illinois 2013-14 basketball preview

College basketball recruiting still eludes me.

Here are the incoming freshman recruits for this fall:

This 2013 class is ranked #15 on ESPN:

And here's how our roster looks this year:

But wait...Aaron Cosby and Darius Paul (brother of Brandon) are incoming transfers which means that they aren't eligible to play until the fall of 2014. (If it were me, I wouldn't put them on the roster, but whatever.)

Rice and Ekey are transfers that are eligible for this season.

Ahmad Starks is a transfer that is waiting on a waiver for this season. Full story here.

- - -

Cosby and Paul will join our class of 2014 recruits that everyone is already excited about. Black, Snider and that other guy.

I know it's early, but we're currently the #4 class for 2014. 

- - -

Anyways, back to this year's team. I'll put an asterisk on Starks because we don't know what we've got.

Guards: Bertrand, Starks,* Rice, Abrams, Nunn, Hill

Bigs: Egwu, Ekey, Colbert, Morgan

Bench: LaTulip, Tate

The bench is just a guess. We're thin on bigs this year, as Egwu is the only returning player.

This year is a setup year. Because in 2014/2015 our top ten guys looks like this:

1: Tracy Abrams (SR), Quentin Snider (FR)
2: Aaron Cosby (JR), Kendrick Nunn (SO)
3: Rayvonte Rice (SR), Malcolm Hill (SO)
4: Leron Black (FR), Darius Paul (SO)
5: Nnanna Egwu (SR), Maverick Morgan (SO)

That's four new players in bold, two transfers, two freshmen.

Here's the Big Ten predictions for this year, with odds for winning it all. I expect our odds to a be better next year.

Michigan State 10/1
Ohio State 18/1
Michigan 35/1
Wisconsin 60/1
Indiana 75/1
Iowa 80/1
Illinois 125/1
Purdue 125/1