Your Inaugural 2024-25 Illini Power Rankings

In the first 18 years of my life, I hugged my father exactly twice. The second time was when I graduated from high school—it was quick and awkward for both of us. The first time was on a March afternoon, when I was 13 years old, after Jay Edwards hit a circus shot to tie a game against our mortal enemy Bob Knight and Indiana, Steve Bardo—my favorite player on that Illini team, still today, even though all my friends were Kenny Battle people—heaved the ball across half court, and this happened:

My father and I leapt into each other’s arms, a euphoric accident, realized what we had done, both hopped backwards, went silent for about half a second ... and then screamed. It is a moment I will remember on my deathbed. And it is a moment, and a feeling, that we—and I think any Illini fan who experienced it—have been trying to chase down ever since.

Over the next 30 years, my father and I have shared every Illini moment. I called him from the Daily Illini offices to tell him Lou Henson was leaving; he sat courtside at Bragging Rights with me in college pretending to be a reporter and shaking Dick Vitale’s hand (he even got some good Norm Stewart quotes for me); I rang him from my New York City apartment with three minutes left in the Arizona Elite Eight game, forlorn, and he told me to keep the faith, and he was right. We have traveled to see this team play in Champaign, in New York, in Las Vegas, in Happy Valley, in Iowa City, in Bloomington, in East Brunswick, in Indianapolis, in Minneapolis, in any -apolis you can throw at us. Next year, to celebrate my 50^th birthday, we’re going to watch them play a conference game in Los Angeles, because that’s something you can do now. Today, he lives in Winterville, Georgia, just a 15-minute drive from my home in Athens, and we never, ever miss an Illini basketball game. And now we get to watch them with the soon-to-be-teenager who shares his name. Watching Illinois basketball games may be the central organizing principle of our relationship, and our lives. There is nothing I am better at than watching the Illini with my dad.

And last Sunday, as we sat down in his den to watch the new version of the Illini basketball team, like we have every October/November for decades, we realized something disorienting: We had no idea what we were doing. It was as if we had never watched a basketball game before. I had spent months reading about this new team, warning Dad that DGL and Ty were the only guys back, that we’d need a crash course in figuring out all the newcomers, and I’d even taken a picture of the basketball team tailgating when I was at the football opener against EIU, right before they all climbed up Robert’s truck to send to him. I thought I was prepared.

I was not prepared. With no Ty in the starting lineup, five people walked on the court who I had never seen in Illini jerseys before. Then there was a break, and there were four more. It didn’t help that the game was being called by two (pretty terrible, actually) SEC Network broadcasters who were (understandably) focusing on Ole Miss’ players; I found myself begging them to simply tell me which Illini, in fact, was dribbling right now. I didn’t have their jersey numbers memorized—who memorizes jersey numbers before the first game?—so eventually I had to load up the roster on my phone and just start yelling out their names every time they touched the ball. “Uh … OK, that’s White! He’s the Louisville guy! And that’s … uh … is that Humrichous? Yeah, gotta be … he's from Evansville! Yeah, Dad, that’s the Russian guy, though I think he’s Croatian.” I found myself actively relieved when Jake Davis and his Troll Doll hair came in: You can’t confuse that guy with anybody else.

My father turned 75 years old this year and was diagnosed with Parkinson’s a few years back, but he’s doing great, he’s exercising, he still fixes everything in his house and mine and works in his garage all day, he still makes a mean Old Fashioned—he hasn’t lost a step, and he doesn’t miss a thing. But midway through the first half, I turned to him and saw a look of confusion I hadn’t seen since that time I brought home a Cubs fan girlfriend from college.

“I can’t follow any of this,” he said. “Who are these guys?”

Who are these guys? This is, obviously, the central question of the Illini season, at least for the first couple of months. I know some Illini fans, and college basketball fans in general, lament the direction the sport has taken over the last few years, and while I understand that, I also am in favor of anything that benefits Illinois basketball, and a system that rewards schools with vast and deeply engaged fanbases, like Illinois has, is one that I’m going to quickly make my peace with. Besides: It doesn’t take that long to learn all these guys. A year ago, I had no idea what a “Marcus Domask” was, and by January, I had decided that we were best friends and should someday go off an adventure together. You watch a team often enough—and Lord knows I, my dad, and all of you will be doing that—you learn who everybody is. These guys are all gonna feel like family members by Christmas. Probably before.

