Big Ten Basketball: Each team’s worst performance of the last decade

Illinois

December 18, 2010 (UIC 57, Illinois 54) (GS: 18)

Since their magical season in 2005, things have been dismal for Illinois. They haven’t even been to the Sweet Sixteen since that season and the most recent NCAA Tournament appearance was back in 2013. John Groce couldn’t get the job done and Brad Underwood is only just starting to build something in year two. Despite this, we’re going to focus on a few games from the Bruce Weber era, the man responsible for coaching (and not him‘self’ recruiting) that 2005 Finalist.

For the Illini, 2009 was a year with several of those struggles. Even ignoring Illinois’ NCAA Tournament loss to 12-seed Western Kentucky, there were two terrible offensive performances that stood out. At the end of January, Illinois dropped a 59-36 game at Minnesota. Worse yet, the Illini welcomed Penn State a few weeks later and the game was an insult to basketball, a 38-33 loss in which Illinois didn’t shoot a single free throw.

And yet what transpired against UIC in 2010 was far worse for the program as a whole. The 12th ranked program in the nation at the time, Illinois entered the game on a seven game winning streak, a run that included wins over Maryland, North Carolina and Gonzaga. In this close battle with a familiar in-state foe, Illinois was outperformed by a team that won 7 games the whole season (two of which came against 3-28 Toledo). UIC committed a rough 19 turnovers, but used a late run to eliminate a 7-point Illinois lead with 5 minutes left. Robo Kreps led the way with 15 points for UIC while Demetri McCamey had 16 points for the Illini.

I’ll stress again that while this wasn’t a home game for the Illini, they were definitely expected to flatten UIC, but that is not what happened on that cold December night. While this is not a bright program these days, there’s plenty of time for Illinois to return to glory… or time for another loss to UIC.