PMP25: Downstate Basketball

I can't tell you how big that photo was at the time. For you youngins, this photo elicited similar feelings to, say, that video of Ayo and Kofi walking off the court after a postgame interview where we beat some team during the Covid season. It meant that Illinois basketball was finally back. The fallout from Bruce Pearl lasted 6-7 years and then three guys from the same high school in Peoria picked Illinois and everything was OK again. Welcome to Champaign indeed.

Today's question: what happened to that?

I think it would be interesting to discuss the significant drop off in D-1 basketball talent from downstate IL.

There are substantially less High D-1 prospects from downstate IL than in the past - when you could find a TJ Wheeler, Tommy Michael, Jesse Hall, all of the Peoria guys, Brian Cook, Andy Kaufman, Springfield guys, etc...

While you have the every now and then guy (ie Liddell), they aren't as numerous as in years past. I know they aren't all going the prep school route.

~Scott S.

First off, thanks to Scott for his donation to the scholarship fund. Here's my thoughts:

The prep school thing mentioned there is my very first thought. College basketball recruiting has completely changed. And it's not just the prep schools. The entire system is different. So we should start there.

I spent the summer of 2006 obsessed over Sherron Collins. OBSESSED. In September of 2014 I spent nearly every day looking for clues on which school Jalen Brunson would pick. Hell, in the fall of 2013 I left work early and drove to Louisville to attend Quentin Snider's hat ceremony. Many people first found this blog when I told my boss I had a meeting in Creve Coeur and that "meeting" was driving to Chaminade HS to attend Brad Beal's hat ceremony. Ayo in 2018? I followed his every move night and day.

Now? I don't think I could name a single recruit in the 2026 class. Like, seriously - not a single one. It's almost July, the month I'd spend hours and hours and hours looking for updates from the Peach Jam to see who Illini assistants were following, and now I'm not even sure if there's a Peach Jam anymore.

This is because of many things, but mostly the transfer portal. Rosters are formed in April now. Yes, there's still high school recruiting – we added Brandon Lee and Keaton Wagler for the 2025 class – but it's not really the focus anymore. The success of Illini basketball hinges on Petrovic and Stojakovic, not Lee and Wagler.

As a result, we don't hear as many names as we used to. You mentioned Tommy Michael and TJ Wheeler above. I'm of the opinion that, in 2025, Michael and Wheeler would have gone to Drake and Southern Illinois and then Marcus Domask'd their way to Champaign later on in their careers. There just aren't as many high school players added to high majors anymore. Transfers are everything.

So I feel like that's where we need to start before discussing the specifics of downstate recruiting. High school recruiting has fallen off significantly in the last five years. And that's going to trickle all the way down to "are there fewer recruits from downstate now?" perceptions. Maybe others follow it just as closely now, but as I said above, I couldn't name a single in-state prospect in 2026.

In fact, I'm not sure if I could name a single national prospect in 2026. Let me go flip through the top-20 players nationally and see if I recognize any names.

Yep. 0-fer. I read every name in the top-20 and didn't recognize a single one. In 2010, I bet I would have recognized 18 of the top-20 players. Probably all 20. Maybe it's just me, but it feels so insignificant now. I'm no longer dependent on any of those names if I want my college basketball team to win games in the future. (And I don't think I'm alone given that only one of the top-24 have made a college choice as of June 25th. It has all changed so, so much in the last five years.)

The second thing, as you mentioned, is the prep school thing. Everything is now Prolific Prep this and Link Academy that. Kylan Boswell would have been a top-25 player from downstate Illinois, but Kylan Boswell's family moved him from Urbana to California and then Arizona so he could play for Compass Prep. If this was 2015, and Boswell was the #25 player in his class playing right here in Chambana, you would have a slightly different feeling about "where are all the downstate players?"

With all of that established, however, there's still a dearth of downstate basketball talent. We had that run of nearly 20 years having a player from Peoria on the roster (your Jerry Hesters and your Sergio McClains and even your Jerrance Howards and your Jamar Smiths and your Billy Coles). And now that's just not the case. There have been a few players from Peoria – just last year, Cooper Koch picked Iowa and Lathan Sommerville picked Rutgers (he's now at Washington) – but it certainly hasn't been anything like Peoria in the 90's and the 2000's. And that's not all just because "the good players go to prep school."

Yes, there are also high school transfers. Adam Miller left Peoria to play his senior year in Chicago. So that's a little part of this as well. If Boswell and Miller were Peoria and Urbana, the downstate perception would be different. But it's still not "we added Sergio and Marcus from Peoria Manual in 1997, then Frankie in 1998 from the same high school, and then the very next year there was a McDonald's All American in Lincoln named Brian Cook."

And I don't really have an answer for that. As established above, there are a few factors that change the perception a bit – players transferring to prep schools/bigger high schools and the change in college basketball recruiting where smaller schools are asked to develop the outside-the-top-100 kids – but there's still a big gap here. The only player this entire decade of the 2020's who could be considered a top-50 talent from downstate Illinois is Boswell. And he played high school basketball thousands of miles away.

So I wish I had a better answer but I don't. The last time downstate Illinois had a great year was the 2017 class (and we're now discussing the 2026 class so that was nearly 10 years ago). In that year there was Jeremiah Tilmon in East St. Louis, Jordan Goodwin in Belleville, and Mark Smith in Edwardsville. Add in Da'Monte Williams (Peoria) and Javon Pickett (also Belleville) and downstate had a banner year.

Since then, I think it's just EJ Liddell in 2019 (as mentioned in the question), Adam Miller in 2020 (but he moved to Chicago), Kylan Boswell in 2022 (but he moved to California and then Arizona and never played high school ball in Illinois), and then the two guys from Peoria last year who picked Iowa and Rutgers (neither was a top-100 player). And there's really nobody in 2026 or 2027 so that will be five high-major recruits from downstate across 10 seasons with two of the five playing high school ball elsewhere. Yeah, it's a dearth.

(I guess we could count Owen Freeman from Bradley and Brock Harding from Moline as high major "downstate" players but Iowa's 17-16 season last year didn't really scream "high major." HEY-OH.)

So here's my conclusion. It has clearly dropped off. We don't see many Meyers Leonards and we don't even see Michael Finkes. Riverton isn't cranking out Mike Tisdales and Peoria isn't sending us Billy Coles. The Metro East has been quiet this entire decade (and that comes immediately on the heels of Belleville West winning back-to-back state titles in 2018 and 2019 with EJ Liddell and Malachi Smith plus big man Keith Randolph). As stated in the PMP submission, there has been a drop-off.

Viewing it as a "significant" drop-off however, to me, is a function of the other stuff. Jaylan Mitchell would be a five-star downstate kid in the 2027 class. But he's no longer in Olney - he's at something called "SPIRE Academy" in Ohio. Players leaving for prep schools (as well as fewer offers going out to high schoolers while the high-majors wait around for those guys to develop at mid-majors) plays into why this feels like such a huge drop-off. At least in my opinion.

I think that covers everything. So that leaves one final question from the question:

Jesse Hall? As in, the kid who played basketball at SIUE in the early 1990's when my sister was at SIUE? That's the only Jesse Hall I can remember.

Anyone? Jesse Hall?