The six Illinois basketball home games I’m most excited to attend

Illinois basketball is almost back. The home schedule is loaded. Football is 3-3 and frustrating me every Saturday. I’m ready to be back in State Farm Center.

This isn’t a ranking of the six most important home games. It’s the six I’m most excited to attend.

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Maybe it’s a big opponent. Maybe there’s an NBA prospect I want to see. Maybe Scottie Pippen’s kid is playing. Maybe it’s just November, and I’ve spent seven months without Illinois basketball.

Here we go.

6. Fairleigh Dickinson — Nov. 2

Why am I excited to see Fairleigh Dickinson?

Because it’s Nov. 2, and there will be an Illinois basketball game happening in front of me.

That’s it.

There are only so many times during an offseason I can look at roster updates, watch clips of new guys and convince myself that THIS is definitely the year before I need to see an actual basketball game.

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FDU is the first one that counts.

They could play the Washington Generals on opening night, and I’d probably have them sixth on this list.

5. Penn State — Dec. 12

Now the games start getting real.

Illinois actually opens Big Ten play four days earlier at Minnesota, but Penn State is the first conference team coming to Champaign.

And there’s just something about that first Big Ten home game.

By this point, Illinois will have already played Texas Tech, Duke and UConn. We’ll have had more than a month to wildly overreact to every good and bad thing this team does.

Then Penn State comes to town, and conference season is officially in the building.

Roko Prkacin is in action during the BKT EuroCup Round 8 match between U-BT Cluj-Napoca and CB Gran Canaria at the BT Arena in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, on November 21, 2023. (Photo by Flaviu Buboi/NurPhoto via Getty Images) | NurPhoto via Getty Images

Penn State basically rebuilt its roster, but there’s one guy I’m interested in seeing: Roko Prkačin.

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He’s a 6-foot-8 Croatian (my friend Luke will probably love that) who has already played professional basketball in Europe and…

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Publish date : 2026-10-20 10:30:00

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