So, because nothing says “these guys are family” than ranking them against each other, throughout this season, I’ll be doing sporadic Illini Roster Power Rankings here at IlliniBoard. If you don’t know who I am, good for you: This means you have lived a rich and full life. 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.” (I graduated in 1997 and nearly jumped out of the press box to storm on the field after the 1994 Penn State loss. "Nearly" being the key word there.)

I love Illinois basketball as much as I love just about anything in this world that doesn’t live in my house, and writing this on a semi-regular basis, trust me, means more to me than it ever could for you. It is an itch I simply must scratch. And it will almost certainly be the only thing I write that my father will actually read.

I imagine doing these before big games or big events, like, post-Alabama, pre-Missouri, pre-Big Ten regular season, pre-Big Ten tourney, pre-NCAAs, that sort of thing. And I solemnly promise the intro to the rankings will never be this long again.

All right. Let’s (finally) get started.

12, 13 and 14. AJ Redd, Keaton Kutcher, Jason Jakstys.
These Power Rankings will forever be a proponent of the walk-ons and will never leave them off the rankings, no matter how little they play: Walk-ons are the backbone and lifeblood of any program! They also are magnet for fan joy: I guarantee you Cameron Liss got more love from the Krush than Alex Legion ever did. Good for Redd and Kutcher for getting three shots off in the exhibition, even if they missed all three of them. Jakstys isn’t a walk-on, but he didn’t play in the Ole Miss game and is widely assumed to be redshirting. I suspect this will be his last mention in a Power Rankings all season, and perhaps by next season, presuming he returns, I will be able to successfully pronounce his oddly tricky last name. Actually: “Pronouncing last names” is an occupational hazard of watching any Illinois game this November. Be careful out there.

11. Jake Davis.
Illinois announced Davis’ transfer from Mercer a mere three days after the Connecticut loss in the Elite Eight, the canary in the coal mine of what would be coming in the weeks and months to come. Davis is supposedly a shooter, though he missed both his shots in the exhibition, and while it’s always handy to have an extra shooter around, this team has plenty, and they can do all sorts of other things that he can’t. I do wonder if he had held off picking a school until, say, August, if he’d still be at Illinois right now. I suspect he will be treated by fans this year like a walk-on in spirit: A kinda-funny-looking white guy with crazy hair who we’ll all go wild for when he hits a three—at least those of us who didn’t leave when the lead hit 30.

10. Carey Booth.
If you’re looking for a sign of just how much Brad Underwood has upped the talent quotient around here, look at Booth. A top 60 player two years ago, he’s (supposedly, I am not a professional scout, I’m not sure I’ve ever even met one) a great shooter with big hops and an NBA legacy guy (he’s the son of the Nuggets’ general manager, which now has me hoping Jokic shows up to a game the way Ayo got Demar DeRozan to come to Champaign a couple of years ago) who was a big get for Notre Dame but just didn’t work out there. So he comes to Illinois with a ton of tools but little production … exactly the sort of buy-low transfer any program needs. In the Groce era, Booth would have felt like a potential savior, a guy who instantly elevates the floor of the whole program. In the Underwood era? He’s probably never getting off the bench unless everyone else in the frontcourt has three first-half fouls. Good signs everywhere, folks.

9. Ty Rodgers.
Let this, please, be the lowest Rodgers is on this list all year. Ty Rodgers is my favorite kind of player, a Dennis Rodman-type but sane and less liable to find himself in the middle of tense nuclear negotiations. Rodgers is smart, he’s big (bigger than it even looks sometimes), he can leap over anyone, and when he’s on, he plays with intensity and fire unmatched by anyone on the roster. He is, theoretically, exactly the type of guy a winning team wants. The problem is that this has existed more in theory than actuality, kinda for a while now. He’s helpful, and he has moments where you’re so happy he’s in there rather than some green freshman, but it should be noted that he actually has struggled with guarding wings and with fighting amongst the bigs, and of course there is that whole problem of his total inability to shoot. He also looked way too out of control against Ole Miss, like he was so eager to show he could fit in among the new guys that he was bouncing out of the gym and sending passes into the rafters. It may take a longer time for Rodgers to find his place among this roster than we had anticipated. I nevertheless have no doubt he will eventually find it.

