Before Illinois guard Keaton Wagler was, well, Keaton Wagler, he was just another name buried among a litany of mid-major-plus guard options for Murray State to consider in the 2025 high school recruiting season.
The accolades were there: Wagler had won a state title in Kansas that spring at Shawnee Mission Northwest, playing alongside a true recruiting prize in 2026 7-footer Ethan Taylor. So too was the size: Wagler was already 6' 6", though he was certainly skinny at 165 pounds. But the Murray State board had lots of names on it. Publicly, Murray offered 24 guards in the 2025 class, and plenty more were on the radar in some form but didn’t make the cut. For most of that spring and summer, Wagler was among the latter. Murray’s assistant coaches had seen him, liked him, but hadn’t loved him enough to go to bat for him hard to their boss, head coach Steve Prohm. The slender sharpshooter playing off the main AAU circuits was flying far below the radar.
