Illinois basketball has plenty of opportunities to kick down door of AP Top 25

Now that the Illinois basketball team is a couple of weeks into the 2024-25 season, the AP Top 25 is starting to sort out with the haves and have-nots.

It is still extremely early in the year, so it is hard to see who is better than who. Already, two AP Top 25 polls have been released, and do you know who you won’t find on them? The Illini.

Illinois didn’t make the first AP Top 25 poll of the season. That was an understandable decision by the voters, as the program lost all but two players from last year’s team.

After a couple of games, the Illini have looked good. While the competition hasn’t been the best, the program is firing on all cylinders. The AP Top 25 seems to not care much, though.

In the latest AP Top 25 poll, the voters are still leaving Illinois out. We received 144 votes, the most out of any non-ranked program, to be on the coveted list. So, technically, Illinois is ranked No. 26.

Illinois basketball has a chance to skyrocket up the AP Top 25 in the coming weeks

I think Illinois should be ranked right now. It is kind of bonkers that a team like Texas A&M can fall to UCF and Baylor can fall to Gonzaga by 38 points, but they are still both ranked in the AP Top 25.

That is neither here nor there, though. This isn’t the final ranking of the season. It is mid-November. Illinois has plenty of time to not only move up into the AP Top 25, but we have opportunities to climb high in the ranking.

On Wednesday, Illinois has another cupcake contest against Oakland. This is the final rehearsal before one of our big non-conference matchups.

The Illini are set to take on No. 2 Alabama on Wednesday, November 20. This is a “neutral site” game between the two programs, but the game is being played in Birmingham, Alabama. Let’s see how neutral this site really is.

Do you want to see a team shoot up the ranking? If Illinois can knock off Oakland and then take down a top team like Alabama, I would imagine the Illini will go from somewhere around No. 25 in the country to a top 10 program overnight.

There are still big games in the non-conference to help the Illini shoot up the ranking even with a loss to the Crimson Tide. Both No. 16 Arkansas and No. 12 Tennessee await Illinois. These two programs are going to be tough, but they would earn the Illini a lot of respect with the voters. Big games are ahead, and Illinois has plenty of options to help shoot up the AP Top 25.