Before Illinois guard Keaton Wagler was, well, Keaton Wagler, he was just another name buried among a litany of mid-major-plus guard options for Murray State to consider in the 2025 high school recruiting season.
The accolades were there: Wagler had won a state title in Kansas that spring at Shawnee Mission Northwest, playing alongside a true recruiting prize in 2026 7-footer Ethan Taylor. So too was the size: Wagler was already 6′ 6″, though he was certainly skinny at 165 pounds. But the Murray State board had lots of names on it. Publicly, Murray offered 24 guards in the 2025 class, and plenty more were on the radar in some form but didn’t make the cut. For most of that spring and summer, Wagler was among the latter. Murray’s assistant coaches had seen him, liked him, but hadn’t loved him enough to go to bat for him hard to their boss, head coach Steve Prohm. The slender sharpshooter playing off the main AAU circuits was flying far below the radar.
In the final AAU weekend of that summer, Prohm decided it was worth getting eyes on Wagler in person. He had known Wagler’s AAU coach, Victor Williams, dating back to when Prohm was head coach at Iowa State, and Williams had sold his guard hard to Prohm and anyone else who’d listen. And what Prohm saw that day was, as he says, the best AAU performance he’d ever seen, outside of a handful of surefire NBA players he had evaluated over the years.
Geoff Stellfox/Getty Images
“I’m texting my staff the whole time, ‘Guys, why are we not all over this kid? He is elite, he is special,’” Prohm says. “I was like, man, he’s an NBA player. It’s not even a debate.”
Prohm is as reliable a narrator as there is for underrecruited guard talent. At Iowa State, he signed a three-star point guard named Tyrese Haliburton who quickly proved the recruiting rankings wrong. Prohm saw many of the same attributes in Wagler: A low three-point release but a shot that goes in, elite feel for the game, tons of winning traits. It was like lightning striking twice.
“I came back [to Murray] like, This is who we have to have,” Prohm says. “We are all in every day on Keaton Wagler.”
Wagler’s meteoric rise from lightly recruited three-star prospect to potential top-five draft pick and Big Ten Player of the Year is a story without parallel in modern college basketball recruiting. These stories are often rather cliché: A savvy coach stumbling into a small gym, perhaps looking at another player, and “discovering” a hidden gem that they keep as secret as possible from the rest of the world. But the way the college basketball world missed Keaton Wagler is a much more complicated story, and one that illustrates the very imperfect art of recruiting in the modern era.
The biggest driver of the “unseen” adage with Wagler is that he played for a small, independent AAU team called VWBA Elite, run by Williams, who had trained Wagler dating back to seventh grade. Many players in his shoes might’ve felt obligated to move up to a Nike- or Adidas-sponsored team to play in front of more big-name coaches during the recruiting period. But Wagler says he remembered seeing plenty of coaches at VWBA’s 17U games as a 15-year-old just starting out and was confident he could get the attention he needed with the club that had helped him to that point. And he was right: Plenty of high-majors saw Wagler in-person that summer, including one memorable game against eventual Butler commit Azavier “Stink” Robinson that had several high-major head coaches at it. Wagler outplayed Robinson badly that day, as the legend goes, but none of the big-time coaches there extended offers. He did the same in Atlanta against eventual Kentucky guard Jasper Johnson, who played on a team loaded with Division I players while Wagler was VWBA’s only D-I prospect.
“With college coaches, the narrative is, no one had seen Keaton or he was in a back gym somewhere,” AAU coach Victor Williams says. “That’s not true. College coaches were in the gym with Keaton. I just think they kind of dismissed some things … I didn’t know how people missed it. I always thought it was glaring. By the time he was a junior, going into his senior year, it was so glaring to me that he was a high-major player.”
At its core, what slowed Wagler’s recruitment wasn’t a lack of eyeballs, but a lack of momentum. He entered the critical recruiting months of June and July before his senior year with limited buzz or attention. He had an offer from his hometown D-I in UMKC and some successful D-II programs in the area and tons of interest from top mid-majors, but none had pulled the trigger with offers.
His strongest early interest was from Colorado State, which had plenty of connections to him. The Rams had recently recruited another Kansas City point guard in Kyan Evans, top assistant Ali Farokhmanesh had a relationship with Williams, and Farokhmanesh had heard from plenty of others in the area (including The Athletic writer C.J. Moore, who knew Wagler’s dad) that Wagler was worth pursuing. Plus, Colorado State had seen Wagler plenty in-person because the staff had recruited another player from Wagler’s AAU circuit, Docker Tedeschi.
