Illinois Basketball: The saddest anniversary in Illini history

I had to take a deep breath before proceeding to type this tidbit about the Illinois basketball team.

Do you know what today is? Honestly, I probably would have forgotten if it wasn’t for Mike Pearson (@illinilegends) tweeting about it yesterday. Today, April 4, 2019, is the 14-year anniversary of the Illini falling to North Carolina in the national championship game.

That game, among others in that NCAA tournament, will always be remembered. I will always remember I just turned 15 years old a few months prior. My dad and I were down in Myrtle Beach during my spring break my freshman year in high school. We played 36 holes of golf every day down there for a week. It was always the best part of the year.

Even with a loss that will haunt me for a lifetime, just getting to the national title made me happy at the time. I was devastated after the loss, though. I was so close to my first title win as a fan. Who would have thought, just 14 years later, not only am I still without a title, my beloved Illini are the furthest away I have ever seen them from getting to the pinnacle again.

If you are an Illini fan, you know the history since that great title run back in 2005. Deron Williams left a year early. Luther Head and Roger Powell were both seniors, so they departed as well. Dee Brown would have left for the NBA if it wasn’t for an injury he suffered during the pre-draft workouts. Both Brown and James Augustine came back for their senior campaigns and helped lead Illinois to another postseason.

In the years following that 2006 NCAA tournament appearance, the Illini program turned into a roller coaster of emotions. Bruce Weber would only make the postseason in three of his final six seasons as the head coach of the program. His final year, with extremely high expectations, ended up being a disaster. He had so much talent on the roster but couldn’t finish the season strong. This is where the true decline in the program started.

I will say, as many fans already have, Mike Thomas took over as the athletic director and ruined the revenue generating sports. Weber may have been fired by anyone who took over the program, but the decision to hire his successor, John Groce, is one that will go down in the record books as, arguably, the biggest hit to the success of the team in program history.

Groce made the NCAA tournament his first year in Champaign, albeit with Weber’s team. That Illini team was, actually, pretty good. They had a lot of experience and should have made it to the Sweet 16 if it wasn’t for some bad calls down the stretch. While that 2012-2013 season was a solid one, that was the last time any Illini fan had a chance to watch the Orange and Blue in the NCAA tournament.

Since the first year under Groce, Illinois has failed to make it to the Big Dance. We just finished up the sixth-straight season without a postseason berth. This program hasn’t even hit 20 wins in a regular season since that first year under Groce either. A combination of bad decision making, which led to bad coaching and recruiting, has now put this program in a position where we just hope to get back on the bubble, let alone go deep in the NCAA tournament.

I look back 14 years ago and see a team that had so much success. They had so much fun on the basketball court. When I was watching that team fall to the Tar Heels, I wasn’t thinking the future was going to be grim. I was thinking this is the start of something special. This program is one of the best in the nation. While I still think this program has the potential to be one of the best in the nation, something needs to start changing. That change needs to happen this upcoming season. We aren’t going seven seasons without a postseason berth. You can take that to the bank.