Ep. 935 - Illini football on a recruiting roll in Class of 2026
Illini Inquirer Podcast: An Illinois Fighting Illini athletics podcast
247Sports, Illinois, Illinois Football, Illinois Basketball, Illinois Athletics, College Football, C
4.9 • 576 Ratings
🗓️ 28 January 2025
⏱️ 76 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Illini Inquirer's Jeremy Werner, Joey Wagner and Ryan Easterling discuss Illinois football's recent recruiting roll. The guys discuss recent commitments from Florida WR Kenyon Alston and Lincoln-Way East edge rusher Jacob Alexander, the Illini's recent junior day visitors and what this class could mean for Bret Bielema's program. Werner and Wagner then discuss Kendall Bostic's record-setting night for Illinois women's basketball and the Illini's push for an NCAA Tournament bid.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Good afternoon. Welcome into the online choir podcast. It is Jeremy Warner. We got Ryan Easterling on his lunch hour, joining all you guys in your lunch hour live on YouTube and Joey Wagner. |
| 0:23.3 | And we have a lot of Illinois football recruiting to talk about because it feels like Mr. Momentum is on the Illinois side. |
| 0:29.9 | They have six commitments now in class of 2026 and they are trying to add more. |
| 0:36.2 | So Ryan, I will throw it right to you right away. |
| 0:39.6 | Illinois has not started this well under Brett Bielma. It feels like they haven't had this good |
| 0:43.2 | of a start to a class since 2019 when Marquez Beas and Isaiah Williams jumped on board early and |
| 0:48.9 | it felt like they could potentially keep adding, didn't add as much as they hoped in that class. |
| 0:54.9 | Still got guys like Keith Randolph and a couple others. |
| 0:57.4 | But how do you feel? |
| 0:58.8 | Like what's your perspective of this start to this class girl? |
| 1:03.1 | Amazing what you can do when you win 10 games, right? |
| 1:05.6 | You beat an SEC opponent in a bowl game and you go right out on the road. |
| 1:09.1 | And there's not a whole lot of downtime between the end of the bowl season and the start of recruiting season. They got right out after it, hit the road and sold all that momentum and you're starting to see the fruit of that already. You know, something we've talked about time and time again over the last three or four years under Bilema's, you know, they did all the right things, but the one thing that was still |
| 1:28.0 | yet to come was consistently winning and having a big season. And you're seeing what's |
| 1:32.3 | happening now that they're winning, you know, this first time they've won double-digit |
| 1:36.3 | games, gosh, forever. And the recruiting is reflecting that. They're landing good prospects. |
| 1:42.2 | They're getting a lot of momentum in state. |
| 1:44.4 | You're starting to hear more serious traction with legitimate prospects that in past years may not |
| 1:49.8 | have given Illinois the time of day. And it's not just a, hey, we're including Illinois. |
| 1:54.1 | As courtesy, it's, hey, we're including Illinois because we really are considering Illinois. |
| 1:58.3 | So, yeah, it's a huge step forward. Obviously, you want to keep that momentum going forward. |
| 2:02.7 | You can't really afford a big step back. |
... |
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