Ask Michigan how that works out
Illinois Hoops Recruiting Thread
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ptgrd23
- orange county CA
Just like the NBA and now colleges will find talent wherever you are hiding.
I am not big fan of basketball academies. They are supposed to improve you by giving you better competition everyday. However there is something to be said for learning to be the man. Carrying your team. Beating double and triple teams. If you have the talent and work ethic you will get to P4 and NBA.
I went to Univ Illinois and got my MBA from Carnegie Mellon. I will put my career/resume up against the Ivy league / Harvard MBA grads.
Keaton went to Illinois not Duke, Kentucky, North Carolina and he will be 1 and done lottery pick.
Who won that state's player of the year? He wasn't a complete unknown; they got lazy and didn't do their homework on him. That is what the embarrassment is.
And we got a coach who is determined to capitalize on our prior success. It's a great time to be illini fan. ILL
Purdue just landed a big recruit in more ways then one
This is the ILL filter? They must not be good if we stop recruiting them. /sConstanza's really fallen in the rankings.
Alex Constanza, SPIRE Academy , Small Forward
Constanza transferred from Westminster Academy in Florida following his junior year.247sports.com
I remember the first time QC's name appeared on this board (Landon Davis commitment thread) -- he was a 3star, outside the top 100. Constanza was certified top 20.
Joel Goodson
- it's all ball bearings, nowadays
imagine if he knew what he was doing
Ok, so are we expecting Zens to be a lottery pick next year? He's outside of the top 100, was the Wisconsin player of the year, his team went undefeated and won the state championship. It was us, Wisconsin or Utah State.
This is a very similar scenario to Wagler's and just like May/June of last year, we don't know if this kid is going to play one meaningful minute this year.
You know for a fact that all the recruiting services "got lazy"?
This is a once in a generation miss that essentially every single high major coach missed, including our own. His son is the one who found him.
Your take is what is lazy and embarrassing.
blackdog
- Champaign
He had chances to join those higher profile AAU teams but he made a deliberate choice too stay where he was.
ChiefGritty
- Chicago, IL
And what the ranking thing really shows is how AAU-centric and HS not-centric the recruiting process has become.
There are logical reasons for that, you learn a lot about players going best-on-best, but you also miss a lot.
Wagler facing well prepared HS teams who had spent real practice time focused on stopping him specifically and cutting them to ribbons anyway to win games demonstrated something important about him that AAU wouldn't have.
He was the 6A POY in Kansas. I'm not sure how that could have been hidden from anyone whose job it is to evaluate prospects... They knew of him. He had a ranking. They just thought 149 other guys were better.
He chose not to leave the AAU coach who helped turn him into a monster. His coaches were making calls & sending tapes, trying to get people to take notice, (That's how Tyler found him) but many didn't bother.
Probably a chicken/egg situation where the scouting sites didn't take him seriously because he wasn't getting major offers, and the schools not taking him seriously because he was barely rated.
It should bother every coach in the Midwest, that they didn't make that call. I understand with KU & Arkansas because Self & Cal can get pretty much anyone they want, so they aren't looking for diamonds in the rough, but if you are Kansas State, Nebraska, Missouri, Oklahoma, OK ST... and you haven't bothered to check out the POY in Kansas, you are doing something wrong.
It's not embarrassing because he's quite literally the only one ever to have the success he had (in ratio to his ranking).
Every other high major coach could be said to have "missed" on him. He had TWO offers (HM).
It's a complete needle in a haystack situation. What we call an "exception"; not the rule.
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But did anyone - even our staff - really see it coming? I'm sure our staff thought he was better than #150 or 261 and saw enough to take a chance on his development, but if you had asked them before he arrived what he should be ranked in the country, they probably would've put him around or even behind Lee (#124, also didn't get any major offers except Miss St, and didn't outperform his ranking). It's also very possible that he actually improved and/or looked better with the right staff and team around him.
Just to be sure I'm not crazy, I dug up what our insiders were saying soon before he arrived.
LvilleILL1:
"Really feel people are sleeping on Lee. Wagler has some nice long term upside as well, he can really shoot it."
"Wagler, Lee, Jake, and JJ as deeper rotation guys."
"Ivisic, Ty, and Ben would be a very good bench (possible Jake or Lee as well)." (not even mentioning Wagler)
Indy Illini Fan:
"Think one of Wagler / Lee could redshirt"
"If Wagler or Lee are getting serious minutes next year … Something has gone very, very wrong"
DB11HeadBand:
"would be shocked if either [Wagler or Lee] play significant minutes"
It's possible our staff didn't want to lose him to another school at the last minute, so they didn't tell anyone outside a very tight circle how good they thought he was until he got here. But even after he arrived, while we heard very encouraging reports, expectations were still tempered (at least for year 1) and put him with Lee:
LvilleILL1:
"Wagler will not be a starter, but I do think he will have a positive impact this season, especially as a shooter. He can handle it very nicely as well."
