How Keaton Wagler became the NBA Draft’s most surprising story — and a top-10 prospect

When Keaton Wagler’s dream freshman season ended in the Final Four, he quickly went from Indianapolis to Champaign, Ill., to Lenexa, Kan., returning to his parents’ house to decompress and to plan his future less than 24 hours after Illinois’ loss to UConn.

Back in December, when Wagler’s name started buzzing in NBA Draft circles and the possibility of him being a one-and-done draft pick became real, the Waglers made a decision.

“We had one conversation with (his agents),” Logan Wagler, Keaton’s dad, said. “We don’t wanna have those conversations. We don’t want to know. We don’t want to get excited.”

The Waglers told their son they didn’t think they should talk about the NBA. They would if he had questions, but they thought the best approach was to set aside draft talk so Wagler could focus.

Wagler went on to have one of the most surprising freshman seasons in the history of college hoops. A player with just three high-major scholarship offers in high school, who ranked No. 261 in his class by the 247Sports Composite, Wagler was a second-team All-American and the Most Outstanding Player of the NCAA Tournament South Regional. He fully exploded onto the national radar with a 46-point performance in a road win at Purdue in January.

The Waglers didn’t discuss the NBA, but every day it got closer to becoming a reality.

Until, finally, it was time to talk about it.

It might have seemed obvious to the rest of the world what the star freshman should do — he was a projected top-10 pick — but not to Wagler. He was 50-50 on whether to return to college.

With any other player, Illinois coach Brad Underwood said he wouldn’t have even considered coming back for a sophomore year to be a possibility. “But with him,” Underwood said, “it was more him than anything else initiating all of that.”

So one week after the Final Four loss to Connecticut, Underwood, his assistant coach and son Tyler Underwood, assistant Zach Hamer and strength coach Adam Fletcher flew to Kansas to meet with the family. Wagler met with his agents to go through his options one more time and said he made his decision then, but he took an extra day to make sure.

Logan and Jennifer Wagler waited all day for their son’s decision while he played “Guitar Hero” and watched some TV.

“Torturing us,” Logan said, “That’s just the way Keaton is. He processes things.”

Eventually, Logan fired up the grill for the celebratory steaks they planned to eat either way. Wagler’s agency had a graphic prepared for either choice.

Finally, Wagler came down the stairs and asked his parents, “So do you guys want to know?”

Of course!

“I’m going to the NBA.”

His parents started screaming. They FaceTimed his brother and sister, then his agents and his Illinois coaches, making sure they heard the news from him.

“Refreshing,” Underwood said recently, as he picked up the phone to talk one more time about Wagler.

The focus of Wagler’s story has been on how everyone — high school evaluators, other schools, and especially nearby powers like Kansas, Kansas State and Missouri — missed Wagler’s potential when he was in high school. The Athletic’s Sam Vecenie projects that Wagler will be picked fifth by the Los Angeles Clippers, and if he lands there, he will be the highest NBA Draft pick ever among U.S.-born one-and-done freshmen who ranked outside the top 100 of the Recruiting Services Consensus Index, which dates back to 1998. Only two other freshmen outside the top 100 (Zhaire Smith and Jaxson Hayes) were first-round draft picks after one college season.

Wagler is 6-foot-5, with vision, instincts, a beautiful jumper and footwork. That didn’t just happen in the last year. But what’s different about his story is that Wagler is the rare one-and-done freshman who didn’t set out with that as the goal, and when it became a reality, he didn’t change. No one around him changed.

“I wish I could write the manuscript on how this worked,” Underwood said. “Because to me, it’s the innocence and the parenting 101 lesson. They were very dialed in to Keaton’s happiness and his ability just to play the game he loved and be a great teammate. You couldn’t write a better manuscript.”

Jennifer Wagler pulls up a picture of her youngest son from four years ago at the Kansas state tournament. She rediscovered it recently while going through old pictures, and the thought of how quickly things change shocked her.

In the picture, Wagler is a 5-foot-8, 130-pound freshman, looking extremely out of place.

“His jersey and his uniform was just hanging off of him,” Jennifer said. “His legs just look so tiny.”

Wagler is wearing a pair of scrunched-up decorative socks, the kind his dad would buy him if he got 10 or more rebounds in a game.

