Most Illinois basketball fans would say that the 2010s were one of the worst decades in program history.
During this era, Illini fans only had a chance to see the team play in two NCAA tournaments. In each of the two brackets, Illinois was able to make the second round only to lose to a higher-seeded program.
In the 2010s, there was only one time where Illinois had a winning Big Ten record and that came in 2010 when we were 10-8 but still managed to miss the postseason. On three separate occasions, Illinois had a record of below .500, which hadn’t happened in a decade since the 1970s.
Overall, winning wasn’t a trend for the Orange and Blue during the 2010s, but that doesn’t mean we didn’t have some talented players come through the program. There were a variety of great recruits come in from the start to finish of the decade. Meyers Leonard, Malcolm Hill and Kofi Cockburn were some of the best.
Illinois had quite a few recruiting busts during the 2010s as well. Some of the players who came into the program as decorated high school athletes couldn’t manage the spotlight and fizzled out before they could reach their potential.
The Writing Illini took a look at every recruit who signed up to play basketball for Illinois in the 2010s. We looked at 247Sports to see how many stars they had coming in and what their composite rating was as a recruit. We then adjusted how many stars they should have actually had and what their rating should have been.
Here are the adjusted Illini recruiting ratings from the 2010s.