It shouldn’t have been this hard.
“It’s about a year late as far as I’m concerned,” Auburn coach Bryan Ott said after his former star guard Rakim Chaney committed to play for Valparaiso.
Chaney could join East’s Sincere Parker as the only NIC-10 boys basketball players in the last decade to make an impact in NCAA Division I basketball. And both wound up going far away from Rockford to land their chance. Parker, who averaged 14.5 points in two NCAA Tournament games for McNeese State this year and had three straight 30-point games at St. Louis in 2024, went to both an Arizona prep school and an Alabama junior college. Chaney went to prep school this year at Two Twelve Sports Academy in Sarasota, Florida.
“Recruiting was not good for me last year,” Chaney, a 6-foot-3 point guard, said. “We looked at different routes we could take. One was going JUCO and the other was going postgrad and getting different exposure in a different area. It ended up working out.
“I always knew it was a process. My dad and my grandfather always told me to stay patient, to stay within the game. They always tell me it's a marathon and not a sprint, but no matter how long it takes or how fast or slow you go, just know you are going to get there.”
Rakim Chaney learned that lesson early. He began his high school career in a hospital bed. Next to his brother. Rakim had torn his ACL in a freshman game. Two days later, his older brother, Rob, tore his left ACL — for the second time. The two brothers had their knees operated on the same day, returned home at the same time and began physical therapy together.
In a way, that was fitting. Rakim grew up competing with his older brother in everything. And being inspired by the same thing after they both attended their first Final Four in 2015.
His parents had gone to a Final Four. Rakim’s dad, Bo Chaney, was a former basketball player and big fan. His mom, not so much. Not, that is, until Charo Chaney returned home from the National Championship..
“When she came back, she told us we have to go to one,” Chaney, the 2024 NIC-10 MVP, said. “She learned a lot from watching me, my brother and my dad play. “She watches all the time now. She’s very emotional about it. It helped us just to fall in love with the game a lot more. March Madness, that’s the best time of the year for basketball, even better than the NBA. For us to be in the arena and be part of the fan base and cheer the players on, it sparked our interest and made us love basketball so much more.
“When I first started watching ...
