Illinois basketball is now heading back to the NCAA tournament Sweet 16 for the second time in three seasons.
This type of success for the Illini hasn’t happened since the 2003-04 and 2004-05 stretch. Brad Underwood has Illinois clicking at exactly the right time, and now we head into the second weekend and will face No. 2 seed Houston.
The Cougars have had a great year, finishing the regular season with 26 wins and then falling to Arizona by just five points in the Big 12 Championship game.
Illinois is going to take on this juggernaut of a program, but it isn’t the first time in the Underwood era that we have faced Houston. While we have only played the Cougars six times in the history of the program, back in 2022, Illinois faced them in the NCAA tournament.
The Illini entered the postseason as a No. 4 seed. We snuck past Chattanooga in the first round. Houston then beat us down in the Round of 32. That was the same Houston team that beat No. 1 seed Arizona in the next round to advance to the Elite 8.
That 68-53 pounding that Illinois took was not fun. We kept up in the first half, but Houston had too much firepower and too good a defense for the Illini to really make an impact in the final 20 minutes of action.
Illinois will need to avoid that same fate on Thursday. How can we compete and maybe even beat the Cougars? Well, this isn’t the same style of Illinois team they played four years ago.
Illinois basketball is better in nearly all facets of the game than we were in that 2022 NCAA tournament
Let’s start off with the Illinois defense. I believe at all levels on the floor, the Illini are a much better defensive team than that 2022 squad.
In the paint, Illinois has multiple 7-foot-1 or taller players. We saw the impact that Tomislav and Zvonimir Ivisic had on VCU. They couldn’t get anything going around the hoop.
The 2022 squad only had one defensive stopper in the paint, and that was Kofi Cockburn. It was easy to game plan him out of the paint, though. He was a tree who couldn’t move from side to side.
Illinois’ perimeter defense is probably a little better now than back then, too. Da’Monte Williams and Trent Frazier were both animals out on the three-point arc, but honestly, that was about it for perimeter defense.
This Illinois team has a lockdown defender in Kylan Boswell. Keaton Wagler is very disciplined defensively and doesn’t do a lot of dumb things. The leap defensively that Ben Humrichous took this season has been impressive. I even like the hustle and heart Jake Davis brings to the court.
On the offensive end of the court, there is no comparison in my opinion. The 2026 Illinois squad is far superior to that of the 2022 team.
Frazier was okay offensively. He was always streaky. The same can be said for Coleman Hawkins and Luke Goode.
The best offensive threat Illinois had back then was Alfonso Plummer, who was incredible from three-point range. But much like Cockburn, you can game plan for one or two players.
I believe the great thing about the current Illinois team is that we have so many weapons. A team can focus on one or two players, but then we can throw three or four other players at them and not miss a beat.
The last two games have proved that. David Mirkovic went off for a massive double-double against Penn. VCU focused on him and Keaton Wagler on Saturday. The result was Andrej Stojakovic going off for 21 points.
From top to bottom, the Illinois team we are seeing today is much more equipped to handle the style that Houston plays. We are a better team than that squad that lost by 15 points four years ago in the Round of 32.
Illinois has a chance to really go deep in the NCAA tournament. This is a prove-it game on Thursday. Houston is one of the best teams in the country, but let’s put the college basketball world on notice. The Illini are here to stay.