Illinois head coach Lovie Smith enters the 2019 season on the hot seat but he certainly isn’t going down without a fight. You could certainly say he’s fighting on Thursday afternoon.
Such is the case after the Illini landed a big transfer pickup in Oluwole Betiku Jr., a former five-star recruit at USC who will be making the jump from the Pac-12 to the Big Ten after recently visiting the program.
While going from Los Angeles to Champaign is the culture shocks of all culture shocks, there is a connection that undoubtedly played a role in luring Betiku back East in Illinois defensive line coach Austin Clark, who used to be a graduate assistant with the Trojans.
The redshirt junior has two years of eligibility to use at Illinois and is coming off a hip injury that cost him all of 2018. He played in a total of 14 games at USC but recorded just two tackles after being ranked by 247Sports as a five-star and No. 15 overall recruit in the country back in the class of 2016. Betiku figures to be a potential starter opposite of fellow Illini end Bobby Roundtree this season.