Illinois Football: 2023 4-star recruit keeping Illini alive for commitment

Illinois football finds themselves in a spot that we aren’t too familiar with as a program.

The Illini are actually a winning football team. Despite losing a tough battle against Michigan State, Illinois is still 7-2 this season with a good chance of winning the Big Ten West and making the Big Ten Championship game.

This ability to win games should also help Illinois win some recruiting battles in the near future. One of the recruiting battles that is starting to narrow is with Jyaire Hill.

Hill is a 6-foot-1, 170-pound athlete from Kankakee High School in Kankakee, Illinois. He is rated as a four-star recruit and ranked as the No. 156 player in the class of 2023. He is also the No. 15 cornerback in the nation and the No. 2 player coming out of Illinois.

On Sunday, Hill decided to cut down his recruitment to just 10 teams. Making his top 10 included Florida, UCLA, Michigan, Missouri, Auburn, Florida State, Oklahoma, TCU, Washington, and Illinois.

Illinois football should be a legit threat to land Jyaire Hill for 2023.

The landing spot for Hill is starting to get clearer with just 10 teams left vying for his commitment, but there seemed to be two teams as frontrunners for most of his recruitment.

Back in December 2021, a Crystal Ball Prediction was submitted in favor of Michigan to land Hill. The Wolverines seemed to be the landing spot at the time, and no one has updated the 247Sports prediction as of right now.

Rivals has been more updated with predicting where Hill will end up, though. Josh Henschke, the publisher for Rivals’ Maize & Blue website, actually switched his prediction from Michigan to Illinois back in June 2022. Illinois publisher Doug Bucshon then put in a prediction in August 2022 in favor of the Illini.

As far as predictions go, that is where we stand right now. I think Illinois is going to end up being one of the final teams when a decision is going to be made. Will it be the Illini at the end? I do believe we could be the ultimate landing spot.

I think when Hill decides to sign is going to reveal a lot. If he decides to sign during the early signing period, then I think Illinois will be the destination. If he decides to wait until February, then there is no telling who will swoop in and convince him to head elsewhere.

Illinois has been there through all of Hill’s recruitment. He has visited Champaign multiple times as well. And just look at what defensive coordinator Ryan Walters has done with defensive backs. Hill would get the best coaching in the country and would likely punch his ticket to the NFL if he picked the Illini.

That is a lot to offer Hill. As a four-star cornerback, he would help Illinois a lot on defense, especially with departures after this season. Hopefully, we can continue building out the class of 2023 with a top 300 recruit in Hill.