Illinois Basketball: Kahlil Whitney keeps Illini in top 4

The Illinois basketball team received some great news on Monday afternoon.

Kahlil Whitney decided to cut his list down to just four programs and included Georgetown, Kentucky, Oregon and Illinois. This list cut comes one week after Whitney trimmed the list to eight programs. It looks like Florida State, Louisville, Miami and SMU all failed to make the cut.

Whitney is one of the most wanted recruits in the nation right now. He is a 6-foot-6, 190-pound small forward from Roselle Catholic High School in Roselle, New Jersey. He is rated as a five-star recruit who is the No. 14 player in the class of 2019 and the No. 4 small forward in the nation.

The list of four consists of some pretty good programs, but the recent trend has been Whitney to the Kentucky Wildcats. He just received an offer from them a little over two weeks ago, and his first official visit was to Kentucky this past weekend. But, there was no commitment and now he has a final four. That means all four programs are still alive.

There have been a lot of reports out there that Whitney is going to pick the Wildcats and that is fine. Kentucky has a good program that has a history of sending players to the NBA. But, those same reports also didn’t include Illinois. Just two weeks ago, Adam Zagoria of ZAGSBLOG wrote an article and said Kentucky, Louisville, Florida State, Miami and Oregon were all the top suitors for Whitney.

This clearly wasn’t the case considering Whitney cut three of the five programs that Zagoria named, and Illinois and Georgetown ended up making the top four, which Zagoria left off.

It is exciting that the Illini are in the top four for Whitney. He is one of the best players in the nation and would improve the program immensely. Hopefully, Illinois can close the deal and land this talented wing player.