Illinois Basketball: Illini to face toughest schedule in decades

Illinois basketball might be in for one of the toughest schedules the program has had in quite some time.

I think most Illini fans at this point are ready for the basketball season to start. As the football team tries to scrounge together a bowl year, the basketball team is poised to have a big season.

Coming into the season with three graduate transfers, a fifth-year senior, and a regular senior all projected to be key contributors, the expectations are rightfully high for this program. But this talent and experience won’t have an easy path to Brad Underwood’s fourth-straight NCAA tournament appearance.

Just last week, the preseason AP Top 25 poll was released. This poll included Illinois at No. 25 in the country. Starting the season ranked is nothing new for the Illini, though. We have now started four straight seasons inside the AP Top 25 and have now been ranked at some point in five straight seasons.

Along with the Illini, there are 24 other programs that have a number next to their name. We will be facing some of these talented teams throughout the 2023-24 season as well.

The 2023-24 season will be no cakewalk for the Illinois basketball program

Underwood and the Illinois coaching staff did a great job reloading and building around the players who returned to the roster this offseason. This is the best Illinois roster I have seen since the Dee Brown and Deron Williams days.

Illinois is going to need this loaded roster to get through the 2023-24 schedule as well. The Illini will be facing seven ranked opponents this season, as it stands right now. All of these programs are currently ranked inside the top 10 in the AP Top 25 poll.

The last time Illinois played seven teams ranked inside the top 10 was in 2020-21. We played seven top 10 programs that season, but only five of those opponents were in the regular season. Illinois also played two Big Ten opponents in the Big Ten Tournament that were ranked inside the top 10.

So, when was the last time Illinois played seven top-10 opponents in the regular season? You have to go all the way back to the 1987-88 campaign, the year before the Final 4 run by the Flyin’ Illini. That year, Illinois played seven top-10 opponents in the regular season and finished 2-5 against those teams. The Illini went on to win 23 games and advanced to the second round as a No. 3 seed.

Things will likely change throughout the season, and who knows which of these programs will still be in the top 10 or even ranked when Illinois faces them. On top of these top 10 matchups, Illinois will also face Wisconsin, Maryland, Missouri, and Indiana this season, all of whom received votes to be in the AP Top 25. This season should be a doozy.