Ayo Dosunmu and the lasting Illini Legacy

Ayo Dosunmu was back in Champaign on Friday night, this time to officially become a member of the Illinois Athletics Hall of Fame. Before and during the ceremony, Dosunmu reflected on the decision that changed his life — and ultimately helped change the trajectory of Illinois basketball.

When Dosunmu committed to Illinois in October 2017, he wasn’t walking into a program that was on the rise. He was walking into a program that was trying to find its way back. Illinois had fallen out of the Big Ten’s upper tier and was no longer a consistent presence on the national college basketball stage. For a Chicago-area five-star like Dosunmu, there were other options that made sense on paper. Wake Forest was involved. USC was involved. Kansas was looming. Choosing Illinois wasn’t necessarily the popular decision.

Ayo Dosunmu chose it anyway.

“When I committed to Illinois, no disrespect to the greats or the players before me, but, in my opinion, it wasn’t cool,” Dosunmu said. “It wasn’t looked upon to come to Illinois if you were from Chicago. That just wasn’t the thing.”

That decision ended up changing the trajectory of both Dosunmu’s career and Illinois basketball.

Brad Underwood made Dosunmu one of his first major recruiting priorities after taking the Illinois job, and the two sides eventually built something that went well beyond a recruiting relationship. Dosunmu became the centerpiece of the rebuild and developed into one of the best players in the country. One of the moments that still stands out to Dosunmu came during his sophomore season at Michigan, when he hit the game-winning jumper over Xavier Simpson with 0.5 seconds remaining to give Illinois a 64-62 victory.

During Friday’s Hall of Fame interview, Dosunmu mentioned that shot as his favorite game-winning moment from his Illinois career. It’s fitting. Illinois had spent years searching for players who could change the program’s trajectory, and suddenly it had a Chicago kid taking on one of the Big Ten’s best defenders with the game on the line.

By his junior season, Dosunmu was a consensus First Team All-American, won the Bob Cousy Award and helped lead Illinois to a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament. He then became a second-round pick of the Chicago Bulls in 2021 before eventually signing a five-year, $112 million extension with the Minnesota Timberwolves.

But Dosunmu’s impact on Illinois goes beyond the numbers.

His success helped show other high-level players that Illinois could once again be a destination. More talent followed, the program returned to national relevance, and Dosunmu became the first major building block of Underwood’s tenure.

Now, his No. 11 jersey hangs in the State Farm Center rafters, and his name sits alongside some of the greatest players in program history in the Illinois Athletics Hall of Fame.

“The only thing that could have been better is a national championship,” Dosunmu said. “Besides that, I think I’ve created a legacy that’s pretty well cemented now.”

It’s hard to argue with him.

Ayo Dosunmu took a chance on Illinois when doing so wasn’t the obvious or popular choice. Nearly a decade later, that decision looks like one of the most important recruiting wins in the history of the program.

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