "SG" (later in the season - earlier in the season those roles were reversed).
This is why I am not a fan of using the traditional PG, SG, SF etc. designations in modern basketball, especially for a team like ours that doesn't run it's offense based on those traditional roles. Using designations like lead guards, wings, and bigs is a lot more useful (though also doesn't tell the full picture). Our normal lineup typically features a lead guard, two wings, and two bigs, but we have multiple people who can play multiple roles. Our small ball lineup basically swaps out a big for one of our longer wings (BH this past season, some speculation that Morillo would play a similar role this upcoming season). I expect that Coleman will start as a wing, but also spell Vaaks at times as the lead guard.
I think the main problem people have is that if you have money for Blackwell, you have money to get another proven experienced guard. To rely on Freshman to play these backup roles I get it, make them happy keep them around for 27-28. 27-28 isn't guaranteed. Michigan was the class of the fieldi last year and they had experience coming off the bench, Cason, Gayle, Cheddar, Burnett and then Mckinney the lone Freshman who played meaningful. We have Z, Jake, and I will even throw Jack in there. Michigan bench 4 experienced players 1 Freshman right now we are going in with 2 experienced and 3 or 4 freshmen. We are at least 1 experienced player away from being comfortable. It is just we have momentum and we need to capitalize. Like people say the best thing about Freshman is they become Sophomores.
Any chance y'all can chill? Having this much angst over a top 5 preseason roster is such a laughable luxury.
Little to nothing is going it happen for the next 3 months and this place is trending towards being unreadable in the meantime...
Quick recap of the offseason so far:
Staff: "It's going to be so great when we build the team around Mirkovic and bring back as many contributors as possible."
Staff: *brings back everyone, adds 2 top 30 freshmen and a top 10 transfer guard*
Board: "What's the plan for backup PG? Who is going to be the guy? How can we trust in freshmen to contribute a season after our top 2 contributors were freshmen?"
It's like last year, but speedrun since the staff brought everything together so quickly.
Staff: "It's going to be so great when we build the team around Mirkovic and bring back as many contributors as possible."
Staff: *brings back everyone, adds 2 top 30 freshmen and a top 10 transfer guard*
Board: "What's the plan for backup PG? Who is going to be the guy? How can we trust in freshmen to contribute a season after our top 2 contributors were freshmen?"
It's like last year, but speedrun since the staff brought everything together so quickly.
Looking at the teams nationally, our floor is top 5-6 but our ceiling could be the highest because of our unknowns. Our freshmen are going to be studs.
pruman91
- interviewing new NL's daily....I really really am
maybe not the best comparison to evoke since '24-'25 was pretty disappointing. i think people got their hopes up with blackwell and an almost assured second weekend and beyond run.
looking at stoj's numbers and improvement plus that vaaks passing vid has me feeling very optimistic, to say nothing of our returnees and freshman class.
I see what you are saying, but I still like the Wagler comparison better because of the 3pt shooting.
KJ - 31% from 3, 50% 3pt rate
Wagler - 40% from 3, 48% 3pt rate
Vaaks - 35% from 3, 68% 3pt rate
Teams were okay letting KJ settle for a 3. Teams did not want Wagler shooting 3s and they don't want Vaaks shooting 3s.
I’ll ask again… The staff went after Blackwell and I think was still going after him after Vaaks committed. So if they aren’t getting him why does it no longer make sense to suggest getting some other veteran guard? And apparently not make sense to the point that people are being ridiculed for suggesting it.
Michigan was the class of the field last year, no? I just want a roster constructed similar to that. It isn't too much to ask for.
You also don't need a ball dominant lead guard all the time when the offense can run through Mirk and/or Tomi. That's the benefit of having skilled bigs.
mhuml32
Gesture of Northern Aggression
Agree with a lot of this. The five position designations haven't been replaced because there isn't a straight-forward way of explaining fit when most 2-4 players have multi-positional fits. For example, Petro fell out of the rotation from poor play but his fate was fully sealed once the staff was comfortable with Wagler taking on ball handling responsibilities.
I usually prefer to write out how many minutes-per-game each player will play to think about lineups and roles.
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