Illinois Basketball: Illini extend offer to athletic Virginia wing

Illinois basketball has been busy over the past week with extending scholarship offers to big-time recruits.

Building out future recruiting classes is important for the success of the Illini program. We have a good class of 2023 coming in this season. For 2024, Morez Johnson Jr. leads the charge, and look for Illinois to add some great pieces to join him in Champaign.

A player from the class of 2025 hasn’t picked the Illini, but that doesn’t come as a surprise. There aren’t many players who have pledged to a program. In fact, out of the 75 players who have been ranked by 247Sports, not a single player has picked a school yet.

Illinois is trying to build a solid recruiting relationship with some of the talented players from the 2025 class. On Sunday, Nate Ament took to social media to announce that he had received a scholarship offer from the Illini.

Illinois basketball is targeting a talented and athletic wing in class of 2025’s Nate Ament

Ament is a 6-foot-7, 170-pound small forward from Colgan High School in Virginia. He isn’t rated or ranked by 247Sports just yet, but he is starting to rack up scholarship offers.

So far, Ament has roughly eight offers on the table right now. Besides Illinois, some of the bigger offers for Ament include the likes of Iowa, Wake Forest, and Creighton. So, he has the big-time DI programs eyeing him.

Opinion

If I had to guess where Ament opens up in the initial 247Sports rankings, I would say he is somewhere between No. 80 and No. 120 in the country, which is pretty impressive.

Ament clearly has a ton of talent. There are two things that really stand out to me about his game. The first thing is his athletic ability. Ament can jump out of the gym. He is someone who will be able to get around defenders and be able to finish at the rim.

The second thing that jumped out to me is Ament’s handles. He was clearly more of a guard at one time, so he has the handles of a guard. At 6-foot-7, and likely to grow more, being able to handle the ball well is an amazing asset.

This is a good offer by the Illini. I think Ament is going to be a really nice player at the next level. Let’s see how well we can recruit the east coast players for the 2025 class.