AHRON ULIS
VITALS
Height: 6'3"
Weight: 190
Class: Freshman
High School: Marian Catholic
Hometown: Chicago
GIA Nickname That Won't Catch On Anywhere: Taller the Creator
THE PAST
Recruiting stories, at the highest levels, are stories of persistence. But the better recruiting stories, further down the line, are stories of connections.
Ahron Ulis, of course, is the brother of Tyler Ulis, one of the great Iowa recruiting near-misses of the last decade. Fran McCaffery got himself into the top three for the elder Ulis before losing out to Kentucky. Iowa had been all in on Tyler, and grabbed Trey Dickerson out of junior college as a replacement. When Dickerson didn't work out in his first year, Iowa was hosed. McCaffery turned to a lightly-recruited guard out of Cedar Rapids, Jordan Bohannon.
The younger Ulis was ranked the fourth-best prospect in Illinois last year and a national top 200 player, according to the 24/7 composite. He was Iowa's highest-rated recruit in the 2020 class. But he also received just one other power-conference offer, and that was from DePaul.
THE FUTURE
Your guess is as good as mine. Ulis is ostensibly behind Bohannon, Joe Toussaint and Connor McCaffery in the point guard pecking order, but he also has size that two of those guys lack. At least according to what the program is telling Mike Hlas, there isn't a plan to redshirt anyone just yet. Of course, with Covid out there, who knows if or when Iowa will need a deep bench.
Long-term, Ulis checks the boxes for the sort of point guard McCaffery has long sought. He has size, vision and a consistent perimeter jumper. He might need to wait a year or two for the depth chart to clear, but eventually he should be running the show.
