Illini Power Rankings: 2,143 Miles Just For Some Guy Named Gene

Exactly two days after I graduated from the University of Illinois in May 1997, my father and I packed up my 1993 Toyota Camry and drove across the country to Los Angeles, where I was scheduled, one week later, to start a job at U. The National College Magazine. Older readers of Illini Board--and hey, are there any other kind?--may remember U. Magazine: It was a monthly supplement inserted into student newspapers like the Daily Illini, a national magazine produced by recent college graduates, the ones young enough to, you know, know what's going on. It looked like this:

Anyway, it was my first job out of college, and there was no time to waste. Thus, on Sunday, Graduation Day, this:

And then, the next Monday, six days later: New job ... in Los Angeles. So, like any self-respecting Midwesterner, Dad and I got in the car and drove like crazy. We made one overnight stop, somewhere in New Mexico I think, but otherwise we went straight through. We were like that crazy astronaut lady who drove straight across the country wearing NASA diapers so she wouldn't have to stop. (True story.) It was the longest drive of my life ... basically, just leaving Champaign and driving as far west as you can until you hit water. By the end of the trip, we were mad savages; it felt like we had traveled to the end of the world, like nothing in this grand country of ours could possibly be farther away from Champaign than California.

Now, this week, our Illini will travel farther than that for a conference game. Do you realize that Thursday night's game--a conference game!--starts at 10 p.m. local here in Georgia? I am not as appalled by all the dramatic changes that the rat-faced television executives who run college sports now are foisting on us as some other people are, and honestly, I've already gotten used to most of it. I'm actually planning a big trip to my former home in Los Angeles next year to see us play USC and UCLA: I've made my peace with it. But it is still insane that Illinois has a conference game Thursday in Western Oregon. When I covered the team for the DI, I used to dread driving to freaking Iowa. Though I suppose one should always dread having to go to Iowa.

With nothing but Big Ten games (and that intriguing MSG game against Duke in February) the rest of the way, this seemed like as good a time as any to update our semi-regular Illini Basketball Power Rankings. (The first installment ran before the season opener against Eastern Illinois, and the second installment ran before that truly miserable Northwestern game.) As always, these rankings are ridiculous, uninformed and written primarily as a nervous tic. There may be nothing I think about more than the Illinois men's basketball team. My name is Will Leitch, a contributing editor at New York magazine, a regular columnist at The Washington Post, national correspondent for MLB.com and author of seven books, including the novels How Lucky, The Time Has Come and the upcoming Lloyd McNeil’s Last Ride, which comes out next May and I would not be against you pre-ordering, were you to feel so inclined. I also write a free weekly newsletter about parenthood and living through these tumultuous times that you might enjoy: You can find it here. I am (somehow, still) perhaps best known as being the founder of the late sports website Deadspin, though I’d prefer you think of me as “former Daily Illini sports editor” and "forever Mattoon Green Wave."

Thank you for letting me scratch this itch once again.

11 and 12. AJ Redd, Keaton Kutcher (previously: 11, 12).
Legitimate question: Has there ever been a more stressful shot taken by a walk-on in Illinois history than the 3-pointer Keaton Kutcher hit to give Kylan Boswell his triple-double? There was only 1:30 left, which means if Kutcher missed, Boswell is almost certainly not getting his triple-double, which Boswell clearly understood, considering he had his hands in the air the second Kutcher put up the shot. I know that when matters were real dark with the Illini in the post-probation early-90s, walk-ons like Will Tuttle had to play real minutes, but no offense to Scott Pierce and Steve Roth here, but no one will ever remember anything that happened with the 1991-92 Illini. But we'll remember that Boswell triple-double. And it only happened because Kutcher hit that shot. Clutch shots from walk-ons are very, very much my jam.

10. Carey Booth (previously: 10).
Fun fact: Carey Booth has actually played one more minute this season than Jake Davis. It doesn't seem like it, does it? Davis has played more meaningful minutes--he has hit exactly as many 3-pointers as Booth has, though it has taken him three fewer shots--and all told, Booth just hasn't made much of an argument for him to get any real run come Big Ten season. He looks like a rotation player for a top 25 team. But he sure doesn't play like one. I cannot believe he played 20 minutes a game for Notre Dame last year. I think his moment has already passed: In two years, none of us will remember he was ever here.

