Good Morning, Illini Nation: Bound for the rafters?

To subscribe, click here

Sign up for our daily basketball newsletter here

Welcome to “Good Morning, Illini Nation,” your daily dose of college basketball news from Illini beat writer and AP Top 25 voter Scott Richey. He’ll offer up insights every morning on Brad Underwood’s team and college basketball at large:

The criteria for an Illinois basketball player to have their jersey honored at State Farm Center is straightforward. One of these qualifications has to be met:

1. National Player of the Year
2. Enshrined in the National Basketball Hall of Fame
3. Big Ten Player of the Year
4. Consensus First- or Second-Team All-American
5. Illinois All-Century Team Member
6. Individual whose pioneering efforts made a significant impact on Illinois and international basketball

Illinois, of course, took some leeway from those guidelines when honoring Terrence Shannon Jr. and raising his No. 0 to the SFC rafters. (Upside down at first, of course). That’s fine. Rules the Illini make can be rules the Illini break.

Keaton Wagler is well on his way to qualifying, though, after earning Second Team All-American honors from the Associated Press on Tuesday and the National Association of Basketball Coaches on Wednesday. That makes the Illinois freshman 3 for 3 on Second Team All-American recognition after the Sporting News also included him among those second-best five players nationally.

All that’s left to reach consensus status is for Wagler to be named an All-American by  United States Basketball Writers Association (USBWA). I voted for the USBWA and had Wagler among my top 15 players nationally. Odds are he’ll get enough votes to claim that last All-American honor. 

So that would put Wagler in some fairly elite company. Both among players who have their jerseys honored — his No. 23 would be the second in addition to Jerry Colangeo — and among consensus All-Americans. Illinois has had eight consensus First Team All-Americans and eight consensus Second Team All-Americans.

Wagler would be the third in the Brad Underwood era after Ayo Dosunmu and Kofi Cockburn.

Consensus First Team All-Americans

• Bill Hapac, 1940
• Andy Phillip, 1942
• Andy Phillip, 1943
• Walt Kirk, 1945
• Rod Fletcher, 1952
• Dee Brown, 2005
• Ayo Dosunmu, 2021
• Kofi Cockburn, 2022

Consensus Second Team All-Americans

• Andy Phillip, 1947
• Bill Erickson, 1949
• Ken Norman, 1987
• Kendall Gill, 1990
• Luther Head, 2005
• Deron Williams, 2005
• Dee Brown, 2006
• Kofi Cockburn, 2021