Illinois basketball has started the 2020-21 campaign as one of the darlings of the college basketball world.
A pick by many to go deep into the postseason, the Illini received even more notoriety when the Associated Press named the Orange and Blue the No. 8 team in the country in their preseason top 25.
The highest preseason ranking since the 2004-05 national title run, Illinois looked to have earned the top 10 status during their first two games of the season. A 62-point thumping of North Carolina A&T was followed up by a 59-point beat down of Chicago State.
A small speedbump in the road about sent the Illini program off course, but Illinois managed to break through the adversity to pull out a 77-75 win over Ohio in the final game of the round-robin MTE last week.
With the Illini starting the season 3-0, the AP Top 25 continued to take notice of the Orange and Blue and their talented program. Their No. 8 national ranking is now No. 5 in the nation. This has to do with Illinois winning games and some of the teams ahead of them dropping some early-season contests.
No. 3 Villanova was one of the teams to fall this past week. An unranked Virginia Tech team got the best of the Wildcats 81-73 in overtime. No. 4 Virginia fell as well, as an unranked San Francisco bunch took down the Cavaliers 61-60.
Another team that fell behind Illinois was the No. 6 ranked Kansas Jayhawks. They fell to No. 1 Gonzaga, so the fall from the No. 6 spot wasn’t huge. But the Illini did manage to move ahead of their former head coach, Bill Self.
A tough couple of weeks for the Illini.
Illinois hasn’t played the best of the best just yet, but the rough part of the schedule is coming up here shortly.
On December 2, the Illini welcome in the No. 2 ranked Baylor Bears. This should be a great matchup of two teams looking to stay at the pinnacle of the college basketball world.
Things don’t get much easier for the Orange and Blue after the Baylor game, though. The following week, on December 8, Illinois takes on the No. 6 ranked Duke Blue Devils in the ACC/Big Ten Challenge. This is another proving ground game for the Illini.
I love where Illinois is ranked in the latest AP Top 25. While there was a struggle against Ohio, the Illini still came out with a win. That is all that matters.