8. Morez Johnson Jr.
For all the talk about how he’s a rebounding monster and a dunking machine, in the exhibition, he mostly just looked like a guy who can clean up messes but can’t create a lot for himself yet and doesn’t really know where to stand on defense. Another prediction: The exhibition will be the only game all year where he has zero fouls. I was more worried about all of this before Tomislav Ivisic got cleared last week. Johnson should have more of a runway now, and he'll be counted on less. Still: This is the kind of player I imagine wanting to play a little bit more than he will, which, as we've learned, tends to mean him finding somewhere else to go in the offseason. I hope not, though.

7. Ben Humrichous.
I suppose we should have assumed that Dalton Knecht would break a lot of college basketball commentators’ brains, that there would be an assumption moving forward that a transfer from a smaller school who can shoot, has size and is white would henceforeth unexpectedly take over a Power Five program every year. The otherwise pretty solid college hoops broadcaster and observer John Fanta tried to make the argument that Humrichous could be the next Knecht, but not only are they not similar players, Humrichous doesn’t make any sense as the sort of creator Knecht was. Humrichous was pretty lousy in the Ole Miss game, but I think that’s more because our offense was completely all over the place, like the whole team had just met each other or something. Ideally, Humrichous is the guy who can D up a little but, mostly, just has the Luke Goode role (but better) of draining open threes and getting more boards than you’d expect. He’s big, and he can shoot, and he could be a huge part of this offense. But he doesn’t look to me like someone who will ever be a central part. That’s fine: We've got plenty of those. It may turn out that I have him way too low here. But if everyone else hits, they won’t want Humrichous to even pretend to be Dalton Knecht. Maybe he’s a Bully Ball Domask type? But does this roster even need that? Honestly, if his worst case is the T.J. Wheeler role, we’re OK with that, aren’t we? Everything more than that could be bonus.

6. Will Riley.
I’m not sure any player on Illinois has more boom-or-bust potential than Riley. He’s obviously a highly regarded recruit, and Underwood would have been insane not to bring him in when he reclassified. But the thing about him reclassifying is that, well, he’s a kid. He’s 18, and looks like he could be a classmate of my soon-to-be-13-year-old. (It is remarkable, isn't it, much emotional energy we adults put into these basketball players who are so young they’re still breaking out in zits everywhere? I try not to think about it too hard.) The problem too is that, in the Ole Miss game, he very much played like a kid—like a teenager who was used to being able to launch 3-pointers over the heads of 5-foot-8 high school sophomores and not face any ramifications for it. He's also frighteningly skinny: How has Fletch not taken this guy over yet? There’s obvious talent, but I can’t help but wonder if he’s a guy who is going to get a lot of minutes early because of his pedigree, make a lot of mistakes that cost us in crunch time, slowly loses playing time as the season goes along, then comes in and bails us out of a game in late January that we were otherwise going to lose. This is all to say: The arc of a guy who is only here for one year and ends up finding his true self elsewhere—either in the NBA or for a team he transfers to. We’ll see. Who knows? I am, after all, putting together this whole imaginary narrative after one exhibition game.

5. Dra Gibbs-Lawhorn.
I haven’t really talked much in the macro about the Ole Miss exhibition, so let’s just say it and get it out of the way: That was pretty bad. They got blown off the floor! You could see the talent everywhere, but yeah: It sure looked like no one knew each other, had figured out their roles yet, had even opened up the playbook much. I’m not sweating it too much: It’s an exhibition, we knew there would be growing pains, they really did just all meet each other. Underwood’s a good coach, and he has all sorts of clay to mold. They’ll get there. But yeah: It was bad! That allowed someone like DGL, a hustle player who tends to act like he’s the only guy on the court sometimes (in a good way, like everyone else is a supporting character in his story), to make a real impression. He definitely got more yells out of me than anyone else did. Still, though, I remain skeptical that he'll be anything different than what he was last year: A young, undersized player who can shoot but also is streaky and is probably going to foul a lot on defense. He’ll be good for a spark here or there, but I still ultimately see him lower on the depth chart than his ranking will reflect here. He is a blast to watch when he’s on, though.

