Illinois Football: 4-star Louisville lineman keeps Illini in top 3

While the Illinois football team didn’t play a game this past weekend, they did move one step closer to adding to their class of 2022.

The Illini currently sits with 15 commitments and a national recruiting ranking of No. 46 for the 2022 class. This isn’t a bad start to the first full class by Bret Bielema, but there is a lot more work to do. Landing someone like Selah Brown would help bolster this already solid group of players.

Brown is a 6-foot-2, 251-pound defensive lineman from Louisville Male High School and resides in Louisville, Kentucky. He is rated as a four-star recruit and ranked as the No. 326 player in the class of 2022. He is also the No. 44 defensive lineman in the country and the No. 3 player coming out of Kentucky.

Illinois has been in the running for Brown for quite some time. The Illini coaching staff started recruiting him just months after Bielema took the reins. Since then, there have been virtual visits and, on May 9, Brown cut his list to 10 teams and kept the Illini alive for his commitment.

Brown’s list got small this past weekend, and the Illinois football program is right in the mix.

Back on June 18, Brown took an official visit to Champaign. This was one of the two official visits he has been on, the other was to Northwestern on June 4.

Well, it now looks like Brown is even closer to making a decision on where he will play football at the next level. On Sunday afternoon, the talented defensive lineman narrowed his list down to just three teams. The three programs vying for his commitment include the likes of Northwestern, Louisville, and Illinois.

Illinois is clearly recruiting Brown extremely hard. I would put us in the lead but only slightly. I think this is a pretty open recruitment among the three teams.

The Illini would provide a lot of benefits for Brown, though. I think there would be some early playing time for the young Louisville product. Illinois has a lot of turnover happening with the program, so there is room for Brown to emerge as a starter in the first couple of years.

I think the work defensive coordinator Ryan Walters has done this season with the Illini should entice Brown. With roughly the same cast, Walters has managed to improve the defense greatly. This is a productive defense, and adding a four-star defensive lineman to the mix, it could be one of the top defenses in the Big Ten.

It is exciting to see Illinois in the top three for a four-star recruit. Let’s land Brown and continue building this program into something special.