John Groce was a hero on the brick streets of Athens, Ohio, the first coach to take the Ohio Bobcats to two NCAA tournaments since the early 1980s, and he was a missed free throw, perhaps, from taking a 13-seed to the Elite Eight.

You might not have heard of him before this year's tournament, but he didn't come out of the cornfields of the Mid-American Conference.

In four years, he took a fairly average mid-major program and turned it into a March pest. At 40, Groce is the perfect coach to take over the University of Illinois. He's young, hungry and aggressive. He recruits point guards and gives them the keys to his offense. His teams play fast, shooting 3s and causing turnovers.

No, Shaka Smart didn't want the job. But this isn't a dumb hire for the Illinois.

John Groce led Ohio to the Sweet 16 this season before losing to No. 1 seed North Carolina in overtime on Friday. Don McPeak/US Presswire

Yes, it's official (well, almost). Illinois will replace Bruce Weber with John Groce, sources told ESPNChicago.com on Wednesday night. The search took longer than expected and the negotiations between Groce and athletic director Mike Thomas stretched things out to an interminable length, at least for our 140-character attention span.

After news of his imminent hiring became public, Groce (pronounced Gross) was looked at like he's a nobody by the Illinois fan base, the media and probably some Chicago coaches. Some of the cynicism is simply ignorance, but it's understandable. Illinois basketball hasn't had much go right since making the NCAA championship game in 2005.

Groce was on a roll at Ohio, beating Michigan and South Florida and nearly upsetting North Carolina in the tournament. Two years ago, the Bobcats beat Georgetown.

Needless to say, as publicity goes, the search to replace Weber did not start off well. You get the feeling if Thomas were on "The Bachelor," he'd be proposing to a key grip by the third episode.

There is nothing wrong with getting turned down by the likes of Smart and Brad Stevens, two elite young coaches with no reason to bail on their programs, especially with uncertainty in Illinois' administration. But the public nature of Thomas' failures didn't do much for Illinois' already faltering Q-rating. And it certainly wasn't fair to the coach who wanted the job all along.

As an Ohio alum, I was already well familiar with Groce. I watch games online, read everything and get background information from my sources ("Deep D.P. Dough") in Athens.

So here is what I know about Groce:

Illinois is getting a top-flight recruiter. Groce didn't get this job with coaching chops alone. If you care about meaningless awards, Rivals.com named him recruiter of the year in 2006 when he landed Greg Oden, Mike Conley and Daequan Cook, which resulted in an NCAA finals appearance. Check out Ohio State in the Final Four this weekend. Groce was still on staff when most of the current team was being recruited.

Don't believe the noise, especially for them, that Chicago coaches won't like him. They will like him just fine once they meet him. He will recruit Chicago better than the Illinois coaches who preceded him. His assistants (according to the Chicago Tribune, some of the holdup was due to his salary demands for them) and Jerrance Howard (if he stays) will complement Groce, who does fine on his own.

Groce got D.J. Cooper, the feisty Chicago point guard, to commit to Ohio by leading the recruiting charge himself. He first saw Cooper play for Meanstreets AAU club shortly after getting the Ohio job, and summarily impressed Cooper's then-assistant coach at Seton Academy, Brandon Thomas.

"Ohio doesn't get D.J. if Groce is not recruiting himself," Thomas said two weeks ago in a conversation. "He showed he wasn't too big to drop by school himself."

Cooper isn't Jabari Parker, the crown prince of Chicago, but I have a feeling Groce will have a shot with Chicago's best players. Cooper has been telling people that Groce will do very well in his hometown, and tweeted congratulations to current Illinois guard D.J. Richardson.