While the Illinois basketball team is still trying to figure out the next head coach of the program, it is on fans minds what the class of 2017 will do.
Will these four commits stay with their pledge or move on to a different team? That is a multi-million dollar question right now but it got me to thinking about recruiting in the John Groce era.
This is an awfully impressive class ranking No. 9 in the nation. Groce had a few solid classes prior to this as well, but I have always believed in winning the state will translate into winning on the court and field.
Winning the state was one of the downfalls in the career of Groce at Illinois. I think this was one of the main reasons that the Illini came up short four years in a row.
I will start with Groce’s best class, which is 2017. In the state of Illinois, the class of 2017 consisted of four top 100 players in the nation. Out of those four players, Groce was only able to snag one and that was No. 19 Jeremiah Tilmon.
While the class of 2017 for the Illini ranked in the top 10 nationally, they still couldn’t get in-state talent.
There was only one top 100 recruit from the state of Illinois in 2016 and that was point guard Charlie Moore. He didn’t commit to Illinois but instead went out west to California.
The class of 2015 had five players in the top 100. Groce got one player out of those five from this class and that lone player was DJ Williams, who Groce didn’t play much this year.
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The other four from 2015 were Jalen Brunson who led Villanova to a national championship, Marcus LoVett who averaged 15.9 points and 3.8 assists per game, Charles Matthews who is sitting out a year after transferring to Michigan and Glynn Watson who averaged 13 points per game this season.
In 2014 the state of Illinois was loaded with in-state talent as well. There were six players in the top 100 that year and the Illini couldn’t snag a single one.
This class had some serious superstars like Jahlil Okafor who was the No. 1 player overall and is now in the NBA. It also had Cliff Alexander who is trying to land with a team in the NBA, Tyler Ulis is playing for the Phoenix Suns this season, Keita Bates-Diop averaged 9.7 points and 5.2 rebounds for Ohio State, Paul White transferred to Oregon and Malek Harris was dismissed from Kansas State.
The first real recruiting class for Groce was in 2013 and it was his most successful in the state of Illinois. He was able to get two top 100 recruits out of the five that were available. Kendrick Nunn and Malcolm Hill were the two who were ranked No. 52 and No. 72, respectively.
Nunn ended up being kicked off the team and Hill ended up being a special player for the Illini. The other three in this class were Jabari Parker who is in the NBA with the Milwaukee Bucks, Kendall Stephens who transferred to Nevada and Kyle Davis who is averaging 8.1 points and 3.9 rebounds per game with Dayton.
There have been some land mines and special players come out of the state of Illinois in the Groce era. Illinois only managed to snag 4 out of 21 top 100 recruits during this time and this is no way to win games.
Next: Coaching search update for the Illini men
Hopefully, Illinois can rope in a great coach so they can start owning the state once again. This is one of the keys to success and I truly believe that we will win.