{"id":601194,"date":"2026-04-12T02:14:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-12T02:14:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/601194\/"},"modified":"2026-04-12T02:14:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-12T02:14:08","slug":"illinois-keaton-wagler-declares-for-nba-draft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/601194\/","title":{"rendered":"Illinois\u2019 Keaton Wagler declares for NBA Draft"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"\">He\u2019s off to the NBA (most likely).<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Illinois freshman Keaton Wagler declared for the NBA Draft on Saturday, according to ESPN\u2019s Shams Charania.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Wagler had one of the great freshman seasons in Illinois history, with the most points in a single season by a first-year player.<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">He also led the Illini to their first Final Four in 21 years.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">As Charania points out, Wagler is ranked No. 5 in ESPN\u2019s Top 100 in the draft, so expect him to be a lottery pick at worst. If he gets picked in the lottery, he\u2019ll be Illinois\u2019 first lottery pick since Meyers Leonard.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Much more to come on Keaton in the coming days and weeks, but what a sensational year it was to watch him in orange and blue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"He\u2019s off to the NBA (most likely). Illinois freshman Keaton Wagler declared for the NBA Draft on Saturday,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":601195,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,1403,794,1411,71695,293014,590,18419,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-601194","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-connecticut-huskies","11":"tag-espn","12":"tag-illinois-fighting-illini","13":"tag-keaton-wagler","14":"tag-meyers-leonard","15":"tag-nba","16":"tag-shams-charania","17":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=601194"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601194\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/601195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=601194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=601194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=601194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}