TCR Bracketology: A Way-Too-Early Look at Where Illinois Fits

With non-conference season wrapping up on Tuesday, it is time to get our first glance at how the bracket is shaping up. For Illinois, wins already banked against Texas Tech, Tennessee, and at Ohio State give them three Quad 1 wins and have the Illini well on their way to another tourney appearance. What Underwood and the Balkans will be playing for (besides Big Ten supremacy) will be an easier path to a Final Four in Indianapolis.

Besides getting a higher seed to get easier early opponents, there is a dream path out there of St. Louis to Chicago to Indianapolis, but Illinois has a lot of competition for those spots. Who do the Illini need to pass on the seed line to get those spots?

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For St. Louis, the teams to pay attention to are Iowa State and Purdue. Illinois will have to finish above one of those teams to get the Saint Louis first and second round site. Right now, both of those teams are projected as 2-seeds, so Illinois will have some work to do, or one of them needs to have a disappointing conference season. There is a chance a team like Kansas or Nebraska goes to St. Louis as well if Oklahoma City has already been filled, and a team like Iowa or Louisville could rise up and go for those spots as well, but the main competition are the Cyclones and Boilermakers.

For Chicago, it basically means being the highest seeded Big Ten team. Illinois, Purdue, Michigan, Michigan State and Nebraska would all have Chicago as their preferred regional site, but the seeding procedures say the top four seeded (1-4 lines) teams need to go in different regions, so after the first one takes Chicago, the next three will need to go to Houston, Washington D.C., or San Jose. Since the Big Ten is so strong, there is a chance that there will be more than four teams on the top four lines and Chicago becomes an option again for the fifth team, but at that point a bunch of other seeding procedures also come into play. In this iteration for example, Illinois is the fifth seeded Big Ten…

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Publish date : 2025-12-30 13:34:00

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