"Very early rotation guess ... Lee (10 mpg) ... Wagler (8 mpg). Wagler and Lee have both flashed, but the biggest stock riser of anyone has been Keaton. Needs to put on weight, but there's high optimism he can contribute right away. Great shooter."
Indy Illini Fan (credit for calling All-B1G, but that was future looking, and he still put him in the "developmental" category and also had good things to say about Lee):
"Keaton Wagler will be all Big Ten by the time his career is done here … Brandon Lee has some shades of Feliz to his game … Will be a fan favorite …"
"Little portal, Little retention, Little Europe, Sprinkle in 1 ELITE HS kid if it’s the right fit or right connection, and a couple developmental HS kids like Wagler, Lee, Brown, Davis, etc. … That’s Brad’s new philosophy …"
"Lee & Wagler have been better than expected so far …"
I dont know if our "insiders" are scouts or just have inside info. I would imagine most are saying what they are told. I want a 4 8n the Ben role. I think our backcourt with Coleman n Vaaks will be better offensively.
I miss Indy because he had the most reliable unbiased info..... Me , personally, i think the NBA game has changed for the worse and so players like Harper and DWill arent as good as Keaton one day. But no way at 19 or 20 Keaton couldve dealt with Harper...no way. I hope Keaton plays as long as Harp. Most dont.
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I'm not a reflexive "insider defender" at all. Look at my posting history, and my opinions have certainly run counter to an "insider" or two here. But I don't really feel this line of critique is fair. I don't think anyone could have known exactly how good Keaton was until he showed up on campus and the coaches saw him against our regulars. We started to hear what sounded like hyperbole about him from Brad and the coaches shortly after practices started. Heck I remember dismissing that "hyperbole" myself as typical preseason hype. Players that outplay their ranking during their freshman years THAT hard are beyond exceptional, so I wouldn't blame certain folks for not seeing it coming.
What I feel Keaton's story shows, though, is that every one of our newcomers will be given a fair chance to prove their worth and earn as much playing time as their play merits. Keaton is living proof of this which is fantastic for recruiting, IMO, because it shows potential freshman recruits that they will have a fair chance to earn PT if they choose to come here.
What are your thoughts on Zen, who has the exact same profile as Keaton in HS, is ranked outside of the top 100(was originally 200+) and his choices were Wisconsin, Utah St and Illinois versus DePaul, Minnesota and Illinois for Keaton?
State player of the year
Undefeated season
State Championship
Huge numbers
All of that and we're projecting non meaningful minutes for us. That's the same thing we did this time, last year for Wagler.
RabidDawgClassic
- Los Angeles, CA
This is hilarious, but only because we all know that the only people who truly saw Wagler’s potential were Tyler and Boswell (and perhaps Niko Medved). Though funny, it shouldn’t be taken as a knock on any of the insiders. Their info is generally rock solid.
Having said that… now repost their takes on Petro and Mirk.
Joel Goodson
- it's all ball bearings, nowadays
Maybe my post came across wrong. I wasn't trying to critique the insiders at all. I quoted them because it suggests that even our staff didn't know how good Keaton was before he got here (I figure our insiders would've heard if the staff had really high expectations).This is hilarious, but only because we all know that the only people who truly saw Wagler’s potential were Tyler and Boswell (and perhaps Niko Medved). Though funny, it shouldn’t be taken as a knock on any of the insiders. Their info is generally rock solid.
Having said that… now repost their takes on Petro and Mirk.
The context is the debate over whether Wagler's rise should be an embarrassment to other schools and recruiting websites, or if he just turned out better than everyone could have possibly expected. I think it's more the latter than the former, though probably not completely black and white.
Ja Morant went 2nd overall.
I'm not saying he should even have been top 75 but much closer to 100 when you are POY and did what he did on the HS level. That is embarrassing. They went to the big tourneys and just said, yep that's good enough.
To be fair to those saying (early in the summer) that he would only play if something went wrong, a lot did and Wagler papered over our highest paid players having some really inconsistent regular seasons.
Injuries impacted them all, but Boz & Tomi were on preseason awards watchlists and didn't take the next step, Stoj was inconsistent/out enough that he wasn't a starter by end of year and Petrovic was a flop.
An amazing tourney run was made possible by Wagler (and Mirk) unexpectedly carrying the team for parts of the season and all those dudes killing it in the tourney.
He was a sophomore when he got drafted. KW's a freshman.
First one and done lotto pick.
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