{"id":96530,"date":"2025-07-27T11:00:11","date_gmt":"2025-07-27T11:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/96530\/"},"modified":"2025-07-27T11:00:11","modified_gmt":"2025-07-27T11:00:11","slug":"five-illini-freshmen-to-monitor-during-training-camp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/96530\/","title":{"rendered":"Five Illini freshmen to monitor during training camp"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><b><a href=\"https:\/\/247sports.com\/college\/illinois\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Illinois<\/a><\/b> had no problem leaning into the College Football Playoff buzz at Big Ten Media Days last week in Las Vegas.<\/p>\n<p>The Illini are old, experienced and coming off a 10-win season with most of their starters returning for this season. Yet, the Illini were clearly impressed with a handful of freshmen in winter workouts, spring practices and summer training. They&#8217;ve\u00a0gotten head coach <b><a href=\"https:\/\/247Sports.com\/coach\/Bret-Bielema-137\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Bret Bielema<\/a><\/b>&#8216;s attention entering training camp later this week.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Some of those freshmen who looked good in the spring, now they get the summer with us. They get fall camp. If they haven&#8217;t enrolled early, I don&#8217;t know if that window can be as big,&#8221; Bielema said on the Illini Inquirer Podcast.<\/p>\n<p>How many will ultimately break into the two-deep or meaningful roles on the team remains to be seen, but Illini Inquirer\u00a0breaks down\u00a0five\u00a0freshmen\u00a0to watch entering training camp.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Illinois had no problem leaning into the College Football Playoff buzz at Big Ten Media Days last week&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":96531,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[1318,1317,1315,1316,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-96530","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-ncaa","10":"tag-ncaa-football","11":"tag-ncaafootball","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114924855774599529","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96530","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96530"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96530\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/96531"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}