Even in a poor shooting performance, Keaton Wagler answered every remaining question

When a player comes out of nowhere, it takes time for their expectations to catch up to the reality of what they are as a player. Sometimes it never happens in a breakout season. It just all feels like found money.

Illinois freshman Keaton Wagler, however, has been so good since arriving in Champaign as a skinny three-star freshman that it became fair to question if he could carry the Illini on a deep NCAA Tournament run. 

In some of Illinois’s biggest games of the season, most notably against Michigan and Michigan State in February, Wagler seemed to wilt against the intense ball pressure and physicality. So could he really withstand Kelvin Sampson’s veteran-laden roster and a Houston program that is perennially one of the toughest and most effective defenses in the country? Well, the skinny three-star from Shawnee, Kansas just did. 

Wagler only finished with 13 points on 14 field goal attempts, an inefficient outing by any measure, but after a wretched 1-8 first half, he hit three of his six shots after the intermission, grabbed 12 rebounds throughout the game, and calmly guided the Illini to a 65-55 win. 

Keaton Wagler keeps passing every test

Not one to pull up from the mid-range or break out a floater to score over lengthy rim protectors, Wagler struggled on the interior. Without much vertical pop, the 6-foot-6 point guard continually challenged JoJo Tugler and his seven-foot wingspan and the rest of Houston’s forwards at the rim to no avail. That’s a concern for the NBA certainly, but in a game in which Illinois shot 43 percent from the field and won by 10, it’s no reason to panic. 

The real issue would have been if Houston’s physicality took Wagler out of the game, as Yaxel Lendeborg of Michigan did in the first half of the Wolverines’ win in Champaign. Instead, Wagler kept coming. His slow shooting start didn’t snowball into other mistakes, or worse, make him tentative in the second half. Instead, he calmly probed the Houston defense, picked his spots, and found other ways to impact the game with 12 rebounds, three assists, two blocks, and a steal. 

Even at 6-foot-6 and 180 pounds, which might be generous, a size that had Underwood planning to redshirt him this season, Wagler was always in balance, dictating the terms of engagement with his controlled pace, attacking mismatches, and working his way into a rhythm. 

Wagler isn’t the best player in the country. He’s not the best freshman in a loaded class. But he keeps raising the bar, and after Thursday night it’s clear that he’s good enough, with this fantastic group of floor-spacing bigs around him, to lead the Illini to a national title.