9. Jake Davis (previously: 9).
If he's going to keep his hair in the manbun--and c'mon man, let it roam free and be a legend--the lasting memory of Davis this year may be the incredulous look he had on his face during the Braggin' Rights game when, for a brief moment, you wondered if we were going to get some actual fisticuffs. It didn't turn out that way, but I wonder if that's a role that would get Davis some more minutes: The guy who throws some elbows and causes some trouble. Otherwise, he's just another guy we were told was going to be able to shoot who does not seem to be able to shoot. 28 percent? Please. I'm pretty sure Keaton Kutcher could put up 28 percent from long range if he had to.

8. Ben Humrichous (previously: 5).
I ... I think I'm out? The problem is not that he needs to be shooting better than 34 percent from three. The problem is that even if he were shooting the 41 percent he shot for Evansville last year--which we never should have expected anyway considering the leap in competition--he gives up so much on defense that it still wouldn't make up for it. He's bigger than Luke Goode was, but he's certainly not tougher than Goode was, and you can tell: He just gets knocked around underneath, and you can see other team's fours, even guys who aren't even all that big, licking their chops when they can isolate him in the post. (Which every team's coach designs plays specifically to do. Repeatedly.) I understand that the offense, theoretically anyway, works better when you've got a big wing who can shoot. But that feels like November 2024 thinking rather than January 2025 thinking. We've seen a whole bunch of this now. Humrichous seems like a nice kid, and I know we spent a lot for him in the portal. But this isn't working. All Underwood's defenses of him aside, his minutes have been slowly dwindling over the last month. I wouldn't be stunned to see them, after a couple of months of Big Ten games, evaporate entirely.

7. Dra Gibbs-Lawhorn (previously: 7).
He is instant energy when he enters the game, and against teams like Chicago State, it leads to highlight-reel plays that gets everybody out of their seats. But we've got a lot of data now showing that any time he gets extended minutes against high-level teams, he's just too small, and hot-and-cold, to stay on the floor too long. He has a value on this team as the guy who can change the tempo of the game, to change the look if the opponent's on a run, or grab a steal and throw down a dunk to start one of our own. But after that initial burst of adrenaline, I'd prefer he get back to the bench. I consider him the Eric-Stoltz's-needle-penetrating-Uma-Thurman's-chest-cavity of this team. Break glass in case of emergency, but unless you just need free throws made, don't give him much run in crunch time. If he transfers after this season to a mid-major, he's exactly the sort of guy who will carry a team to win the Horizon League tournament.

6. Will Riley (previously: 4).
It's his feet. That's what it is, right? The thing that made Riley so cool the first few games of the year, his ability to hit a shot from any angle, off any dribble, and even fling out enough to steal some 4-point plays, is coming home to roost as the competition gets tougher. His feet are always just flying all over the place when he shoots. This makes him fun to watch when the shots are falling, because it makes him seem unstoppable, like there's no way to guard him. But in the long run, well, there's a reason people have a set shot in which their feet land in the same place every team: It's the proper shooting form. Riley gets so dialed up and frenzied that all his body parts just start flailing, like all his extremities are trying to go different places at once. And it's causing him to miss shots that he obviously can hit. He's so skilled that you know it's going to come together at some point. A good starting point might just be persuading him to just be, for a while, what Humrichous was supposed to be: Just wait in the corner for a kick from KJ, then drain it, or keep shooting until you do. Then he can start adding all the other stuff he can obviously do. The good news for Illini fans: This slump has started sending him down draft boards, which means the odds that he is still wearing orange-and-blue a year from now are no longer zero.

