Illinois Basketball: Duke is sniffing around top Illini target for 2024

Brad Underwood and his coaching staff are setting up the Illinois basketball program to have tremendous success in the future.

The Illini continue to bring in great recruiting class after great recruiting class. When Underwood lands a group of players who will make an impact on the team, he doesn’t just sit on his hands and let recruiting go by the wayside. He continues to stack great class on top of great class.

A top 10 class of 2022 will lead into a class of 2023 that is building and has the potential to be a top 10 class. Those two classes will then lead into the class of 2024.

The 2024 group currently ranks No. 2 in the country with Morez Johnson – a four-star recruit – and ZZ Clark – a future four-star recruit – already committed to the program. There are plenty of names still left for the Illini to land, though. One of those names is James Brown.

Brown is the No. 31 player in the class of 2024 and the best player coming out of the state of Illinois. The Illini have been all over Brown for quite some time, but we aren’t the only program that is eyeing the kid. He currently has numerous teams that have an interest, including some of the blue bloods of the college basketball world.

Illinois basketball is in a fight for the commitment of James Brown.

When blue bloods come sniffing around a recruit, it automatically makes it more difficult for a team like Illinois. On Monday, Jake Weingarten of Stockrisers reported that Duke head coach, Jon Scheyer, took a visit up to Chicago to visit Brown at St. Rita High School.

This visit doesn’t come as a surprise by any means as Duke is getting one of Brown’s five official visits on October 21. But what this visit by Scheyer means is that Duke is starting to really put the full-court press on Illinois’ top target for the 2024 class.

Duke is going to be a problem in the Brown recruitment. Not only do they have the power of being Duke, but Scheyer is also from the Chicago area. He went to high school at Glenbrook North, which is just north of Chicago. He was a Chicago area kid who went to Duke and had a good career.

With that being said, I still think this is Illinois’ recruitment to lose. Brown has been down to Champaign for unofficial visits multiple times. He is scheduled to take his final official visit to Illinois on November 4. To place the final piece of the recruiting puzzle, his teammate at St. Rita is Illinois commit, Morez Johnson. These two seem to be a great one-two punch in high school, and they would have the same effect in the Big Ten.

Brown is one of the most coveted recruits in the country for 2024. I think Illinois is in the driver’s seat right now. But the blue bloods of the college basketball world are not making it easy.