1989 is not exactly recent. Illinois's best player in the last 20 years came out of Texas. Kruger jumped ship because he got offered a NBA job, not because he wasn't recruiting. Bill Self came in and was the guy that recruited the players that went to the national championship game. He obviously recruited some kids from the Chicago suburbs, which is not the same thing as recruiting Chicago itself in my opinion. Dee Brown was the only Chicago public league player in that core if I remember correctly. Self worked on Chicago, but he recruited nationally. Everyone told Weber he had to recruit Chicago. And he did, but he lost control of his program in the process. The fans think you just go and recruit Chicago and you'll have a Final Four team, and a delusional belief that Chicago kids really want to go to Illinois. It doesn't work that way. The elite players out of Chicago don't give a crap about going to a school that is still 2 1/2 hours from home. And the 2nd tier players come with issues because its Chicago. The kind of issues that Weber lost control of. Chicago can't be ignored, but you are better off recruiting players that may actually have a reason for wanting to go to school in the middle of Illinois. Indianapolis is actually closer than Chicago. St. Louis is almost as close as Chicago is. Recruiting Chicago just isn't this magic bullet for Illinois that people like to assume it is, especially on the women's side.