5. Morez Johnson Jr. (previously: 6).
You think Morez is good now? Wait until referees start respecting him, when the word finally gets around just how good a defensive player this guy is, that they stop calling ridiculous fouls when he jumps straight up and does everything right just because he's a freshman and they're assuming he's fouling. I am not of the school that thinks he should be playing 30 minutes a game already, if just because: a) he is still a freshman; b) he'll end up getting called for too many fouls to let that happen anyway; and c) you do need shooters for the offense to work. (I love the Ivisic-Johnson hi-lo game, but it's a change of pace rather than a go-to.) But I love players like Morez, just a dude who's smart and huge and relentless. I now assume he's just going to get every rebound. He won't make the NBA until he learns to shoot, but as an Illini fan, that's fine with me: Let's just make sure, as long as he's in college, he stays here. Will Riley is your kid's favorite player, but Morez Johnson Jr. is your dad's. Your dad is right sometimes too, you know.

4. Tre White (previously: 8).
I think he finally has that Louisville stink off of him. White has become the most important thing for his role on this team: He has become a guy you trust. He still dribbles a little bit too much--I suspect Underwood told him once he could be a Booty Ball guy and he hasn't entirely let it go--but he's doing exactly what he's supposed to be doing: He's cutting to the basket, he's rebounding, he's hitting some threes (he has the third-highest percentage on the team, which I don't think anyone saw coming) and he's acting like the guy who has started 67 college basketball games, more than anyone else on this team, by far. This team very much needed a glue guy. Tre White has turned out to be the glue guy.

3. Tomislav Ivisic (previously: 1).
The emergence of Morez has made the Illini slightly less reliant on Ivisic, which is good: We've seen a few limitations in his game pop up since I was with you last. He tends to close out late on shooters, he is big but more a rim protector in a "drivers see him and he's big so they hesitate a little" rather than a "erase every shot in the general vicinity" sort of a way, and he tends not to use some of the size advantages in the post that you'd like him to. (It's not the Deon Thomas era anymore.) He's still central to everything this team is doing, not least of which because he really does seem to be the second-best shooter on the roster, amazingly. Also, the two-man game with KJ has more meat on its bones than those two are currently stripping, I think. I'll cool it a bit on the "this guy's gonna be in the NBA someday!" noise for now. But an All-Big Ten team someday? Maybe next year? Yeah, I can see it.

2. Kylan Boswell (previously: 3).
I am comfortable with the current state of college basketball, with the fact that I invest so much emotional energy, and family history, in a team and school that guys who show up here from Lithuania or Croatia did not know existed as recently as nine months ago. I'm all right with it! I just want my team to win! But I am not immune to the charms of "this guy grew up in Central Illinois and is now starring for his hometown team." I mean, look at that picture of him and Trent Meacham: I'm not made of stone, people. Boswell still can't shoot– though you're starting to see that come around a bit; remember, he was a career 38 percent 3-point shooter heading into this year--but he definitely leads the team in "do something that gets me personally fired up"s. (DOTGMPFUs.) His defense is so good we're starting to take it for granted, and I love how both defers to KJ and knows when to take charge himself: It has been seriously heartwarming and even sort of inspiring how fondly he talks about the future lottery pick he shares a backcourt with. When the shots start falling, and I really do think they will, he'll be even better. KJ's the guy I want taking the last shot. But Boswell's the guy who makes the stop that allows that last shot to happen. (And the guy I want on the free-throw line too.) I love him. It makes me wish Mattoon was still in the Big 12; we used to always smoke Centennial in baseball.

1. Kasparas Jakucionis (previously: 2).
The turnovers are annoying, yes, particularly because they seem to come in bunches: KJ has a tendency to get in his own head sometimes, which is pretty normal: He is freaking 18, after all. But I don't actually think the Luka Doncic comparisons are that insane? He can get off his own shot anytime he wants, his offensive fundamentals are impeccable and he may actually be a more natural (or at least more willing) passer. He's not Luka: He doesn't have that irritating swagger, he's not at that otherworldly level and he's not, you know, a smoker. But is he the Luka of college basketball? 100 percent he is. And he plays for us. Just one year. But what a year it's going to be.

Will Leitch is a contributing editor at New York Magazine, columnist for The Washington Post, national columnist for MLB, and the founder of the late sports website Deadspin. Subscribe to his free weekly newsletter and buy his novels “How Lucky,” and "The Time Has Come” from Harper Books. And pre-order his next book, "Lloyd McNeil's Last Ride," which will be released on May 20, 2025.