Illinois Basketball: Enoch Boakye and the Illini seem like a perfect fit

The future at the center position for the Illinois basketball team might be getting a boost in the coming months.

Well, at least the foundation for landing a talented center to replace Kofi Cockburn is starting to get laid. On Tuesday, Kedric Prince of IlliniGuys.com, Tweeted out that Enoch Boakye will be having a Zoom meeting with the entire Illinois coaching staff on Friday.

Boakye is a 6-foot-10, 240-pound center from George Harris Prep and resides in Mississauga, Ontario. He is rated as a five-star recruit who is the No. 20 player in the class of 2022 and the No. 4 center in the nation. He is also the best player coming out of Ontario.

The recruitment of Boakye really heated up toward the beginning of 2020. He received some big offers from teams like Texas Tech, UCLA and Arizona, among others. But one team stood out the most. On July 28, 2020, Boakye decided to end his recruitment and commit to Michigan State.

That commitment was about seven months ago, which is a ton of time in the college recruiting world. In that time, the meat of the pandemic happened and things changed for Boakye. On February 15, 2021, the talented big man decided to back away from his commitment to the Spartans. His recruitment is now open.

On the same day Prince broke the news of Illinois’ coaching staff getting a Zoom call, Travis Branham also posted an article about an interview with Boakye. He talked about some of the programs that have been in contact with him including Maryland, Oklahoma State, Texas Tech and Wake Forest.

But the main thing I took away from the article was that Boakye isn’t set on any team right now. He is listening to everyone and isn’t ready to make a decision.

Does Illinois basketball have a chance at landing Boakye?

I think it is blatantly clear that Illinois is creeping into the discussion and will be a player in the second recruitment of Boakye, which is exciting if you are an Illini fan.

One more thing that piqued my interest about the Branham article was that Boakye mentioned not only COVID-19 as a reason for backing away from Michigan State, but he also mentioned that the Spartans had too many big men on their roster.

"“Just the timing of everything with Covid and the amount of bigs that were at MSU and just coming in so that was pretty much it,” the five-star prospect said of why he de-committed from Michigan State last Monday."

What this says to me is that Boakye wants to play right away. He wants to be the man in the middle from day one. Do you know who can provide that to him?

Illinois.

I don’t care what anyone says right now, Kofi Cockburn is heading to the NBA after this season. He might not be drafted, and he might not be ready, but I don’t see him sticking around. I think he goes into the G-League for a few seasons before getting the call-up to the NBA.

This would leave the door wide open for Boakye to come in and start from day one. Illinois needs an elite No. 5 because, if they don’t have Boakye come in, Giorgi Bezhanishvili would be the starter for the 2021-22 campaign. While we love Giorgi, he isn’t a starting No. 5 on a high-level program.

When it is all said and done, there is no doubt in my mind Illinois will be a major player in the Boakye sweepstakes. This kid is elite, and Illinois needs an elite center. It seems like a perfect marriage.