College Sports (Basketball)
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Fighter of the Nightman
- Chicago, IL
Would just like to generally complain once again about the lack of protected rivalries in the Big Ten for basketball. On the football side, you have teams like Iowa with THREE protected games out of nine total conference games (Minnesota, Nebraska and Wisconsin), and Illinois can't get more than on protected rivalry other than Northwestern for basketball?? It's an absolute travesty that we do not play at least Iowa and preferably also Indiana every year. I really don't think fans would complain about some perceived "competitive imbalance" given there are 20 Big Ten games ... I think they'd rather play their perceived rivals. Also, some teams have way more perceived rivals in the conference than others ... this is TOTALLY my subjective opinion based on limited knowledge, but I would guess each team's fans would rank their top three rivals (in alphabetical order, as I'm not speculating on the 1-2-3 ranking) something like this, at least historically and/or in an ideal scheduling world. If I just absolutely could not think of a third, I left it blank.
Big Ten Teams in Green
Illinois: Indiana, Iowa, Missouri
Indiana: Illinois, Kentucky, Purdue
Iowa: Illinois, Iowa State, Wisconsin
Maryland: Duke, Georgetown, Virginia
Michigan: Michigan State, Ohio State
Michigan State: Michigan, Wisconsin
Minnesota: Iowa, Wisconsin
Nebraska: Creighton, Iowa
Northwestern: DePaul, Illinois
Ohio State: Cincinnati, Indiana, Michigan
Oregon: Oregon State, Washington
Penn State: Pitt, West Virginia
Purdue: Indiana, Notre Dame
Rutgers: Princeton, Seton Hall, Syracuse
UCLA: Arizona, Notre Dame, USC
USC: UCLA
Washington: Gonzaga, Oregon, Washington State
Wisconsin: Marquette, Michigan State, Minnesota
I could be off base, of course, but the point is we wouldn't have a situation where all of these teams have SO many rivalries, lol. Noting once again it is just my subjective list, these would be the only "two-way" matchups protected in-conference each year:
Illinois/Indiana
Illinois/Iowa
Indiana/Purdue
Michigan/Michigan State
Michigan/Ohio State
Michigan State/Wisconsin
Minnesota/Wisconsin
Oregon/Washington
UCLA/USC
I don't care what the conference is trying to shove down our throats ... it's a travesty that we wasted a protected series on Northwestern rather than Iowa or Indiana, or even other teams we have a better series history with like Purdue, Michigan or Wisconsin.
Big Ten Teams in Green
Illinois: Indiana, Iowa, Missouri
Indiana: Illinois, Kentucky, Purdue
Iowa: Illinois, Iowa State, Wisconsin
Maryland: Duke, Georgetown, Virginia
Michigan: Michigan State, Ohio State
Michigan State: Michigan, Wisconsin
Minnesota: Iowa, Wisconsin
Nebraska: Creighton, Iowa
Northwestern: DePaul, Illinois
Ohio State: Cincinnati, Indiana, Michigan
Oregon: Oregon State, Washington
Penn State: Pitt, West Virginia
Purdue: Indiana, Notre Dame
Rutgers: Princeton, Seton Hall, Syracuse
UCLA: Arizona, Notre Dame, USC
USC: UCLA
Washington: Gonzaga, Oregon, Washington State
Wisconsin: Marquette, Michigan State, Minnesota
I could be off base, of course, but the point is we wouldn't have a situation where all of these teams have SO many rivalries, lol. Noting once again it is just my subjective list, these would be the only "two-way" matchups protected in-conference each year:
Illinois/Indiana
Illinois/Iowa
Indiana/Purdue
Michigan/Michigan State
Michigan/Ohio State
Michigan State/Wisconsin
Minnesota/Wisconsin
Oregon/Washington
UCLA/USC
I don't care what the conference is trying to shove down our throats ... it's a travesty that we wasted a protected series on Northwestern rather than Iowa or Indiana, or even other teams we have a better series history with like Purdue, Michigan or Wisconsin.
I hear you but which teams actually consider us a rival. Iowa probably but that's it. kinda needs to be both ways right?
Fighter of the Nightman
- Chicago, IL
I mean, I only listed Iowa and Indiana for us ... so even if you think Indiana would respectfully decline the protected series, I would gladly take Iowa!!
I do think Iowa, Indiana and northwestern fit as our protected rivals and would push for that. in general I do think we miss that dedicated rival over the decades. northwestern isn't good enough consistently to cause any vitreol or get the juices pumping. and that's with our recent terrible losses to them.
Fighter of the Nightman
- Chicago, IL
Agreed, but I think Iowa is the closest. Missouri has an incredibly weird and pathetic obsession with not just hating Kansas but letting everyone know that Kansas is their main rival ... so we'll always be a distant second there, likely even to the Mizzou fans in the St. Louis MSA. Indiana has an obvious #1 rival with Purdue, and repeating that Kentucky is their only other rival like trained seals really helps to pump up their unfounded egos, lol. Northwestern would almost certainly claim us as their biggest rival, but like you said ... it just hasn't been anything historically.
I do think Iowa is easily the best mutual answer right now, especially if the new coach gets that going. They would have been most Illini fans' first choice just after the Bruce Pearl incident, and they skyrocketed back to #1 for a lot of Illini fans when things really heated up and we had so many close games with them from like 2020 to 2023. It fell off a bit in 2024 and 2025, but I am hoping it's on the way back!
