Bradley's doing a LOT better landing the top prospects out of Illinois

Time to put to rest the talk of BU missing out on the best Illinois kids. Over the past few years with BU getting Dodie, Dyricus, Jordan Prosser, and now Donivine Stewart and Walter Lemon....I think there can be little doubt Bradley's doing as well as any school in the state (there are 13 D-I schools) in landing the best INSTATE talent.

Here's a listing of kids out of Illinois high schools over the past decade and a half that have landed at Bradley, although a few never played at BU, and I am not sure we can really count the juco kids who come via a different route...but I included them.

.....And a rough sense of where they were ranked as high schoolers...
(rankings from the 90's are hard to find, and rankings vary so I gave some links)
Players are listed for the year they entered BU--

Can anyone deny that Coach Les has really stepped it up and is landing the better Illinois kids now??

96-97: Rob Dye (top 20)
97-98: none
98-99: Reggie Hall (top 30)
99-00: none
00-01: Phillip Gilbert - ranked #32 in Illinois per highschoolelite.com (Cello was unranked)
01-02: none
02-03: Jabbar Battle was ranked 26th as a HS senior but did not come to BU from high school, and Danny Adams & Joey Paul were both mentioned by HSelite.com but outside the Top 40
03-04: Daniel Ruffin was ranked 23rd in Class of 2003, Marcellus Sommerville was 7th ranked in Illinois (2001) but did not come to BU from high school, Michael Rembert was ranked #21 in IL Class of 2003
04-05: Jeremy Crouch was ranked 17th in IL in Class of 2004, Tony Bennett was unranked and did not come to BU from HS
05-06: none
06-07: Jeremy Fears was ranked 10th in IL (2004) out of HS, but did not come to BU from HS and did not ever play
07-08: Sam Maniscalco was ranked in the 14th, but actually 12th with the prep school kids eliminated
http://illinoishsbasketball.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=14&Itemid=1
08-09: Dodie Dunson was ranked 12th out of HS (2005) but did not come to BU from HS
09-10: Dyricus Simms-Edwards was #24, Jordan Prosser as high as #7 and others inside the Top 20
http://www.windycitybasketball.com/index.php?id=75
10-11: Walter Lemon is ranked #20-25
11-12: Donivine Stewart is ranked #10-15...but these guys had Donivine #7
http://www.windycitybasketball.com/index.php?id=77
12-13: still open


I don't think we're at the point where our instate recruiting is threatening University of Illinois...but clearly we've been doing consistently as good or better than ANYONE in the state and that includes SIU and ISU who some seem to think are doing a really great job of recruiting within the state.

Great job Coach Les, and keep it up..That's TEN Top 20-25 kids since 2003, with really NONE in the preceding decade, and quite possibly none going all the way back to the 80's or even late 70's, although we'll never know because the rankings as we know them did not exist back then.

Now bring us a few more among the local kids - Max, Bobo, etc.....