Shaka Smart Opens His 2025 Recruiting Class With Ian Miletic

A lanky wing player, you say?

It’s not officially summer on the calendar, but if school’s out, it’s summertime. That’s recruiting time for college basketball, and for a lot of players about to enter their senior year, that means it’s time to make a commitment for where they’re going to play hoops.

Case in point: On Wednesday, Illinois forward Ian Miletic announced his commitment to play for Shaka Smart and YOUR Marquette Golden Eagles. Miletic is the first commitment for Marquette in the Class of 2025.

If you’re particularly dialed into the recruiting scene, than this announcement is probably not a terribly huge surprise for you, at least not after what Miletic himself said at a recent Under Armour event. It’s not like he gave away the game, but the tone of how he spoke certainly made it sound like he had made up his mind after an official visit to Marquette a few days earlier.

247 Sports lists Miletic as a 6’7”, 180 pound small forward. Miletic’s Twitter bio points out that he thinks of himself as a guard, so there’s a certain amount of “you are what you can defend” involved here. For the moment at least, Miletic isn’t a tippy top prospect in terms of rankings and ratings. 247 doesn’t have him in their Composite, but mark him at #45 in the Class of 2025 at small forward and #5 in the state of Illinois in their internal systems. I don’t know why 247 has stopped listing their internal ranking for guys, but he’s at #200 in the country there as a three-star prospect. Rivals says he’s a three-star guy, but that’s it. On3 agrees with the three-star part, but they have him at #117 in the country. That makes Miletic the #23 small forward and their top prospect in Illinois. ESPN hasn’t been paying attention to him at all. Like I said though: That’s all for the moment. That interview clip with Miletic was at UA’s Future 60 event, and they’re not inviting goofs to that camp, y’know?

Marquette’s offer to Miletic came back in January of this year, so it’s kind of been a whirlwind thing to this point, but five months is still a pretty long time….. and much, much longer than Josh Clark’s recruiting process. With that said, the Chicago Sun-Times notes that the Golden Eagles were the first high major program to make an offer to Miletic. He was a regular fixture at MU home games for the rest of the season, making his way up from Rolling Meadows in Chicago’s northwest suburbs four times for unofficial visits.

What was it about Marquette that tipped him over?

“That stood out to me right away – the relationship aspect of it,” Miletic said. “They really invested in me and took the time to get to know me as a person and not just as a player. Over time, that’s what pulled Marquette away from other programs.”

…

“The way they compete stood out to me,” Miletic said. “When I was on campus, just seeing how they get after each other and compete was impressive. It’s a great group of guys who seem to genuinely care about each other and also push each other as hard as they possibly can. They seem to have each other’s back. It was good to see that up close. The development of their players is really something that caught my eye.”

The Sun-Times also mentions that he averaged 19.5 points and 8.5 rebounds per game. Also important, if you’re going to play for Shaka Smart: Miletic shot 45% from the three-point line this past season. Rolling Meadows went 22-10 last season including a 9-1 mark in conference play to win the league title, and they will return all five starters including Miletic next season. That certainly sounds like a mixture that could improve on their Class 4A regional final appearance from 2024.

I don’t have any good videos to embed for you, but I do have a Hudl page for Miletic that was last updated in late February.

And now, the new scholarship chart!

Officially, Miletic is the first Class of 2025 recruit, but the plan is for him to be the second player to be a freshman in 2025-26. Joshua Clark committed to Marquette about a month ago, and he’s already on campus for the 2024-25 season, but the plan is for him to redshirt and make his official debut alongside Miletic. That’s the plan though, and so until that actually happens, I’m going to leave Clark marked in green for this season alongside Caedin Hamilton, Damarius Owens, and Royce Parham.

When it comes to the fall of 2025, Marquette will be looking to replace Kam Jones, David Joplin, and Stevie Mitchell on the roster after they finish their senior seasons. At a glance, I don’t think Miletic obviously fills in a trajectory behind one of those guys. David Joplin might be the best slot, but Joplin seems to have a little bit more of an ability to score in a bruising fashion.