It's funny because I'd push for Michigan, Purdue, and Wisconsin over Indiana and maybe even Iowa. And then I scrolled up and saw those were the three teams he listed at the end of his post too.
Fighter of the Nightman
- Chicago, IL
I think there are definitely a few other fan bases like this (Iowa actually comes to mind), but I find the geographic variety of who Illini fans consider the most hated rival very interesting! Iowa obviously reigns supreme in the Quad Cities MSA, and Mizzou is an obvious choice for most in the Metro East. I imagine a disproportionate share of Illini fans who hate Wisconsin are from Northern Illinois (e.g., Rockford or the northern Chicago suburbs), too. And I would guess that as you get close to the Indiana border, the percent who would answer Indiana or Purdue would increase!
When you "came of age" as a fan would obviously be important, too. The first season I truly remember is 2003, and 2005 was the first season I was religiously watching any game I could as a seventh grader. So, when I was a young fan forming my opinion, I perhaps naively thought...
1) The Indiana/Iowa rivalries were probably cool back in the day, but both had effectively been dead for years and the entire time I was a fan. Both teams were beneath us.
2) Purdue was terrible and seemed like this oddly likeable little brother to Indiana, so I definitely didn't hate them. Plus, you had the Weber connection and later the mutual hate of Indiana after Eric Gordon.
3) Michigan and Ohio State were also usually mediocre (OSU) to downright awful (Michigan), and I thought of them both as simply football schools not worth hating when it came to hoops.
4) Michigan State was a fierce competitor for conference dominance, but it was a remarkably "good-natured" series. This was cemented during the 2005 Final Four when we both cheered adamantly for each other and actually even did a T-shirt swap.
5) Northwestern was just bad and irrelevant and was not considered a historic rival either by my dad, so thus I thought the same!
6) The rest of the Big Ten (Minnesota, Penn State) was totally irrelevant and had zero history/animosity/relevance to Illinois.
That left, at least for me, the only two "rivals" that I genuinely disliked:
A) Wisconsin, as they competed with us for the top of the Big Ten, but it seemed less friendly than MSU.
B) Missouri, but it was (and always will be) at least SOMEWHAT diluted by the fact we sort of forget about each other after the New Year.
Indiana obviously quickly rose to #1 circa 2007, Mizzou became my fashionable pick for #1 during the Groce years and Iowa moved into the top spot circa 2020. This is probably the "least sure" since those mid-2000s days for me. I'm sure fans who came of age with the Bruce Pearl incident will mostly have Iowa #1, fans who came of age during the Bob Knight/Lou Henson feuds OR the Eric Gordon saga will pick Indiana and fans who are just now getting into Illini hoops would probably even say Purdue! This would be my best attempt at carving up the current Big Ten plus Mizzou, and I think 99% of fans would label only a team in the top three categories as a "rival."
Nearly unanimously considered "rivals" at least in some sense
Iowa
Indiana
Missouri
Weird category all by itself where it sort of "has to be" a rival on paper but it would be nobody's #1
Northwestern
Clear history, possibly a "rival" and periods of bad blood ... but lacks the outside recognition as a "rivalry" like the ones above
Purdue (recent history)
Michigan (Hunter Dickinsen shenanigans ... possible that Morez reignites this)
Wisconsin (off and on during Bo Ryan years)
Ohio State (they got a lot of our hate post-Evan Turner recruitment)
Relatively lacking in history but have been a nightmare for us at times and therefore created animosity
Maryland (current Underwood streak)
Penn State (2023 but also in the late Weber years)
Not lacking in history but has never really had any animosity
Minnesota (I can't think of a traditional Big Ten team that Illini fans care less about, lol)
Has gained some history in the last decade but Illini fans just don't have history/animosity with either fan base
Nebraska
Rutgers
Will take a very long time to establish anything at all
UCLA (only interesting because of their history and maybe Skyy Clark)
Oregon
Washington
USC
Bonus - Teams that can't reasonably be considered "rivals" but that we have a shocking amount of history with (either way back or recent)...
Arizona
Kansas
Arkansas
Kentucky
North Carolina
Illini in Italy
- Illini HQ, Florida Panhandle
wettsten
- Chicago
i really hope this gets accepted:
https://www.espn.com/mens-college-b...horter-transfer-windows-mens-women-basketball
https://www.espn.com/mens-college-b...horter-transfer-windows-mens-women-basketball
Saw a social media comment the other day where an Iowa fan tried to big brother Illinois, laughing at Illinois fans for thinking there's a rivalry and claiming that Iowa fans don't think of us as a rival.
Read recently that Stephen Bardo will no longer be part of Big Ten Network and has relocated to another country. Curious if this is true and what the backstory is.
I saw a video he posted about it. Something about he grew tired of racial micro aggressions in the states. Don't think he specified beyond that.
Some (a lot?) of us don't think of Iowa as a rival either. The only schools I really consider rivals are Missouri and Indiana in basketball. The Indiana rivalry seems to be shifting to a Purdue. Its sort of hard to have a rivalry with a doormat.
Oh, and then there is always Muck Fichigan, though that isn't really a rivalry.
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