When “Oskee Wow Wow” erupted from the women’s basketball band Tuesday night, 1,145 Illini faithful at Assembly Hall raised to their feet. The cheerleaders ran in, waving the giant Block I school flags, but only eight Illinois women’s basketball players sprinted onto the court after them.

Head coach Matt Bollant received 11 scholarship players and one recruit when he accepted the job at Illinois on March 28. The number of players was reduced to 10 when junior Alexis Burke transferred to Rutgers and Centrese McGee transferred to DePaul.

Transfers Sarah Hartwell from Georgia Tech and Cassie Dumoulin from Elgin Community College have already been added by the coaching staff, but, with Adrienne GodBold academically ineligible and Kierra Morris and Nia Oden injured, the Illini only dressed eight for Tuesday’s exhibition.

Bollant expects Oden to be back for Illinois’ second and final exhibition game on Tuesday, but the team will still dress six less than the 15 scholarships players it is allowed.

Bollant is in the process of building depth at Illinois. He already has six commitments in the 2013 class to replace seniors GodBold and Karisma Penn. Bollant also said another walk-on may join the team in the coming weeks.

Of the six commits, four are from Illinois and inside the “five-hour radius” that Bollant said he likes to recruit at his introductory news conference. The two other commits are Taylor Gleason from Goodrich, Mich., and Mikaala Shackelford from Minnetonka, Minn.

None of the six recruits are ranked among the top-100 by either Blue Star Basketball or ESPN, although Blue Star ranks Illinois commitments Jacqueline Grant of Maine South High School, as the No. 108 high school senior in the country, and Bolingbrook High School’s Kennedy Cattenhead No. 165. Morton High School’s Sarah Livingston, the younger sister of NBA player Shaun Livingston, and Chicago Marist High School’s Leah Bolton round out the class.

Law had success recruiting, highlighted by the No. 3 recruiting class in the country in 2009. Bollant showed that recruiting rankings don’t mean everything when his less-heralded recruits took down Illinois 82-62 last season.

“A few years ago, the junior class came out of high school as the No. 3 recruiting class in the country,” Bollant said. “How does Green Bay, where the best we’ve ever had is No. 55, how do we beat that team by 20 points?”

Bollant said the current roster is more athletic than his players were at Green Bay, and he plans to take advantage of it.

“Coming out of high school, we couldn’t get those players to visit Green Bay,” Bollant said in March.

Bollant said he expects recruiting will be easier at Illinois.

“At Green Bay, we struggled to beat out the Big Ten,” Bollant said. “We could beat them on the basketball court, but, because of the academics, because of the campus, we couldn’t beat them out in recruiting.”

“The academic piece is so good at Illinois, that’s a huge thing for us,” Bollant said Thursday. “At Green Bay, we never got a kid because of the academic piece there.”

He said he has already been able to reap the benefits Illinois has to offer.

“Already we’ve beaten DePaul on three different kids,” Bollant said. “We beat Oklahoma State on a kid. We’ve gotten kids over other Big Ten schools already. Your first year is your hardest year recruiting, and we’re beating a lot of BCS schools out for kids, and that’s a great sign for the future.”

Johnathan can be reached at [email protected] and on Twitter @jhett93.