3 dream transfers Brad Underwood needs to target with the portal finally open

The offseason started for Illinois on Saturday night, and at least for now, it appears to be going well. Illinois has yet to have a player enter the Transfer Portal coming off its first Final Four run since 2005, and Brad Underwood would like to keep it that way. 

Still, even if Underwood keeps the roster intact, he’s losing Kylan Boswell and Ben Humrichous, who are both out of eligibility, and is likely to lose Keaton Wagler to the NBA Draft. It will be hard and maybe impossible to strike oil with a low-rated recruit as Underwood did with Wagler again. 

So, even beyond his four-player high school class with two four-star recruits, Quentin Coleman and Lucas Morillo, the 62-year-old head coach will need to make more waves in the portal after landing Andrej Stojakovic and Zvonimir Ivisic last offseason. 

Things will move quickly with the portal officially open on Tuesday, a day after Michigan claimed the Big Ten’s first national title in 26 years, so Illinois’s portal wishlist should begin with these three names, who would be dream pickups for the Illini. 

1. John Blackwell, G, Wisconsin

Before averaging nearly 20 points a game as one half of a dynamic backcourt duo this past season for the Badgers, Blackwell played alongside John Tonje, a physical, ball-dominant, downhill scoring wing, not too dissimilar from Stojakovic’s game. He’s a prolific shooter at 40 percent on nearly eight attempts per game, and at 6-foot-4, he has the size to hold up defensively. 

Blackwell isn’t a traditional point guard, so Underwood would either need to add one or play him next to Mihailo Petrovic, but he can handle playmaking responsibilities, run ball screens, and attack switches. Underwood isn’t going to replace Wagler, at least not one-for-one, but a player with the scoring pop of Blackwell and help to make up for his lost production, and he’s the top guard on the portal market. 

2. Stefan Vaaks, Providence

The Providence transfer provides a lot of what Underwood values, including being European. Vaaks is an impressive playmaker with an 18 percent assist rate, but his best skill is his shot-making. 60 percent of his shots come from beyond the arc, but at 6-foot-7, he has great positional size and is a capable finisher on the interior, shooting 67.4 percent at the rim and 50 percent in the paint. 

Vaaks could get picked on defensively, and hasn’t displayed much rebounding prowess through his first college season. Still, as another big wing who is comfortable making the plays with the ball in his hands to go with Stojakovic, Vaaks would be perfect for Illinois. 

3. Bishop Boswell, Tennessee

Bishop Boswell is my pick for Illinois’s Kylan Boswell replacement, and I promise it isn’t because of his last name. The 6-foot-4 guard, with no relation, played off-ball much of his sophomore season with Tennessee next to Jakobe Gillespie, which he’s capable of as a near-40 percent three-point shooter, but on the ball, he produced a near-30 percent assist rate last season. 

He’s a physical, defensive-minded guard who can switch up and down the lineup because of his strength. He can be the tip of the spear on that end of the floor, and offensively, he’ll be comfortable setting the table for Stojakovic and David Mirkovic, or playing off of them as a spot-up shooter.