“Keaton was one of those guys that you had to watch over time to realize he just makes the right play every time,” Farokhmanesh says, comparing him to all-time CSU great Isaiah Stevens. “He’s not going to go down the lane and dunk on you. He might make six threes in a game, but he just kind of goes about his business and wins. And I think that was what was always so impressive, but you had to watch him multiple times to get that feel for it. If you just went once, I don’t know if you would have just walked away and been like, O.K., this is a high-major lottery pick guy.”
CSU invited Wagler on an unofficial visit late in June. The calculus on offering a scholarship was tricky: Colorado State feared that if it offered on the visit and Wagler didn’t commit on the spot, it’d just invite far more eyeballs on Wagler during the July live period. The Rams decided to roll the dice and hope things stayed quiet through July.
That decision may have been the most impactful moment of the Wagler recruitment. More coaches saw Wagler during the July period, and he quickly became a top-priority recruit for the best mid-majors in the region. Then Drake coach Ben McCollum, who is lauded as a sharp evaluator, jumped in the mix, as did Murray State with Prohm. Saint Louis made a late push, as did Southern Illinois and UIC. But the only high-major to pull the trigger on an offer in July was DePaul.
Wagler’s shooting, size and, most importantly, feel for the game all stood out in a major way to Illinois’s coaching staff during recruitment. | Dylan Widger-Imagn Images
“If he has those [mid-major] offers in June, I think there’s a reality that more high-majors go and see him in July,” Illinois assistant Tyler Underwood says. “All those programs are really good at evaluating and obviously you look at that offer sheet and you see some trends of coaches who have had really good guards. And they’re at those events maybe more than we are. I think all high-major coaches are guilty of being at Nike and Adidas.”
Some of the high-majors there to see Robinson or other guards reached out during that July, but they “never followed through” according to Wagler. Had he been “stamped” with those top mid-major offers earlier, Wagler may well have blown up with plenty of high-majors in July. Instead, he exited the month with a mostly mid-major recruitment. Murray State felt good about where things stood, as did Colorado State. Drake and SIU hovered and got official visits.
“I wouldn’t say I was frustrated, but at that point I was a little bit confused [by the lack of high-major attention],” Wagler says. “It was just something to think about, something to remind myself of that and knowing that I have to keep working hard to be able to get to the point where I want to be. It was something that put a chip on my shoulder.”
Where does Illinois come into all this? The Illini weren’t among the teams watching all July, but they had familiarity with Wagler before then. Head coach Brad Underwood is from Kansas, so people from around the state had made it clear to him that the Illini should be looking at Wagler. An Illinois manager had coached Wagler’s brother in junior college. And Tyler Underwood and other members of the Illini staff would regularly get texts from mid-major coaches watching Wagler that summer that he was worth their time. They dove into the film: The Underwoods huddled together to watch four to five Wagler games on the scouting platform Synergy and were quickly enamored.
“It became abundantly clear that he possessed a lot of the skill set and positional size that we look for,” Tyler Underwood says. “And credit to [Brad Underwood], as we found out more about the situation and the type of kid he was, he was very comfortable offering him having not seen him in person.”
Beyond its connections in the state allowing it to gather plenty of rave reviews, Illinois also had another competitive edge that made it more comfortable recruiting Wagler hard. Its strength coach, Adam Fletcher, is as integrated into the program as any in the country and is lauded as one of the nation’s best. Fletcher’s presence meant not being scared off by Wagler’s ultra-slight frame the way other top programs were.
“I think we’re in a position where we can take guys that are a little underdeveloped physically and develop them,” Tyler Underwood says.
Illinois and Minnesota came into the recruitment around the same time. Prohm held out hope that he could beat out Minnesota. But Illinois offering right after Wagler’s official visit to Murray? That was a gut punch, one he knew he likely couldn’t recover from.
“It ruined dinner that night,” Prohm says. “Your kids, your family’s invested in the recruitment too, right? They know you know this guy’s special. Everybody in the house knows I’m in love with Keaton Wagler. Like, this is the guy. And like, my wife’s not stupid. She has been around long enough. And when it was like, ‘Illinois just offered’, your stomach drops, you know it’s over.”
“I wouldn’t say [easy],” Wagler says. “But I’d say my game translated better than I thought it would. | Robert Hanashiro-Imagn Images
Illinois still had work to do to seal the deal. Much of it had to do with convincing Wagler the staff actually believed he was good enough to play early. The Illini certainly didn’t project an explosion of this magnitude, but thought he had the skills to play rotation minutes as a freshman off the ball as a shooter. Other schools involved negatively recruited Illinois by suggesting he wouldn’t be ready to play there early from a physical standpoint. But Wagler came on his visit to Champaign and saw three freshmen playing huge roles in practice, including one (five-star Will Riley) who was even skinnier than he was. That, plus a detailed plan from Fletcher on how to take him to the next level physically, helped the Illini win out over Minnesota and the top mid-majors involved.
