Illinois basketball was in a tough battle with Maryland on Saturday, but ended up coming away with a big win.
The Illini needed this victory for the Big Ten Tournament and NCAA tournament seeding. Illinois will now get the coveted triple-bye in the conference tournament this week.
After the game, Brad Underwood did his usual postgame press conference. He was answering questions, and everything seemed to be going fine. That was until one question clearly got under his skin.
From the 4:33 to 4:47 mark in the postgame press conference video, you will see the exchange between the reporter and Underwood.
The question, “Brad, you have struggled a little bit in close games of late. Does this give you guys confidence because you know you are going to have close ones coming up?”
Brad Underwood’s answer, “I think that is a bunch of crap. You can think what you want to think. We pulled away in a lot of those, too. Yeah, next question. I didn’t like that one very much.”
This didn’t seem like too harsh of a question for Illinois basketball head coach Brad Underwood
I don’t know who asked the question, but honestly, this isn’t a question that was off the wall.
Illinois has played in a lot of close games lately, and we dropped three games in overtime out of the last eight games we played. So, it is not like Illinois is winning close games as of late.
The question probably could have been worded differently, too. He did come off like Illinois always loses close games. That isn’t the case. There have been plenty of games this season when Illinois was in a battle, and we forged ahead late to win by double digits.
I do think it is good for Illinois to see a victory in a close game down to the wire, though. We have lost some tough ones in the month of February, so closing this game out against Maryland is nice to see. This was a rare moment for Underwood in what tends to be a pretty level-headed press conference after each game.