The season ended only a few weeks ago, but on the heels of an Elite Eight appearance, Brad Underwood and the Illinois coaching staff have wasted no time reloading for next season.
The offseason for the Illini has already been off to a hot start. With 3 players guaranteed to leave this season in Terrence Shannon Jr, Justin Harmon, and Quincy Guerrier, there was an immediate need for rotational replacements. Coleman Hawkins and Marcus Domask are both likely to be gone next season, but they could return for another season. This means that Brad Underwood and the coaching staff need to replace 5 players, 4 of them being starters for this most recent Elite Eight run.
So far, the coaching staff has been aggressive in the transfer portal, netting 3 players already. The first player brought in was Jake Davis from Mercer, who is a 6’6” wing that averaged 9 PPG and 4.5 RPG and was 38% from 3 in his freshman campaign. From early indications, he could be a Luke Goode-esque piece for the Illini, but not a day 1 starter. Following the trend of a Quincy Guerrier type player, the next addition is 6’7” wing Tre White from Louisville. He’s not quite the shooter that Guerrier was, but he’s a great athlete that provided the Cardinals with 12 PPG and 6 RPG in his sophomore campaign. The next signing is one that should have probably happened when he first entered college, Kylan Boswell. The Champaign, Illinois product transferred in from Arizona, and is the point guard that Brad Underwood has been looking for. As the 4th or 5th option in the Arizona offense, Boswell averaged 9.5 PPG and 3.5 APG. He’s also a career 38% 3 PT shooter, and he’s still only 18 years old going into his 3rd season playing NCAA basketball in a Power Five conference. Lastly, another transfer was confirmed earlier today, as former Notre Dame forward Carey Booth announced he would be joining the Fighting Illini. Booth is a 6’10” big man that averaged 6.5 PPG and 4.3 RPG in only 20 minutes per game in his freshman season.
From the looks of it, Underwood is looking for players similar to Terrence Shannon Jr, not in terms of talent necessarily but in terms of eligibility. All of these transfers have multiple years left of eligibility, and that helps in one major category: Building Culture. With so many guys leaving, there’s a need for players that can impress the culture upon the new players. For this season, it’s looking like those guys will be Ty Rodgers, Luke Goode, Dra Gibbs-Lawhorn, and Nico Moretti. The reason it is only 4 players now is because there have been a fair share of transfers leaving the Illini, seemingly as the result of a coaching change.
Firstly, Dain Dainja decided to enter the transfer portal following his outstanding run in the Big Ten Tournament and in March Madness. He has already found a new home, joining Penny Hardaway at Memphis.
The next change was a rather shocking one, as former Illini great Chester Frazier decided to take an assistant coaching position at West Virginia. We saw the dominoes of this change fall immediately, as Sencire Harris and Amani Hansberry have both entered the transfer portal since Frazier left. This is no surprise, as both of these players were recruited by Frazier himself to come to Illinois, and they will likely follow him to West Virginia. The other piece that changed as a result of Frazier was incoming guard Jase Butler, who was also recruited by Frazier.
While it’s unfortunate these players won’t don the orange and blue next season, the players that are here are more than capable to put the Illini back at the top of the expanded Big Ten next season. That is also with the help of the incoming freshman class.
Illinois’ Mr. Basketball of 2024 will be coming to Champaign next season. Morez Johnson Jr has climbed up the high school ranks these last 2 seasons, currently sitting comfortably in the top 40-50 of the 2024 class. Johnson is a 6’9” center, and will help Underwood reload from the likely loss of Coleman Hawkins. The other freshman addition is 7’0” big man Jason Jakstys, who is a 3-star recruit and hopefully can contribute his size to the roster in a positive way. The Big Ten has seen many great, physical big men join the conference with the transfer portal, multiple teams have stocked up. The Illini will likely need to do the same, or hope that Morez Johnson and whatever other transfers Underwood can pick up are up for the challenge.
In terms of transfers, the Illini are far from done, and hopefully we can see yet another great season in the Brad Underwood Era at the University of Illinois.
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