Illinois Basketball: Fans feel NCAA berth doesn’t erase past
The Illinois basketball team has now won two games in a row and three out of their last four contests. This is a nice run but if they make the NCAA Tournament will it change the feeling of Illini fans?
Illinois fans have put up a with a lot over the last five seasons. They were teased in year one when first-year head coach John Groce led the team to the Final 32 of the postseason. This was supposed to be the beginning of great things to come.
The following year the team flamed out and got to the second round of the NIT. The year after that Illinois once again only made the NIT and was annihilated by Alabama in the first round.
Last season, any progress for the program came to a halt. They started slow and finished slow. The Illini finished with a 15-19 record overall and 5-13 in the Big Ten. If Groce wasn’t on the hot seat before he was now. This was unacceptable.
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Groce kept his job because there was a transition at the top with Josh Whitman coming in and there was the promise of a nice recruiting class coming in for 2017. This was a second life for Groce and he had a chance to take advantage of it.
Now the Illini are 16-12 overall and 6-9 in the Big Ten. This was supposed to be the season where Illinois made the NCAA Tournament and progress on the court heading into a big-time recruiting class. That hasn’t happened and we are looking at needing a three-game winning streak to end the season and a victory in the Big Ten Tournament to just make the Big Dance.
With all that has happened since Groce took the reins of this program, it is no wonder why 73-percent of Illini fans think that even if the team makes the postseason it doesn’t override the past 3.5 years of mediocre basketball.
The mini poll on Twitter says what the majority of Illini fans feel. I think we would all love to see the team make the postseason but that was the expectation before the season started. They would just be meeting an expectation for the first time.
Next: Illini players finishing season with heart
I hope this team pulls off an amazing feat by winning out and doing well in the Big Ten Tournament, but there is a long ways to go for Groce to prove that he should be in Champaign in the future.