Not at all 2nd2n.
It's slow going right now for us in actual commits at the moment, and Penn. St. has some great momentum lately, but we're in the mix with A LOT of 4 and 5 star talent and even though we missed on Eric Shrive, talk of 5 star Ohio stud OT Marcus Hall committing to Tosu is greatly exagerrated. He'll supposedly be making a visit to Champaign (of course Buckeye fans - like NDame fans consider any big time name like Hall with an offer a mortal lock for their school).
A few Illini experts out there think that when it is all said and done the 2009 class might be one of our best/deepest in a long long time.
Some names to keep an eye on, all are 4 star or above:
Chris James - 4 star RB out of Florida who has us #1 on his list and doesn't want to wait too long to get things over with.
David Oku - 4 star Rivals/5 star Scouts RB; coming for a visit, really likes Illinois but is in no hurry to commit. Suprisingly the kid from Oklahoma doesn't want to play in Oklahoma.
RB's Bud Golden and Ronnie Wingo.
Kraig Appleton WR, Terry Hawthorne WR, Jheranie Boyd (athletic freak) WR, Nathan Scheelhaase QB (he'll be back in CU for a visit), Darren Jones QB (who they say is a bigger, more polished high school version of Juice), AJ Graham QB out of Florida who runs a 4.5 40, Chris Watt OG, Craig Drummond DE, Hawatha Bell STUD ILB, Darius Moffett ILB, and super stud corner Branden Smith.
I wouldn't worry about the lack of early commits. From everything I've read this staff is out there working HARD, VERY HARD and other schools have taken enough notice to start negative recruiting against us. They say Illinois has a million offers out there, offers to everybody blah blah blah. The Rivals counted and as for official offers we've got fewer out right now than we did last year and less than a lot of schools.
OT - what's funny is that reading what others have said they've seen on the Mizzou boards is that they're all about the NC and, "Illinois is beneath our notice." Also that "Juice Williams isn't very good and if they had played Ohio State they would have won by 14 to 20 easy." "They only had 2 good players and they both graduated." Benn? Vontae? Juice? Martez? Cumberland? These people are delusional, they got boat-raced by (speedy) Oklahoma twice but they're invincible (that first matchup wasn't as close as the score indicated - I watched that game start to finish - OU missed a couple of extra points, at least 1 or 2 FG's and more, then MU got a cheap TD late). Invincible...right. A BCS bowler, pre-season top 15 team? To say we've got no shot is just crazy talk.
