A look back at the best high schoolers from Illinois in the past decade

Nobody would deny that Illinois is a hotbed of high school basketball talent. But clearly there's a trend over the past couple years, and that trend is for the TOP rated kids in Illinois to struggle and underperform way more than expected. Many the past couple years have been terribly overrated, were complete flops at the college level, or even WORSE, were serious troublemakers and detriments to their college teams!
- But it wasn't always that way! I will show what I mean, then even stick my neck out and predict which of the kids from the Class of 2010 in Illinois might also be a bit overrated, and possibly also fit this category of likely to struggle at first.


To start, let's flash back to the Illinois kids in the Class of 2006 & 2007. I will use scout.com's ranking just for reference...
Here are the Top 10..from 2006 - most of these kids did pretty well.
1-Sherron Collins
2-Jon Scheyer
3-Brian Carlwell
4-Will Walker
5-Patrick Beverley
6-Jerome Randle
7-Joevan Catron
8-Thijin Moses
9-Osiris Eldridge
10-Javale McGee
................as you can see, the top two had superb college careers, and most of the others had solid careers, with only Carlwell and Moses flopping....while Beverley is at least making good money in Europe.


And here's the list for 2007--and I will include the Top 20 kids since there's still time for some to finish a strong career....
1-Derrick Rose
2-Mac Koshwal
3-Demetri McCamey
4-Evan Turner
5-Beas Hamga
6-Darrington Hobson
7-Mike Tisdale
8-Brandon McGee
9-Mustapha Farrakhan
10-Lucca Staiger
11-Mike Capocci
12-Michael Thompson
13-Bill Cole
14-Jacob Pullen
15-Justin Bocot
16-Nick Evans
17-Aaron Johnson
18-Leon Freeman
19-Jonathan Montgomery
20-Mario Stula
.......although still some great careers with Rose on the Bulls now, but at least four of the Top 10 were flops (Hamga, McGee, Farrakhan, Staiger - and I am definitely counting Lucca Staiger as a flop, since he blew his entire 1st year not playing, then was average at best on a bad team before quitting and going to Europe where he can't even break into the playing rotation on a mediocre team over there.)
Also - considering his #2 ranking, Mac Koshwal is a pretty uni-dimensional, undersized post player with little or no chance of ever making the NBA.

Then in the 11-20 range in 2007, only a couple of those (Jake Pullen, Bill Cole) have done anything noticable!


Then we move to 2008 ----
1-Iman Shumpert - successful at Georgia Tech
2-Michael Dunigan - marginally successful so far
3-Kevin Dillard - troublemaker
4-Stan Simpson - flop
5-Lewis Jackson - struggling to keep his nose clean and fit in
6-Brett Thompson - not even a D-I player
7-Steve Goins - ditto
8-Josh Crittle - ditto
9-Verdell Jones - getting a lot of playing time but only because IU is so bad
10-Matthew Humphrey - 4ppg on a bad Oregon team
11-Dion Dixon - deep sub
12-Kyle Cassity - may yet have decent career - 4 ppg career scorer
13-Ryan Hare - you know the story
14-Matt Roth - less PT each year as IU actually gets some talent
15-Tyler Storm - still a chance at a good career
16-Ruben Cotto - long gone
17-Luke Fabrizius - 4 ppg
18-Nick Fruendt - barely plays
19-Kamil Janton - at EMU w/ 9 total FG's in 2 seasons!
20-Kyle Rowley - can you spell "overated" - others ranked this guy Top 5!
and I'll even mention Jeremy Robinson (ISU) who fell just outside the Top 20..

...........so out of the top 21 or so kids in the Illinois Class of 2008, time is running out for any more than just 2 or 3 out of 20 to end with any significant success. And quite possibkly NONE have a chance of an NBA opportunity - really quite starkly different from the past when a few from each lcass were NBA bound!
But when you note the really MAJOR flops in there like the damage caused by Hare, Dillard, Cotto, etc...then this whole Class, save for Shumpert, is essentially the worst collection of overrated kids ever seen.
Just for the sake of final argument..let me name a few kids who fell outside the 2008 Top 20..
#27 Johnny Moran - good career at UNI
#32 AJ Rompza - decent career at UCF
#52 John Shurna - potential All American at Northwestern - 18.2ppg/6.3rpg last year!
.....clearly the guys ranking players in Illinois missed a bit on that one!!


