The Illinois basketball program failed to make the Sweet 16 this season, as the Kentucky Wildcats took us down in the Round of 32.
You have to give Kentucky credit, they played a good game. They came out and punched the Illini in the mouth, and we didn’t have an answer.
In the postgame press conference, Brad Underwood talked about how much this team and the players mean to him. He said all of the right things that a good coach would say, and I look forward to having Underwood as the head coach of the Illinois basketball program for years to come.
With that being said, we are all fans. Illinois started the 2024-25 campaign off well, and we competed against some of the best teams in the country. The team I saw at the beginning of the year is not the team that we ended up with at the end of the season.
I was arguing that this Illinois team was special back in November and December. I mean, we almost clipped No. 1 Tennessee and had wins over Arkansas, Wisconsin, and Missouri before the turn of the calendar to 2025.
At that point, I thought Illinois could have a legitimate shot to not only get back to the Elite 8, but I thought a national championship wasn’t out of the question. We had a great point guard, good experience in the rotation, and a big man who could shoot well from everywhere on the court.
This season should have been special, but what we got at the end was what we had down the stretch. Disappointment after disappointment, and a lack of cohesion.
The decaying of the Illinois basketball team during the 2024-25 season was rapid
What I would give to go back to late December. Illinois knocked off then No. 9 Oregon, 109-77. It was a special time, but the decaying of the Illini was soon to start.
Injury and illness definitely played a factor in what we saw during the second half of the 2024-25 season. You have to use both hands to count the number of players who missed games due to either injury or illness. But at the end of the day, I am not going to put our shortcomings on just those two things.
Illinois changed as a program in the second half of the season. We lacked a toughness is most games that I thought we had earlier in the year. The biggest part of the decaying was Illinois’ lack of defense.
Before January 11, Illinois gave up 80 points just two times. One was the loss to Alabama and the other was the win over Wisconsin. From January 11 on, the Illini gave up at least 80 points in 11 contests. The defense completely disappeared.
Again, health issues do play a factor in what happened to Illinois, but I also believe there is an element of this team just falling apart.
There was a lot of pressure on this team. Some of the players were highly touted coming out of high school. Others had NBA talk surrounding them. It takes a special kind of player to not fold under that pressure. But, sadly, Illinois couldn’t handle what was coming at them, and a potentially special season is no more.