2020 7-Foot Commit Brandon Lieb on Illinois: 'my dream school for so long'
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Illinois head coach Brad Underwood and his basketball coaching staff must always wish recruiting efforts were as simple as Brandon Lieb’s.
Offer the player on a Tuesday night. Do a staff video conference with him Wednesday afternoon. Get the verbal commitment on Wednesday night. If only every prospect was like Lieb, an in-state kid who has always rooted for the Illini, already seen the Champaign-Urbana campus, gone to games with his family and had an extreme desire to stay close to home to play college basketball. Lieb made his dream of playing at Illinois come true Wednesday evening and announced it to the world Thursday morning in a social media post.
“With the success they’ve had over the past two years, I think in-state kids are going to be drawn to that program, that staff and that group of players,” Lieb said in an exclusive Zoom video interview with Illini Now/Sports Illustrated Thursday. “There’s something to be said for playing for the school in your state.”
Lieb has actually played competitive basketball on the State Farm Center floor as his Deerfield (Ill.) High School program was one of the schools for Illinois’ team camp in June and then Lieb was invited to participate in the midwest region version of the NCAA College Basketball Academy hosted by Illinois in July. During those days in July 2019, Lieb was able to further search out the campus on his own and keep in the back of his mind that Illinois would always have a shot at securing his basketball future.
“To be completely honest (the late interest from Illinois this week) definitely took me by surprise but again, with all the interest and offers I was getting just within a matter of a few weeks, as I’m sure you know that transfers are flying left and right so spots are opening up,” Lieb said.
The reason for the comfort level for Illinois’ coaching staff in being able to quickly offer and the confidence in his skills translating over time to the long-term build of Illini basketball under Underwood was simply they’d seen Lieb play multiple times. Illinois assistant coach Orlando Antigua was in the gymnasium at Rolling Meadows (Ill.) High School on Feb. 4 to see Lieb’s Deerfield team defeat Rolling Meadows 74-51. Even Lieb admitted Thursday that he knew Antigua was likely in the gym that night to scout five-star guard Max Christie, the top-ranked 2021 player in the state of Illinois, but the Illini assistant coach got a double feature by being able to evaluate Lieb’s skillset as well.
“A lot of schools started to tell me they wanted me bad in the Class 2020 but even then, some schools weren’t comfortable with making me an offer because they’d never seen me play in person,” Lieb said. “Illinois knew me. They’d seen me play full games. Saying all that, when I heard they were at all interested, it blew me away. It is a dream school for me. Great academics. Close to home. How could I go wrong, right?”
The 7-foot center confirmed his verbal commitment to the Illini coaches less than an hour after the Illini coaching staff conducted a Zoom video conference with him. Lieb then announced his verbal pledge to the Illinois 2020 recruiting class on Twitter Thursday morning. Lieb was set to go to prep school this fall and enroll at a college in the fall of 2021. But that plan likely has changed this month. Not long after his senior season of high school was cut short due to the coronavirus, Lieb found himself with just one Division I offer and instead of signing with Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, the 7-foot center was going to enroll in a college prep school and try to improve his stock there. Only a few months later, mix in with the idea of the volatile nature of the transfer market in today’s college basketball world, and Lieb finds himself receiving interest from several Power 5 conference programs including Oklahoma State, Oklahoma and Utah.
Before the COVID-19 epidemic shut down all high school basketball in the state of Illinois, Lieb averaged 13.5 points, 9.3 rebounds and 2.5 blocks in his senior year at Deerfield.
Even with the Illinois coaching staff continuing to wait on the official word of the draft decisions of stars Ayo Dosunmu and Kofi Cockburn, Underwood’s staff still had a scholarship to use late in this 2020 class. The debate on how that scholarship would be used ended immediately after Lieb instantly declared his intention to play for his “dream school”.
“They’ve been a dream school of mine for so long,” Lieb said. “I’ve pictured myself playing at that level. Who knew it would be the actual school I grew up rooting for, right?”