Now we move to 2009.........here's the Top 20 kids in Illinois' Class of 2009--
1-Chris Colvin - struggling/transferring
2-Brandon Paul - good potential for a fine career
3-Angus Brandt - considering the hype, I'd say possibly the worst overrate on the list..9 total baskets in 26 games at Oregon State
4-Darius Smith - 5 total baskets made!
5-Matt Vogrich - barely played
6-D.J. Cooper - good start to a career
7-Jack Cooley - deep, deep sub
8-Joseph Bertrand - redshirt
9-Drew Crawford - showed flashes...but struggled in the 2nd half
10-Diamond Taylor - from here on down only Payne & Prosser have much chance
11-Nik Garcia "
12-Marcus Jordan "
13-David Brown "
14-Cully Payne "
15-Jordan Prosser "
16-Dennis Kelly "
17-Kannon Burrage "
18-Delino Dear "
19-Markus Yarbrough "
20-Seth Evans - will be a decent player at Green Bay
..then came Terrence Johnson (invisibble @ ISU), Brian Conway (dumped by UNI).......
......while Dyricus was #32 !!!!!!!!!!

Well...I won't even waste time trying to point to the ones that have much potential for a good college career.....there's only a couple......as half that list were either never heard from again or have flopped and already transferred!

So what's happening in Illinois??? Used to be that the whole Top 10 or 20 were guaranteed college stars!!

Want more examples....go back even a few more years...several NBA guys and top collegians each year!!
2002 - Dee Brown, Sean Dockery, Andre Iguodala, James Augustine, Alando Tucker...etc..
2001 - Eddy Curry, Will Bynum, Luther Head, Roger Powell, Marcellus Sommerville..
2000 - Darius Miles, Dwayne Wade, TJ Cummings (UCLA), Phillip Gilbert...

So who in the Class of 2010 will be great in college and who will disappear...?
I think it would be fun to check it out, although I know I could be way off....but I'll give it a shot anyway....
I think we are about to see the re-emergence of the top Illinois kids being talked about on a national level...I think this is a very good class!!!!

Illinois Class of 2010
1-Meyers Leonard
2-Jereme Richmond
3-Crandall Head
4-Alex Dragicevich
5-Lenzelle Smith
6-Brandon Spearman
7-Ahmad Starks
8-Anthony Johnson
9-Alex Rossi
10-Duje Dukan
11-Rayvonte Rice
12-Dwayne Evans
13-Reggie Smith
14-Ben Brust
15-Lavonte Dority
16-Jordan Threloff
17-Jay Harris
18-Fabyon Harris
19-Karl Madison
20-DeAndre McCamey
21-Mike McCall
(Walter Lemon was completely ignored!)
.......I think all the way down into the 20's this year, we have kids who are going to be good college players. I think Drake got a steal in Rayvonte Rice, and you saw the frenzy of schools going after Ben Brust who has 13 other kids ranked ahead of him...
The top 4 or 5 kids might be outstanding even as freshmen in college...

And I don't mean any disrespect, but I am going to name a few I think will struggle - not that they won't be able to have good careers, but whether due to their size or their shooting, a few will take a while on the college level to find their niche..
Harris, Rossi, Starks, and Spearman are actually all a bit undersized for their expected roles in college, and Threloff is a bit like Jordan Eglseder and will need to develop some speed and agility.
But I think more from this group will end up as fine college players than from any group in several year. Time will tell.

At some point in the future I might review the Illinois Class of 2011....and one kid in that class is an absolute textbook case of hos the national talent evaluators go ga-ga over the hype and never really look at kids objectively. That kid is Ryan Boatright...who verballed to USC and Tim Floyd when he was still in 8th grade, and based solely on that action, was moved into the #1 spot in the Class of 2011 rankings NATIONALLY by scout.com. Seriously - the kid was rated as the overall BEST and #1 player in AMERICA!!!
Well, here we are, 3 years later - and as any raitonal person would have known, Ryan Boatright is a still a good high school player but he isn't ranked #1 any more and isn't even in the Top 10 in his own state per some experts!!
Boatright is now ranked somewhere between 7-20 by various evaluators...and as a 5-10 PG/CG, has been cut loose from his scholarship offer and verbal at USC - and still weighs only 155 lbs suggesting he may even be a redshirt candidate where he does land!

The Class of 2011 also has another interesting kid -- Anthony Davis a kid who was not ranked and totally unheard-of just two weeks ago.......
http://hsillinois.scout.com/a.z?s=220&p=8&c=1&nid=4930830

Then, based purely on one or two games and an outstanding outing at an AAU event, he has shot up to a 5-STAR ranking and is now #2 in Illinois.
This reminds me of Aziz N'diaye, Beas Hamga, and John Riek all of whom wowed the evaluators who shot them up to 5-Star rankings without actually noticing that those guys were sorely lacking in real talent...and of course, those evaluators had to eat their words when those kids proved to be quite a bit less than were intially seen.
But not learning their lessons, these guy are at it again...
now maybe Davis will be a superstar -- I hope he does excel!! But just maybe we should wait to see the kid play against opponents that are actually trying to defend him instead of watching what passes for defense on the AAU circuit.