Illinois Basketball: Illini targeting familiar face in the transfer portal

Good things come to those who wait. Hopefully, that will be the saying uttered if the Illinois basketball team can land a former commit.

As of right now, the Illini have lost three scholarship players to the transfer portal in Jayden Epps, RJ Melendez, and Brandon Lieb. We combated those departures with South Dakota transfer, Keaton Kutcher.

But Illinois has a long way to go to be a viable program in 2023-24. Too much talent has walked out the door, and now the transfer portal has become even more important.

There are still plenty of talented options out there in the transfer portal, though. One intriguing option is St. John’s transfer, AJ Storr.

A week or so ago, Storr announced his intentions to enter the transfer portal. He has since received a great deal of recruiting attention from numerous teams. On Friday, Jon Rothstein of CBS Sports tweeted that Illinois had entered the mix for Storr.

Illinois basketball should be a strong contender for transfer portal wing, AJ Storr

Coming out of IMG Academy in Florida, Storr was a wanted player. He was a four-star recruit and ranked No. 97 in the class of 2022.

The Red Storm would be the eventual landing spot for the 6-foot-6 wing. Storr would average 8.8 points and 1.9 rebounds per contest in his freshman season with St. John’s. I was also impressed with his three-point shooting. Storr averaged 2.8 three-pointers per game and made them at a clip of 40.4%.

Storr managed to put up these solid numbers as a true freshman. This production could have easily been for the Orange and Blue too.

Back in 2021, Illinois was strong after Storr. He took an unofficial visit to Champaign, and then on April 7, he would actually commit to the Illini. We had him pledged for a little over a month. On May 13, Storr would back away from his commitment and would eventually land with St. John’s.

So, there is clearly an attraction to the Illinois program. I think the Illini have a couple of other recruiting chips too. We can offer Storr a starting job from day one. Illinois needs scoring, and having Storr out on the wing would be huge.

I think the location factor could also be an interesting recruiting chip. While Storr came out of IMG Academy in Florida, he is actually from Rockford, Illinois. This would give his family and friends a chance to come watch him play basketball.

I am glad to see Illinois pursuing Storr once again. Sometimes things just don’t work out the first time around, but good things come to those who wait.