Richey | Gibbs-Lawhorn has breakout potential

Apr. 12—CHAMPAIGN — Men's college basketball has reached a stage where teams with national championship aspirations clearly have to be well versed in portal-ese.

Just look at this year's Final Four.

Every player in North Carolina State's NCAA tournament rotation started their college careers elsewhere. The Wolfpack's two leading scorers — DJ Horne (Illinois State/Arizona State) and D.J. Burns (Tennessee/Winthrop) — were both on their third school.

Alabama's top-three scorers were all transfers. Mark Sears (Ohio), Aaron Estrada (St. Peter's/Oregon/Hofstra) and Grant Nelson (North Dakota State) all thrived with the Crimson Tide.

Purdue's shot at a national title was clearly bolstered by the addition of Lance Jones (Southern Illinois). And Connecticut won its second straight championship with Tristen Newton (East Carolina) claiming Most Outstanding Player honors and Cam Spencer (Loyola Maryland/Rutgers) matching coach Dan Hurley's vibe.

Illinois got within one win of the Final Four for the same reason. A rotation full of veteran players — most who played elsewhere first — pushed the Illini to their most successful season in nearly two decades.

Brad Underwood is fluent in portal-ese at this point. But the Illinois coach maintains high school recruiting will continue to be a part of his roster-building efforts. That he still has a developmental program that goes beyond fine-tuning veteran players acquired via the transfer portal.

And there are several examples to back up that notion. Coleman Hawkins' four-year growth is simply the latest. There isn't exactly an overabundance of players that started at Illinois and stuck around during the past seven seasons with Underwood in charge, but those that do have gotten better.

Ayo Dosunmu and Kofi Cockburn had lofty expectations when they arrived in Champaign, but it still took a little time for them to become All-Americans. Trent Frazier was less heralded as a recruit, but still wound up with an impressive career.

It's Frazier's growth and development in five seasons in Champaign that might stand as the framework for what Dra Gibbs-Lawhorn could be for Illinois. The parallels just sort of jump out at you. Both are smaller guards with instant offense reputations that had just a passing interest in defense as high school players.

Underwood regularly brought up Frazier's performance in the October 2017 exhibition game against Eastern Illinois. How the then-freshman guard was on the bench, in tears, wondering if he could play at the Division I level that night in Charleston. Frazier scored two points and watched as several EIU guards carved up the Illini defense.

Five years later, he was a nearly 1,800-point career scorer and had Underwood loudly protesting his exclusion on the list of players up for Naismith Defensive Player of the Year.

Gibbs-Lawhorn also started his Illinois career against EIU. Dropped 18 points in the Illini's season-opening blowout. Then spent the rest of the season playing a much smaller role.

That's where Frazier and Gibbs-Lawhorn's paths differ.

Frazier was eventually thrust into a starting role as a true freshman in Underwood's first season. It was full-on rebuild mode in Champaign. Gibbs-Lawhorn arrived at Illinois a young guard on an old team that had long since moved past rebuilding and into winning — and winning now.

Gibbs-Lawhorn battled through the disappointments in a diminished role. Kept working as the DNPs stacked up. And even embraced being a defender.

"When I came to Illinois, I learned that if I wanted to play I was going to have to play defense," Gibbs-Lawhorn told The News-Gazette during the NCAA tournament. "I stopped worrying as much about offense and started putting all my focus into defense. When I did that, it clicked. I wanted to play defense. Usually, I didn't want to play defense, but now I want to guard the best player. I want to be on that end and cause a ruckus on that end."

Illinois' roster is far from set heading into the 2024-25 season. How Gibbs-Lawhorn will fit into the new-look Illini is yet to be determined. But the trust he earned from Underwood late in the season — to get playing time in the Big Ten and NCAA tournaments — was a positive step toward more. Maybe that oft-discussed breakout sophomore season.

Where Gibbs-Lawhorn might cause a ruckus at both ends of the court.