A generation of Illinois basketball fans knows how ugly we have had things in the past decade or so.
There was a solid chunk in the 2010s when the Illini were somewhat of a laughingstock. We couldn’t land the big recruits, and the pinnacle of the sport, a national championship, wasn’t even a possibility, as Illinois couldn’t make the NCAA tournament.
The end of the John Groce era and the beginning of the Brad Underwood era were pretty bad. The decline started well before them, though. Illinois had a great run of coaches, but then we couldn’t build on a trip to the national championship in 2005.
Underwood has corrected things, as Illinois has now made it to five-straight NCAA tournaments, and it would have been six-straight if it weren’t for a worldwide pandemic. But what preceded this great run was disappointment after disappointment. Illinois missed six straight NCAA tournaments.
While we can’t go back in time and rewrite history, a new proposal is being pushed that could have changed the fortunes for the Orange and Blue.
On Thursday, Yahoo Sports reported that the NCAA tournament is getting closer to expanding from 64 teams up to 76 teams. The report says that the executives are “inching closer” to the agreement.
Executives are “inching closer” to an agreement to expand the NCAA tournament to 76 teams with a 12-game “opening round” played at two sites starting in 2026-27, per @RossDellenger. pic.twitter.com/R8mjmuZfue
— Yahoo Sports (@YahooSports) October 2, 2025
Right now, the NCAA tournament has 68 teams that get in, technically, but there are eight teams vying for the final four spots to make the official 64 teams in the bracket.
Illinois basketball would have seen more NCAA tournament berths with this new format
I see a lot of people complaining that this would be too many teams, and that an expansion would be a slippery slope into more expansion down the road. While I understand the concerns, I have always been in the camp of the more the merrier.
As an Illinois fan, prior seasons would have been more exciting. From my calculations, the Illini would have gone dancing at least three more times since 2010.
During the 2009-10 campaign, Illinois finished the regular season 18-13 overall and was 10-8 in the Big Ten. They won a game in the Big Ten Tournament, too. The Illini were on the bubble and made it to the NIT as a No. 1 seed. That gets them into the NCAA tournament if it were a field of 76.
Even though athletic director Mike Thomas was on a firing spree at the time, it would have been much harder to fire Bruce Weber if he had made three straight NCAA tournament appearances before that disastrous 2011-12 season.
John Groce’s time with the Illini would have been a little different, too. He made the NCAA tournament in year one but failed to see the postseason the next four years before getting fired.
With an expanded NCAA tournament field to 76 teams, Groce would have made the postseason two more times, giving him three NCAA tournament appearances in five seasons. Illinois was the No. 2 seed in the NIT in 2013-14 and in 2016-17. Both teams would have been in the NCAA tournament.
I understand some of the people wanting the NCAA tournament not to get watered down. Believe me, there is so much watered down in today’s world. But I am looking at it from a fans perspective. The more teams in means there are more fanbases who feel they have a stake in the action. That is always good for the sport.