Years ago, when this blog was young and I was traditionally employed, Illinois made a nice run in the NIT under interim head coach Jamall Walker.
Walker is still in the greater Champaign-Urbana area.
As far as we know.
His Wikipedia page says he’s an assistant coach at Illinois, still.
But we’re not here to talk about Walker.
We’re here to talk about Brad Underwood, the guy Illinois announced it was hiring in between a first round victory over Valpo and a second round victory over Boise State that season.
Underwood was a hot name at the time. His Oklahoma State team had missed the NIT on the high side, blowing their chances even after an 0-6 start to conference play. That team’s offense was rated by some to be the best in the country, combining lethal outside shooting with aggressive offensive rebounding. The Pokes couldn’t really play defense, of course, surrendering 90 or more points in each of their last three games (all losses), but dammit they were fun, and it’s still a shame they didn’t lose in Morgantown that February and punch their NIT ticket.
Fast forward to the present day, and you’ll find Underwood may have learned from that fabled could-have-been season in Stillwater. Cursed by a strong schedule and no bad losses, Oklahoma State had a weak NIT case to begin with. Not so with this year’s Illini. Illinois has one of the weakest non-conference résumés in the country, pairing losses to the likes of Miami and Mizzou with victories over The Citadel, North Carolina A&T, and Lindenwood (a Division II school that looks quite scenic on Google Images). Plus a few other games. They also don’t do the offense thing quite as well as Underwood’s guys did that year—one of the worst shooting teams in the country, though they do still get a lot of second chances, creating what sounds like a torturous experience for everyone involved. Beautiful.
We wouldn’t be talking about Illinois, though, if they were just another potential NIT team. We’re not that content-starved yet. No, we’re talking about Illinois here, you and me, NIT fans, the two of us, just sharing a nice blog post over our afternoon glass of chocolate milk, because Illinois might win this damn thing. Look at ‘em. They’re 33rd in KenPom right now, right around where Penn State and Texas each were entering their respective NITitle campaigns. They have to play a lot of good basketball teams down the stretch. They also have to play Northwestern twice in games in which they have nothing to gain.
The NIT picture’s always fairly open, but as of today, Illinois’s standing out. And if you think Kofi Cockburn and Giorgi Bezhanishvili are fun in the regular season, wait ‘til you see what they can do against Colorado in an NIT quarterfinal. I don’t know either. Bet it’s a blast, though.
