There have been many changes in high school basketball — some big, some small — in the last several years. Here is a look at eight of them:
Shot clock
While nearly every major basketball event in the state — from holiday tournaments to high-profile shootouts — have used the 35-second shot clock for the last couple of years, it becomes official in the 2026-27 season. That includes, for the first time, in the IHSA state tournament.
Transfers
There have been transfers, including high-profile ones, dating back decades. But players today are transferring in numbers never seen before.
Coaching hires
There was once an emphasis — even some pressure — for a high school, especially one that made athletics a priority, to land a hotshot coaching candidate. Thanks to many factors, that isn’t the case anymore.
Media coverage
Local newspapers shined a bright spotlight on high school basketball for decades. Be it staff writers assigned to prep sports or ‘‘stringers’’ freelancing, dozens of games were covered on a Friday night.
Now, mostly because of cuts in staff throughout the newspaper industry, the attention on the sport has dwindled greatly in the last 15 to 20 years.
But if tweets and 30-second highlights from a game on social media do it for you, you’re in the right era.
Public League basketball
If someone had not laid eyes on high school basketball in the city for 15 or 20 years and came back this year, it might be unrecognizable to them.
There hasn’t been a Public League team in a big-school (Class 3A or 4A) title game in the last three seasons. This comes after 21 city teams — including 15 state champions — competed in IHSA title games in the previous 16 seasons.
And you can count the Division I prospects from the Public League in an individual class on one hand. That’s a far cry from when there used to be three or four in a single program not too long ago.
Private-school basketball
The script has been flipped.
While Public League basketball has faltered in recent years, the presence of private schools in the postseason has been elevated.
Nine private schools have played in a big-school (Class 3A or 4A) championship game since 2022, and five have won a state title. In the previous 50 years, a private school playing in a state-championship game was almost unheard of.
Prep schools raiding the state
It wasn’t that long ago when prep schools weren’t a thing. Remember Anthony Davis, Jabari Parker, Jahlil Okafor, EJ Liddell, Jalen Brunson, Tyler Ulis and more? They all stayed in Illinois, played and left a legacy and at their respective high schools.
Prep schools have been hitting Illinois hard in recent years. And the top players have listened and departed.
College recruiting
Twelve years ago, there were 50-plus Division I college players from Illinois. While it wasn’t one of the all-time great classes, it was still a strong one.
This season? The Class of 2027 will be lucky to inch past 15 Division I players, by far the lowest number in state history. The classes of 2025, 2024 and 2023 produced only 25, 29 and 27 Division I players, respectively.
The combination of the Public League’s talent drying up, the overall talent in the state being down, players leaving the state and what has happened in college basketball with the transfer portal have led to this shift.