Brad Underwood has become known for Eastern European proclivities, but he’s always carried a reputation as an elite offensive coach. However, his first trip to the Elite Eight came courtesy of a dominant defensive performance in Thursday night’s 65-55 win over Kelvin Sampson’s Houston Cougars.
With one of the tallest lineups in the country, Illinois has been a better defensive team this year, while maintaining its offensive efficiency and its five-out, spread concepts. Perhaps to maintain his rep, Underwood was happy to pass the buck for his team’s genius defensive approach to assistant Cam Crocker, who designed a game plan that was the ultimate disrespect for Houston’s five-star freshman, Chris Cenac Jr.
“Cam did a nice job,” Underwood told the media postgame. “We were fairly comfortable with Cenac shooting short to mid-range jump shots, and we’ll live with that. Every shot he took was one that their guards didn’t take… it worked.”
#Illini head coach Brad Underwood credits assistant coach Cam Crocker for the defensive game plan.
— Glenn Kinley (@glenn_kinley) March 27, 2026
He says Illinois planned to let Chris Cenac take short/mid-range jump shots.
"Every shot he took was one their guards didn't take... It worked."
(Video from KXAN) pic.twitter.com/szWbPjtBqW
The Illini dared Chris Cenac Jr. to beat them, and he didn’t come close
Cenac has had a solid freshman year. He’s an uber-athletic forward who has learned to play an unselfish style under Sampson and has flourished as a switchable defender and quality rebounder. However, despite shooting 48.5 percent from the field this year, he shot just 37.5 percent on mid-range twos, where 35.3 percent of his shots came from (per CBBanalytics.com).
Often, with JoJo Tugler’s impressive gravity as a rim-runner and primary responsibilities as a screener for Houston’s guards, Kingston Flemings, Emmanuel Sharpe, and Milos Uzan, Cenac was relegated to sitting in the dunker spot or roaming the baseline to give some semblance of spacing. And with his sub-30 percent stroke on corner threes, that often meant mid-ranger jumpers.
Rather than allowing the threat of a Cenac catch-and-shoot from 15 feet to pull additional rim protection away from the paint, Illinois all but ignored him, allowing Cenac to shoot 3-9 from two-point range and 0-3 from beyond the arc in 27 minutes. While he was the Cougars’ leading rebounder, they were -6 with him on the floor, and their offensive rating was so poor that Sampson had to pull him in favor of Chase McCarty to get more shooting on the floor late.
Houston w/ Cenac | net rating | off rating | def rating | ORB% | mid-range 2s FGA% | mid-range 2s FG% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Season | +26.7 | 121.7 | 95.0 | 35.6 | 21.1 | 39.3 |
vs. Illinois | -16.9 | 87.6 | 104.5 | 25.9 | 32.5 | 15.4 |
By allocating more resources at the rim, Illinois forced just 23.4 percent of Houston’s field goal attempts to come inside the paint. Throughout the season, shots inside the paint and at the rim accounted for nearly 40 percent of the Cougars' attempts. Houston's reluctance to attack the rim also played into the hands of an Illinois defense that fouls at the lowest rate in the country, as the Cougars made just one trip to the line.
Yet, even when everything is going wrong for Sampson's teams offensively, they can always fall back on offensive rebounding to provide a solid floor of offensive production. However, that's much easier when there aren't multiple 7-footers at the rim. Houston’s 26.2 percent offensive rebound rate against Illinois was nearly 10 percent below its season average, its third-lowest mark of the year, and lowest in a loss.
Plus, with the Illini funnelling shots to Cenac, fellow five-star freshman Kingston Flemings, Houston’s leading scorer, finished with just 11 points on 4-10 shooting and a 16.9 percent usage rate, his fourth lowest all season and the only time he had a usage rate under 20 percent in a loss. If Underwood was going to lose, he couldn’t let Flemings beat him, and whether he deserves the credit or Crocker does, he didn’t.
A core set of fundamental principles and a talented roster is how you consistently win year after year. In the NCAA Tournament, a chaotically flawed but undeniably beautiful way to crown a champion, you need a bespoke game plan tailored to each opponent. With his first trip to the Elite Eight, Underwood has proven he can do both.
Now, he just has to get through Ben McCollum, who, through just two years in Division I, has already proven himself to be one of the best in a one-game setting.