“They don’t go with the uniform at all,” Logan said. “That’s when you realize he’s just a kid.”

Even now, Logan said, when Wagler comes home, he looks at his son and thinks he’s still just a kid.

The Waglers always wanted their three children to enjoy childhood. It goes fast, obviously. And college is the last stop before adulthood.

The reality is that if Wagler had been projected as even a late lottery pick, he’d probably be returning to Illinois.

“He loved it there,” Logan said. “He loved all his teammates, loved his coaches, loved being a college kid.”

When Wagler left for Champaign last June, the Waglers had no expectations for playing time or his eventual role. They just wanted him to grow and have fun.

They realized their world was about to change when Logan’s phone rang less than two weeks into summer practices, and Tyler Underwood asked if they had considered getting their son an agent.

“We had no intention of hiring an agent,” Logan said. “We said, ‘Where do we start?’”

Wagler wound up hiring Matt Bollero of ProMondo Sports, who represents six current NBA players, the biggest name of which is Milwaukee shooting guard AJ Green. That step, Tyler Underwood knew, would somewhat squash future distractions, because once everyone saw how good Wagler was, agents would flock to the family’s doorstep.

That was still the case. His parents received messages throughout the season. The agents would try to reach them through Wagler’s brother and sister, or acquaintances, or sometimes wait for the Waglers in the parking lot after games.

“That was really strange,” Logan said, “and a lot more than we expected.”

But, mostly, Wagler’s parents shielded him from those distractions and just let him play.

While everyone around Wagler was surprised by how easy he made it look — “You were almost in awe of how good it was,” Brad Underwood said — Wagler didn’t seem surprised.

“I didn’t really expect to be a one-and-done, but I kind of knew how good I was, and that I could be able to compete with anyone,” Wagler said. “I didn’t really have a set, ‘I’m going to be here for one year or two years or four or whatever.’ It was just going out there and not thinking about it.”

Wagler’s career outlook changed rapidly. During the summer, the Illini coaches thought he was a potential starter and secondary playmaker. By October, “It appeared he had a chance to be a real engine of our offense,” Tyler Underwood said.

Then, at the end of November, following a loss to UConn in which Wagler scored just 3 points in 14 minutes, the Illini coaches decided to move Wagler to point guard.

In his first game at that position, he scored 16 points and had five assists in a win over Tennessee, outperforming Nate Ament, a five-star recruit projected to be a one-and-done lottery pick.

Wagler scored in double digits every game the rest of the season. He was Illinois’ highest usage player, even though he didn’t attempt the most shots for his high school team as a senior.

The summit was that 46-point performance at Purdue, when the Boilermakers decided to switch ball screens and Wagler made them pay, burying nine 3-pointers.

“That was crazy, something I definitely didn’t expect to do,” he said. “It was kind of like I was out there playing a regular game, and I was just feeling it, like in a flow state where I couldn’t miss.”

Wagler had never topped 40 points in his life — his high school career-high was 32. But what was quintessential Wagler was the final four minutes. With the Illini trailing by 3 points, Purdue started double-teaming him when Wagler came off a ball screen. For four straight possessions, Wagler passed to his teammates for four straight buckets.

“He’s on an all-time heater,” Tyler Underwood said. “A lot of people would want to shoot it, and he just made the right play.”

The aftermath? Wagler picked up about 8,000 Instagram followers in one night, and he saw the “SportsCenter” highlights, but …

“Just because I got all of this new stuff doesn’t mean I have to change who I am or how I act or anything,” he said. “Just go be the same person that I am.”

At that point, it was hard for the Waglers to ignore the NBA mock drafts. Their social media algorithm filled up with hype about their son.

But they kept not talking about the NBA, and Wagler kept hooping. He followed his 46-point performance with 22 points and eight assists in a win over Washington, then 28 points and five assists in a win at then-No. 5 Nebraska.

“There’s guys that you can see the pressure building and mounting and this and that, and they can’t handle it,” Brad Underwood said. “Most of it comes, to be quite honest, from internal, the people within those players’ groups. If he felt it, he did an incredible job of hiding it. But I just took on the mom and dad’s lead.”

Wagler finally had a bad game compared to the standards he’d created — scoring 13 points on 2-of-16 shooting with three turnovers in an overtime loss at Michigan State — and the Illini began a late-season tumble, losing five of their final nine games entering the NCAA Tournament.

