Brad Underwood’s take on recruiting rankings are a little bit like the scoring system from “Whose Line is it Anyway?” You know … everything is made up and the points don’t matter. That’s how Underwood views the different rankings that hand out anywhere between (usually) three and five stars to players in each recruiting class.

That said, college basketball fans follow recruiting rankings almost religiously. And while there are always misses — some prospects underrated, others given too much hype — there’s some validity to those stars. A numerical value, too, when it comes to the 247Sports Composite where a 0.9999 is as high as it gets. Think Memphis-bound James Wiseman (at least before he bailed) in the Class of 2019.

I took it upon myself to look at those composite rankings for every player Illinois offered in the 2018, 2019 and 2020 recruiting classes — from Underwood’s first full class as Illini coach to his most recent completed class. The average composite rating fluctuated from 0.9172 to 0.8932 to 0.9546 in those three classes, respectively. In terms of stars, those numbers essentially had Illinois recruiting, on average, a low three-star recruit in 2018 and 2019 and a top 100 recruit in 2020.

Ayo Dosunmu (0.9888) just edged out Adam Miller (0.9884) as Illinois’ top-rated recruit in that three-year period. At the other end of the spectrum were unavailable ratings for Belgian forward Benjamin Bosmans-Verdonk and super late 2019 addition Jermaine Hamlin.

The demographics of Illinois’ recruiting from a geographical perspective outline the fact Underwood & Co. will go anywhere to fill out the Illini roster. Illinois offered 185 players in the 2018-20 recruiting classes. Those 185 players came from 33 different states (plus Washington, D.C.) and 21 different countries.

The state of Illinois had the most Illini targets at 22, but New York wasn’t far behind with 17. Texas and Missouri also generated 10 targets apiece. Canada topped the international list with nine offers followed by Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of the Congo with three each.

Scott Richey is a reporter covering college basketball at The News-Gazette. His email is srichey@news-gazette.com, and you can follow him on Twitter (@srrichey).