No fans, even fans of blue bloods, can demand a final four every year. Over the past 5 years, only one team has made more than one Final Four, UConn (x2).
Kentucky, with annual top 10 recruiting classes, hasn’t made a Final Four since 2015.
Any fan who is upset with the job Brad has done here is a moron.
Yes, but I do think it's important to balance two competing ideas here, both of which have a kernel of truth but both of which I disagree with:
1. We should simply be happy with being an NCAA Tournament team every year in and of itself. Put another way, being a #4, #8, #7 and #6 seed over four seasons and never getting past the Second Round or something is A-okay simply because we were a part of March Madness. That is the expectation at a Minnesota or Wake Forest, IMO.
2. We practically
deserve some type of consistently elite product ala the Blue Bloods, even though it took them decades to amass the "infrastructure" to consistently reload like that.
I think Illini fans should reasonably expect something in the middle over a 10-year time period. I think Underwood has proven what I already believed - that the 1980s Henson, Self and early Weber years weren't (two separate) "Golden Age" flukes. We CAN expect that as a program ... there's too much going for us to settle for 2013-esque results consistently. Looking at our modern history and trying to adjust for a "normal," I would give these three vague, long-term expectations:
1. Getting a "bad" seed (let's say #7 or above) in the NCAA Tournament should at least be somewhat rare.
Missing the NCAA Tournament should be exceedingly rare. Looking at these stretches...
---> 1A. From 1981 to 1990, we made the NCAAT 9 out of 10 years. Our seeds were #4, #7, #2, #3, #4, #3, #3, #1 and #5.
---> 1B. From 1998 to 2007, we made the NCAAT 9 out of 10 years. Our seeds were #4, #1, #4, #4, #5, #1, #4 and #12.
---> 1C. From 2020 to 2024, we would have made the NCAAT in 5 out of 5 years. Our 2020 seed likely would have been a #6 or so, and our other seeds were #1, #4, #9 and #3.
I think those are "great" stretches that also meet reasonable expectations. We were almost always in the Tournament, we had a "good" seed the majority of the time and occasionally we would have a "special" team that got a #3 seed or above.
2. We should be in the top third of the Big Ten almost every year. We should compete for a Big Ten championship of some kind (regular season or BTT) fairly regularly, acknowledging that actually winning either is tough and often won't happen.
---> 2A. From 1981 to 1990, we only won one Big Ten championship. However, we were consistently near the top of the league.
---> 2B. From 1998 to 2007, we won FIVE Big Ten championships and 2 BTT championships. In many of the years we did not win the Big Ten, we were in second (e.g., 2003 and 2006). In many of the years we did not win the BTT, we made the championship game (e.g., 1999, 2000 and 2004). That is probably an unrealistically great stretch in-conference.
---> 2C. From 2020 to 2024, we won 1.5*** Big Ten championships, and we finished in second 3 times. We won 2 BTT championships.
I think conference championships will fluctuate with unbalanced schedules and the strength of the league, but the key here is COMPETING for them.
3. We should advance past the Second Round at least 50% of the time that we have a top 4 seed. If you have a #3 seed or above, the Sweet Sixteen is the expectation ... if you have a #4 or #5 seed, it's sort of a crapshoot, but you should win those half the time in theory.
Anything beyond Sweet Sixteens should ALWAYS be treated as "icing" on the cake ... but over a long stretch of having consistently top 20 teams, you should get that "icing" every once in a while.