4. Tre White.
First off, it is to his credit that he did not look, in the exhibition, as if he had gotten some communicable disease from playing in Louisville: That Kenny Payne stink is going to be tough to wash off. (I hope it hangs on Skyy Clark all year at UCLA.) He was 4-for-8 from the field and 1-for-3 from long distance, but the ideal spot for White would seem to be a cutter: He’s a guy who should be going to the hoop off-ball at every opportunity, particularly when defenses are focusing on Jakucionis and Boswell. (And Ivisic, presumably.) It feels like he should only shoot when wide open. All told, I think this spot on the Illini is potentially the weakest, unless Riley steps up or Rodgers figures out where he fits. White is a default starter at this point, but I wonder, when he’s in the game, if he’s the fifth option offensively. Which is not a bad way to get a lot of points on this team, actually.

3. Kylan Boswell.
Is it OK to say that, in his first game, I wasn’t that impressed? He obviously has played in big games in Arizona, and he can move the ball around and score, but I dunno, I guess I just expected him to be in a little bit more control than he was? One of the main points of having Boswell alongside KJ (which is what I’m calling Jakucionis; I assume we all will) is that he’s played college basketball at a high level before, that he knows how to do deal with some of the physical guard defense that maybe some of the European players (and Riley) don’t. But it didn’t look like that against Ole Miss: It looked like he was getting bounced and rattled by their pressure defense like everyone else was. Now, it was the first game, an exhibition, and the whole team had a deer-in-headlights look. But Boswell’s the one who isn’t supposed to have that look. Also: Are we sure him and KJ are going to fit together in that backcourt? Because it kind of looks like they both want the ball all the time.

2. Tomislav Ivisic.
I found him the revelation of the exhibition. He kind of looks like our little Jokic, doesn’t he? The defense is a problem, sure—he doesn’t seem to every quite understand if he’s in drop coverage or now—but I gotta say: He kind of looks like someone we could run the whole offense through, if we had to. He has a deceptively sweet stroke, he can handle the ball well for a guy taller than God, and, most impressive, he can pass! You surround that guy with some shooters and he’s gonna get some triple doubles, you watch. I think he played better than anyone else against Ole Miss, and it sure looks repeatable moving forward. I'm so glad--and surprised?--that he was cleared so quickly. I legit think he has the best chance on this roster to make the All-Big Ten team.

1.     Kasparas Jakucionis.
Does he seem like more of an NBA prospect—long, with great handles and a beautiful shot—than he does Final Four-ready college basketball point guard right now? I think he kinda does: It appears there will be an adjustment to the elbow-throwing of American college hoops from the more wide open European game. I also was surprised he didn’t have more of a burst: I’m not sure how many guys he’s beating off the dribble. All that said: Man, you can see it, can’t you? The guy just looks like he’s the best player on the court, even when he isn’t necessarily playing like it. There’s an effortlessness, a smoothness, to his game that feels natural, ingrained, and there’s a confidence too. I suspect the “who takes the last shot in a close game” question this team will get answered quick: It’ll be him. There is part of his game that almost seems too pretty for Big Ten basketball—he may have to knock some dudes into the front row a couple of times, but he can do that, he’s Eastern European, they can crack some skulls. He didn’t really play that great against Ole Miss, but he’s got future NBA starter written all over him. There are going to be nights where he makes our jaws drop. Like with everything else with this team, it may take a while for him to truly get there. But when he—and, I bet, they—get there, it’s gonna be glorious.

All right, those are my first Power Rankings: I’m really just guessing like all of you. But at least my dad will have a guide to print out before the EIU game. I will be watching that game, with the BTN-Plus student announcers, in a hotel room in New York City, the day after running in the New York marathon and the day before all the political ads here in Georgia finally stop. The only way that night could be better would be if I were watching it with Dad: That’ll comes when I’m back in town for Friday against SIU-E.

College basketball is back. This is my happy place. Let’s all learn about these guys, and this team, together.

 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.