Men’s basketball head coach Bruce Weber announced Tuesday that top recruit Quinton Watkins is academically ineligible and will not be enrolling at Illinois this year.

Watkins, the Inglewood, Calif., native who was expected to compete for playing time this season, has been attending school in California for the past week in case his transcript didn’t pass NCAA inspections.

“At this point, it’s a really complicated academic issue that, obviously because of privacy laws, we really can’t get into it too much,” Weber said. “We’re disappointed. We were kind of hoping we found a player late, a quality player, a top 100. It’s just disappointing, not only for us, but for the kid and his family. In the future, we’re just going to have to wait and see what happens with his academic issues, and we’ll have to deal with that at a later time.”

At practice Thursday, Weber said Watkins would have been with the team had he been a safe bet to pass the NCAA Clearinghouse.

“There’s probably kids all around the country that haven’t been cleared that are in school,” Weber said. “But if there are really some questions and some doubts on some things, then that’s the reason you might not have them come, stay in the dorms, and go to class.”

“We did not want to put him in a bind,” Weber added.

Weber said Watkins could attend junior college, prep school or go the unconventional route and enroll at Illinois in January, thereby “greyshirting.” A greyshirt is different from a redshirt in that a greyshirt maintains his eligibility but has never attended school full time. Greyshirting is commonly used for fall sports when athletes graduate high school in the winter and attend the University in the spring.

“That’s a possibility,” Weber said. “Football does it all the time. That doesn’t happen that often in basketball, maybe in some transfer cases. But there are some different scenarios.”

If Watkins had cleared, he would have added depth at a depleted guard position for the Illini. The news of his ineligibility comes less than a week after the decision to redshirt guard Jamar Smith.

Chester Frazier, undoubtedly the most seasoned guard on the team, will see the likes of Demetri McCamey, Trent Meacham, Steve Holdren, Calvin Brock and Chris Hicks attempt to secure the platoon. McCamey, a freshman, was ranked the 10th best high school guard in the country on Scout.com last season.

Weber said Meacham could move primarily to shooting guard, while Holdren, and Brock in particular, could improve enough in practice to help fill some holes.

“We have to have some other guys establish themselves,” Weber said. “You never know. I’m not sure what will happen.”

The Illini recruited Watkins last year after top Illinois recruit, guard Eric Gordon, spurned them for Indiana.