Illinois Basketball: 2022-23 season preview and outlook for Fighting Illini

For much of the last decade, Illinois had been a mediocre basketball program. It’s been nearly two decades since that incredible team appeared in the national title game in 2005 and the Illini never really followed up that success. The program has run through a couple of coaches in the meantime but seems to have certainly found something with Brad Underwood. Now entering his sixth year as head coach of the Illini, Underwood has had a few breakthroughs while leading the charge.

Two seasons ago, the Illini surprised many with an impressive campaign, winning the Big Ten Tournament and earning a top seed in the 2021 NCAA Tournament. Last season, the Illini won the conference’s regular-season crown. The program has come a long way under Underwood, who finished under .500 in his first two seasons, though there’s still work to be done.

Neither of those last two Illinois teams got past the opening weekend of the Big Dance, upended in the second round by Loyola-Chicago and Houston respectively. Frankly, last year’s team should have lost to 13-seed Chattanooga in the opening round but got some fortuitous plays near the end of the game. This Illini program has not been past the opening weekend since that national title game run nearly two decades ago, but let’s not focus on just the negative.

Underwood brought Ayo Dosunmu and Kofi Cockburn to Champaign and turned them into college basketball stars. He lost his entire coaching staff and still managed to build a conference champion last season. The Illini move forward this coming season with a plethora of new talent, with the Illini emerging as one of the national winners from the Transfer Portal. However, with the current state of the Big Ten, Illinois is in much better shape than some people expect.

We’ll be looking closely at this season’s Illinois squad, taking a deep dive into the roster, the schedule, and what we can expect from them. The Big Ten has historically been one of the most impressive conferences in college basketball, and this program has fared quite well these last two seasons. Illinois has won 31 of its 40 conference games in the last two seasons, but can this year’s new-look team replicate that success?