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Scared money don’t make money, and that is the phrase Brad Underwood must be living by going into next season. Illinois is coming off its first Final Four appearance since 2005 and came up just short against UConn, but it doesn’t feel like the Illini were just a one-hit wonder.
Sure, Illinois will be without breakout star Keaton Wagler, who came to Champaign as just a three-star recruit and turned into the Big Ten Freshman of the Year and the No. 5 overall pick in the 2026 NBA Draft. A lot changes without Wagler on the court, but Underwood was able to keep some key players at Illinois, added a top player from the transfer portal, and has a stellar freshman class coming in.
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The time is now for Illinois, and Underwood is doing everything possible to get the Illini not just back to the Final Four next season, but one game further to the National Championship. Before Underwood can think of the NCAA Tournament, he must get through the regular season, which starts with non-conference play, and what better way to prepare for the postseason than playing the teams that will likely be there.
“We want to play high-level games,” Underwood said in a recent media availability. “There’s nobody a bigger advocate of great competition, high-level games. They don’t hurt you in terms of the new analytic systems that we all use.”
Brad Underwood’s approach to Illinois’ non-conference schedule is slowly becoming the norm
Every year, there are always a handful of teams that get left out of the NCAA Tournament that many people feel deserved to be there. They might have had an okay conference record, but they use the excuse that their conference was the ‘toughest’ in college basketball. However, the selection committee isn’t only looking at conference play, but the non-conference side as well.
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Underwood believes that the non-conference schedule Illinois played last season, which featured No. 13 Texas Tech, No. 11 Alabama, No. 5 UConn, No. 13 Tennessee and Missouri, helped the…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/brad-underwoods-hunt-high-level-153001162.html
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Publish date : 2026-07-16 15:30:00
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