“There were so many people who told me, ‘Once you get here, this first year, they’re just going to redshirt you. You’re just going to have to put on weight before you can compete on the floor,’ ” Wagler says. “I’ve always been skinny. And that’s something I think that helped me get tougher on the court. It’s not all about strength, it’s about how you use your body. And you can be more mentally tough than physically tough.”
Illinois’s excitement built the more it got to watch him during his senior season at Shawnee Mission Northwest, another state title-winning year. Tyler Underwood recalls a 30+ point game against Missouri powerhouse Chaminade being the first time he started taking seriously the concept that Wagler might be a future NBA player. The shooting, size and, most importantly, feel for the game all stood out in a major way. But there were still questions about what the college transition might look like: Wagler rarely drove the ball in high school and played in a balanced attack built around feeding the post to the 7-footer Taylor.
Wagler’s first day of workouts upon enrolling in Champaign went… about how you’d expect. The Illini traditionally do a weights session first, then move to the court. After the 45-minute weight room workout, Wagler threw up everywhere and was, as Underwood recalls, “half-asleep on the court.” Welcome to college basketball, rookie. But Day 2 and every day beyond it stacked better and better. He settled into a routine off the floor (Fletcher makes him gain 2.5 pounds every morning at breakfast to help fuel him for workouts) and got tons of reps on it. Illinois had a handful of summer absences due to injuries, late enrollment and more, so Wagler spent most of his time playing on the ball and sharpened his skills against Kylan Boswell, perhaps the best perimeter defender in college basketball. That might not have happened everywhere, but the circumstances at Illinois allowed the team to quickly uncover Wagler’s playmaking talent.
“Seeing what he could do on the ball, it was so natural for him,” Tyler Underwood says. “It became pretty clear that he was a different level prospect than maybe we even knew of.”
Sometimes it was even hard for Wagler to believe. He’d read press clippings from Underwood and teammates hyping up his abilities and think I’m just playing how I always do. He debuted loudly with 40 combined points in buy-game wins over Jackson State and FGCU, but was quiet in Illinois’s first three big games (Texas Tech, Alabama, UConn). The Illini’s confidence in him wasn’t shaken; if anything, those games emboldened them to put him on the ball more, since he had struggled some making decisions off the catch. And once that shift was made ahead of an early December game against Tennessee, Wagler absolutely exploded. Historic showings like the 46-point outburst at Mackey Arena against Purdue or the dominant second half in a road win at Nebraska were the ones that drove the hype and headlines, but equally impressive was his knack for constantly making the right play. The 46-point game was, more than anything, a function of what coverage Purdue showed him. Ten days later against Northwestern, Wagler was blitzed with defenders constantly and happily set up his teammates while attempting just eight shots. It’s a brand of basketball that makes the game look like it comes incredibly easy to him. Is it?
Keaton Wagler scored the most points EVER by a visitor at Mackey 😱:
46 PTS
13-17 FG
9-11 3PT
WOW. pic.twitter.com/KVAd0B0W0A
— NCAA March Madness (@MarchMadnessMBB) January 24, 2026
“I wouldn’t say [easy],” Wagler says. “But I’d say my game translated better than I thought it would. People would obviously talk about the physicality part and obviously the speed of the game. I thought it would be hard for me because I’m not the fastest, most athletic person. I thought it would be hard for me to adjust to playing against huge players, tall players. But once I started to get into a rhythm, it all slowed down.”
And at its core, that’s why the college basketball world missed Wagler out of high school. Call it what you like: Feel, instincts, problem-solving ability… those intangible traits were always Wagler’s strongest suit, and they ended up far overpowering any physical weakness he may have had that scared most bigger suitors away. Illinois was just one of the few that could see past the physical limitations to really value the mental.
“When people talk about generational talent, they say, ‘Oh man, LeBron does this,’” Williams says. “They’re gifts that guys have that people can see [physically]. With Keaton’s instincts and feel for the game, that’s generational also. That doesn’t come around often.”
The time for waiting for the other shoe to drop on this once-in-a-lifetime story has long since passed. Wagler’s stardom isn’t a fluke or a Jeremy Lin–style, weeks-long heater. He’s the driving force behind the most efficient offense in college basketball history and a player NBA teams are evaluating as a potential face of their franchise. And after shocking the world plenty over the last two years, no one should be surprised if he becomes the star of March Madness.
“At this point, I don’t want to say it’s what I expect from Keaton Wagler, but nothing surprises me,” Tyler Underwood says. “I think the sky is the limit for him, as a player, as a prospect, and as a person.”
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