The women’s Illinois basketball team is gearing up for the season, and we got a glimpse of what is to come on Thursday night.
An exhibition game took place against Maryville. This was a chance for the Illini to show off the new talent on the roster and to get some old faces back into the mix.
While the talk of the town has been the newcomers via the great recruiting class and the transfer portal, Illinois has a big returning player who will finally see the court once again.
Gretchen Dolan was supposed to be a huge part of the Illini last season. She was going to be, at minimum, the first player off the bench for Illinois and a spark plug for the offense. But that ended eight games into the season, as she went down with a season-ending injury.
The crazy part is, Illinois still managed to make it to the second round of the NCAA tournament. Can you imagine what this team would have done with Dolan in the fold? A top-six seed easily.
Dolan’s ability to shoot from the perimeter was missed dearly in 2024-25. She would have stretched the floor tremendously, but that didn’t happen. In eight games she did play last season, Dolan took 3.9 three-pointers per game and hit them at a clip of 35.5%.
Points number 12, 13 & 14 for @gretchendolan4‼️ pic.twitter.com/SSNECtvXBa
— Illinois Women's Basketball (@IlliniWBB) October 31, 2025
On Thursday night against Maryville, Dolan picked up where she left off. She dropped 17 points on 7-of-13 from the field and a eye-popping 3-of-5 from three-point range.
Gretchen Dolan will be the main scoring threat for the Illinois basketball team’s backcourt
Illinois did a great job bringing in a ton of talent this offseason. We needed it, considering how much of the roster departed after aging out.
The only issue is that most of those players are frontcourt talent. Illinois did get five-star Destiny Jackson, but she is young and will be needed as more of a point guard role.
That leaves Dolan in the backcourt as Illinois’ main scorer. She is ready for the spotlight, as I believe she could have handled things the first two seasons in Champaign if it weren’t for so much experience on the team. Look for Dolan to have a huge season for Illinois.