Illinois Basketball: Illini a step closer to landing coveted 2024 recruit

One of the top Illinois basketball recruiting targets is starting to narrow down the scope of his recruitment.

The Illini have been on quite a recruiting tear as of late. The 2022 class ranks No. 7 in the country. Illinois’ class of 2023 just landed their second top 100 recruit, and this group now ranks No. 22 in the nation. And the 2024 class has already started off on the right foot.

Illinois was able to land Morez Johnson in November 2021 and followed that commitment up with a pledge from ZZ Clark back in April. These two form the No. 2 class in the nation for 2024, but the Illini aren’t nearly finished with this group. Brad Underwood and his coaching staff have a big target still left on the board in James Brown.

Brown is a 6-foot-9, 210-pound center from St. Rita High School in Chicago. He is rated as a four-star recruit and ranked as the No. 27 player in the class of 2024. He is also the No. 5 center in the nation and the best player coming out of Illinois.

Just this past Friday, Brown decided to form the first top list of his recruitment. He would cut his recruitment down to 10 programs and included the likes of Howard, Wisconsin, Iowa, Notre Dame, Duke, Eastern Michigan, Missouri, North Carolina, Michigan State, and Illinois.

Illinois basketball seems to be in a group smaller than the top 10 for James Brown.

While it is nice to see Brown cut his list to just 10 teams, it looks like that list is most likely smaller than that number. Brown has already set up his five official visits.

The first of Brown’s official visits was this past weekend when he checked out Missouri. He then heads to Michigan State this weekend followed by North Carolina on October 15, Notre Dame on October 31, and then Illinois rounds out the visit schedule on November 4.

Illinois getting the final official visit is huge, in my opinion. It seems that the last official visit tends to be the one that ends up landing the recruit. I am hoping that turns out to be true in this case.

I think assistant coach Tim Anderson is an ace recruiter as well, so that is something Illinois has going in our favor. He has been credited with landing a myriad of players such as both Skyy and ZZ Clark, Ty Rodgers, and the most recent commitment, Dra Gibbs-Lawhorn.

The icing on the cake for Illinois to potentially land Brown would be the connection with Johnson. Both Johnson and Brown play together at St. Rita. They also both suited up for Meanstreets in the AAU circuit. I imagine that would be a huge draw for Brown to come to Illinois.

Nevertheless, it is nice to see Brown narrowing his recruitment. The kid has a ton of talent, and I would love to see him with the Orange and Blue. The combination of Johnson and Brown would be one for the ages.