Illinois Basketball: 3 reasons why Illini will win 2021 Big Ten regular-season title

2. Weaker conference

The Big Ten was arguably the best conference in college basketball this past season and Illinois was able to hold their own. Fast-forward to the 2020-21 campaign and it will be hard for the conference to keep up with its past success.

Penn State loses Lamar Stevens and Mike Watkins to graduation, Maryland loses Jalen Smith and Anthony Cowan Jr., and Michigan State loses Cassius Winston and Xavier Tillman. These are all key losses for teams that were in the top portion of the Big Ten this past season. While each team that lost key contributors may not drop off the scene as much as some may think, they will still be tasked with replacing these players with freshmen and transfers for the most part.

The Illini have an opportunity to take advantage of these key losses and assert themselves at the top of the conference this season. Now, I’m not saying that there will be little competition for their quest for a Big Ten championship because there will still be a good amount of resistance.

Iowa returns POTY candidate Luka Garza as well as gets Jordan Bohannan back from an injury that kept him out of most of last season. Patrick McCaffery will look to have a full season under his belt after dealing with health issues last season, and Iowa returns all starters from a year ago.

Michigan State has to replace Winston and Tillman but will do so with Rocket Watts and Marquette transfer Joey Hauser. Not too far away in Ann Arbor, Michigan brings in top-30 center Hunter Dickenson to replace Jon Teske and Wisconsin returns their starting five from a year ago as well.

Even though there is still a good amount of talent in the Big Ten this year, I believe that the conference will dip down a little bit in competitiveness and will allow for the Illini to have a bit of an easier road than this past season.