At that point, some coaches might have pulled the freshman star aside to see where his head was at before the most pressure-packed moments of the season. Brad Underwood didn’t see any reason to do that with Wagler.

“He’s never doubted his abilities,” the Illini head coach said. “He’s never doubted his game. And I think that’s one of the fine lines we deal with as coaches is, what buttons do we push? And sometimes you’ve got to convince them they’re great. Sometimes you’ve got to convince them they’re not so great. And with Keaton, it was always about the process.”

With Wagler at the controls and the Illini finally at full strength from a health standpoint as the tournament began, a run felt possible despite the late-season struggles.

The tournament was likely going to be Wagler’s only March Madness experience, but he said he never thought about that, either.

“What did enter my mind is this season could come to an end,” Wagler said. “That’s something that I don’t think anyone wanted on our team, especially because of how special our team was and how connected a group we were and how good we were. We knew that we couldn’t waste that.”

On the biggest stage, with a chance to go to a Final Four and his team trailing 9-0 early, Wagler made a difficult one-footed shot off a deceleration move in the paint and went on to score a game-high 25 points in an Elite Eight win over Iowa.

When asked about his favorite moment of that run, Wagler said it was the celebration that night. Confetti on the floor. Water guns in the locker room. Not a word about his accomplishments.

“He handles everything with grace and humility,” Tyler Underwood said. “I think that’s his superpower — his humility, but also his aggressiveness. As soon as he steps in between the lines, he wants to rip your head off.”

Tyler Underwood picked up the phone earlier this month and sounded a bit melancholy.

“Sad this is one of the last times we’ll get to talk about Keaton Wagler before he’s on another team that’s not mine,” he said.

The Illini should be just fine. Their returning core should be good enough to earn a preseason top-five ranking, and they replaced Wagler with former Providence guard Stefan Vaaks, one of the top guards in the transfer portal. But the coaches don’t know if they’ll ever get to work with another player quite like Wagler.

“I was fortunate that I was around (Michael) Beasley, and he was one or two (ranked coming in) and then maintained it and just dominated it, and that was fun to see,” Brad Underwood said. “This was drastically different because I’m not gonna lie, I didn’t expect it. It’s so refreshing. It’s just one of the beautiful things about college sports is the rise of somebody like that.”

It happened, they believe, because those around Wagler allowed him to experience college without worrying about anything else.

The draft decision was left up to Wagler, and his parents believe he made the right choice.

“For him, it was more about ‘are you mentally ready to make that step,’” Logan said, “because that’s a big step for a kid that’s just turned 19 years old.”

His parents plan to help him through the next phase. Jennifer, an elementary school teacher, decided to retire and plans to help her son find a home and get situated wherever he lands in the NBA. She’ll stick around there to help as much as he needs.

The Underwoods and the rest of the Illini coaches are still invested in his career. When Wagler told Underwood his plans to turn pro, the coach offered his congratulations and told him to “keep eating.”

That was the one thing the Illini coaches stayed on Wagler about — his weight. He rarely ever ate breakfast in high school and didn’t like to eat before games. He arrived in Champaign at 168 pounds and wasn’t allowed to miss a meal. He was 180 at the start of the season and 186 at the end. The last message from an Illini staffer on Wagler’s phone was from assistant Orlando Antigua. It read: “Eat!”

Wagler proudly reports that he’s up to 192 pounds.

The draft process has been like a movie for Wagler. After he made his decision, he flew to Minneapolis, ProMondo’s base, to begin daily workouts. At night, his parents said they would be FaceTiming with him when he would get a knock on his hotel door and a steak delivery. He told his agents he missed his mom’s spaghetti, so ProMondo’s Will Budenholzer called Jennifer to ask for the recipe.

“Brown burger,” Logan said, laughing, “pour this jar of sauce (has to be Rao’s) and make the noodles.”

It was good, Wagler reported, but not as good as mom’s.

The innocence of Wagler’s story hasn’t gone anywhere, and that’s the takeaway those around him insist is most important.

“I’ll never forget his story. That’s why we got into this is to help better lives through the game of basketball,” Brad Underwood said, noting that the hair on the back of his neck stands up just talking about it. “That’s one you can just keep telling over and over and over.

“It’s everything that’s great about college basketball.”