In Will Riley, Illinois may have their men’s basketball version of Chase Brown. By that we mean a Canadian import who totally changes the game for them in a revenue sport. Will Riley is the Illini basketball program’s highest ranked recruit of all-time. If that sounds like hyperbole, you have to remember that recruiting services have only been around a few decades or so. Eventual All-American and Illini basketball Mt. Rushmore member Dee Brown held this distinction until today.
Brown was the #19 ranked recruit in the class of 2022.
NEWS: 5?? Will Riley, the No. 10 overall recruit in the 2025 class, has committed to Illinois, he tells @On3Recruits.
The 6-8 Small Forward also considered Alabama, Arizona, Kentucky, and the NBL. https://t.co/3OhsLX4uhl pic.twitter.com/jvGUFAqZ1p
— Joe Tipton (@TiptonEdits) June 23, 2024
Will Riley is ranked #9 overall by 247 Sports, #10 by On3, and #11 by Rivals in the Class of 2025. He is a consensus 5-star man, and hopefully, he’ll turn out better than the last two 5*s to enter the Illini program. Skyy Clark and Jereme Richmond were absolute disaster signings. However, Brown was a five-star as well, and he turned out to be all of that and everything more.
So you just don’t know. Sometimes a highly rated recruit lives up to the hype (Frank Williams), sometimes they don’t (Crandall Head).
On paper though, at least right now, Riley is absolutely the real deal. Most likely, if he lives up to expectations, the Kitchener, Ontario native will be one-and-done to the NBA. The Phelps School power forward picked Illinois over Arizona and Kentucky.
Coming off an Elite 8/Big Ten Tournament title season, we thought there might be some great recruiting gains. The positive momentum from that special season has indeed been channeled into the offseason signing period here.
Paul M. Banks is the Founding Editor of The Sports Bank. He’s also the author of “Transatlantic Passage: How the English Premier League Redefined Soccer in America,” and “No, I Can’t Get You Free Tickets: Lessons Learned From a Life in the Sports Media Industry.”
He currently contributes to Ravens Wire, part of the USA Today SMG’s NFL Wire Network and the Internet Baseball Writers Association of America. His past bylines include the New York Daily News, Sports Illustrated, Chicago Tribune and the Washington Times. You can follow him on Linked In and Twitter.