WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Sitting on top of an equipment cart, hair still damp from the water shower from his teammates in the locker room, Keaton Wagler finally had a moment to himself, a wide smile on his face.
The once underrecruited guard admitted postgame he could’ve never dreamed of this, and why would he have? Even a dream wouldn’t have gone this far, the 150th-ranked recruit who was getting Division II looks 18 or so months ago destroying No. 4 Purdue to the tune of 46 points in one of the best freshman performances in recent college basketball history?
“If you guys didn’t get a good read on Keaton Wagler right there, you missed it because that’s just him,” Illinois head coach Brad Underwood said. “He just plays. He just hoops. There’s nothing that fazes him. He just wants to make the right basketball play. And tonight it happened to be scoring.”
And yet until that smile once away from the cameras, the only sign you’d have that Wagler had scored 46 and not four or six was the wet hair. He made off-dribble threes left and right and never celebrated, never pushed back at the crowd that was begging his shots to drift left and right … he just hooped in No. 11 Illinois’s 88–82 win Saturday.
“We always talk about ethical basketball, the new era of ethical basketball,” assistant coach Tyler Underwood says. “He’s like the leading candidate. All he cares about is playing the right way, making the right play … he’s got an unbelievable ability to just live in the present moment.”
Purdue started the game switching defensively, putting its bigs on Wagler after Illinois screening actions. The goal: Take away Illinois’s bigs from shooting it from three, something that had hurt the Boilers against UCLA earlier in the week. Wagler proceeded to score the team’s first 14 points, with dazzling stepback jumpers and a difficult crossover dribble and bucket keeping Illinois pacing with the Boilermakers despite Purdue’s hot start. But for the most part Purdue was undeterred, sticking with the switching, almost daring Wagler to go score more than 30 and beat them.
Though perhaps that’s a lesson college basketball should’ve learned a long time ago: Do not, under any circumstance, bet against Keaton Wagler.
Illinois did little to keep its lowly ranked freshman who most figured would be a developmental project a secret. By late June, having only seen Wagler in person for a few weeks, its staff was already raving to anyone who would listen about his potential. Few left a conversation during July recruiting periods with any Illini staffer without hearing something about their budding star. By September, NBA scouts were well aware. By October, Illinois was a stop on every team’s list to get eyes on the kid who no one could shut up about. That month, the elder Underwood was calling Wagler a prospect on the same level as Kasparas Jakučionis and Will Riley, his two first-rounders the year before. People scoffed. In reality, Wagler was undersold.
Guys with his size who can score off the dribble the way he can? They don’t grow on trees. Especially when they shoot 44% from three. And especially when you have his level of maturity and willingness to always do the right thing on the court.
As Wagler cooked more and more, seeing his point total tick to 24 at halftime and 29 only 90 seconds into the second half, his demeanor never changed. There was one semi-heat check of a three midway through the first half; outside of that, it’d be hard to pinpoint a single play that Wagler made that wasn’t the right one. When he got switches or an advantage driving it downhill, he’d take it. When it wasn’t there, he’d pass it off and set up others. And in the game’s final four minutes, which Illinois entered down four, he made every right play even when it wasn’t scoring the ball. Purdue finally dared someone other than Wagler to beat them, sending two defenders to the ball whenever possible. So Wagler calmly hit the screener and set in motion easy tic-tac-toe threes for the Illini bigs. Tomislav Ivišić made one to tie the game at 73, then Jake Davis drilled one late in the shot clock on a daring dish from Wagler to go up 76–75. Next time down, it was David Mirkovic for a four-point Illini edge. Then finally, Ivišić again to go up five with under a minute to go.
“He had 46 and could’ve, you know, been a selfish pig and said, ‘I want 50,’ or whatever,” Brad Underwood said. “He doesn’t. His game just flows together and he’s going to make the right basketball play, almost every time.”
But when Braden Smith hit a three to cut it to two, it was obvious Illinois would need one more bucket. And better to get it than their freshman wunderkind, who calmly dribbled the ball down and hit a tough midrange pull-up for a four-point edge. Two free throws iced it, and the celebratory shower in the Illini locker room was on.
Wagler was asked postgame about his high school career high. He remembered a 32-point game against Chaminade (Missouri) in Quincy, Ill., a game he shot 12 of 16 from the floor (not far off his 13 of 17 on Saturday) though made just three threes. Tyler Underwood was at that game and remembers seeing some of the same flashes: The off-bounce shooting, the decision-making, the toughness. But for it to turn into a performance for the ages like this? One that had NBA scout text threads lighting up and wondering if a guy they maybe only heard of a few months ago might be a top 10 pick? Nope, not even Tyler Underwood, one of the only high-major coaches to offer him and among the first Wagler propagandists, saw that coming.
“I don’t know if any of us thought it’d ever get [like this],” Tyler Underwood says.
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