That attempt to dunk on Z in early summer practice was a promising sign of how much he had physically progressed even from March to June.
Illini Basketball 2026-2027
Homecoming 2019
- Chicago
Hard to beleive a kid from Central High School in Burlington, IL is playing at Duke on a scholarship.
Fighter of the Nightman
- Chicago, IL
Very long post incoming, lol ... but the gist of it is this:
1) I was thinking today how other than some of the obvious talking points (e.g., Illinois and MSU will be very good), I really don't have a good feel for how the Big Ten pecking order will shake out, at least to start the season. So, I took some time just comparing a few preseason rankings I found to try to come up with a composite for the top of the league.
2) Obviously making it back to the Final Four and of course winning the National Championship are the main goals, but I personally would really like to take advantage of this season to hoist another Big Ten regular season championship banner, myself! So, using the rankings I could find, I tried to group our Big Ten games into tiers.
1) Preseason Rankings
DISCLAIMER - I might be woefully ignorant of which sources I should have included vs. my rather lame method of simply Googling preseason rankings and looking for links people have posted here, AND a lot of these could be outdated given news that came out since these rankings were published regarding certain players.
CBS Preseason Top 25 and 1
#3 Illinois
#7 Michigan State
#16 Michigan
#20 UCLA
#22 USC
#25 Purdue
#26 Indiana
EvanMiya Preseason Top 30
(IL Post With Full Big Ten Rankings)
#3 Illinois
#8 Michigan State
#15 Michigan
#21 UCLA
#25 Nebraska
#33 Ohio State
#34 Purdue
#36 USC
#37 Wisconsin
#41 Maryland
#47 Iowa
#51 Indiana
#54 Oregon
#61 Minnesota
#67 Washington
#92 Rutgers
#93 Northwestern
#101 Penn State
Bart Torvik T-Rank
#6 Illinois
#10 Michigan State
#14 Michigan
#16 Nebraska
#17 Ohio State
#22 Purdue
#23 UCLA
#29 Indiana
#30 USC
#32 Oregon
#37 Maryland
#46 Iowa
#49 Wisconsin
#66 Washington
#72 Rutgers
#76 Northwestern
#78 Minnesota
#106 Penn State
Andy Katz's Power 44
#3 Michigan State
#4 Illinois
#16 Michigan
#20 USC
#25 Nebraska
#26 Purdue
#29 UCLA
#35 Wisconsin
#37 Indiana
#43 Iowa
ESPN's Way-Too-Early Top 25
#3 Illinois
#8 Michigan State
#11 USC
#20 Michigan
#23 UCLA
CBK Report August Power 40 (Instagram - cbkreport)
#3 Illinois
#8 Michigan State
#16 Michigan
#19 Nebraska
#24 UCLA
#25 USC
#27 Ohio State
#28 Purdue
#30 Indiana
#35 Maryland
#39 Wisconsin
#40 Iowa
Anywho, it seems things BROADLY break down into these tiers:
Tier 1 - Illinois and Michigan State ... consistently top 5 or top 10 and significantly higher than the rest of the league.
Tier 2 - Michigan ... nearly always third behind MSU and us but also less speculative than, say, a USC.
Tier 3 - UCLA, USC and Nebraska ... usually ranked ahead of the rest of the pack, though it depends on the rankings.
Tier 4 - Purdue, Indiana, Iowa, Wisconsin, Maryland and Ohio State ... teams forming the middle of the league that at least some analysts have predicted will be better than expected.
Tier 5 - Everyone else.
2) Winning a Big Ten Regular Season Championship
So, while crazy stuff happens every single year and that's why we love college hoops, I'll use these rough tiers (along with other factors like where the games are being played, etc.) to group our schedule into tiers.
Tier 1 - Whether we are favored or not, these are the losses you can absolutely afford but the wins that solidify a #1 seed come Selection Sunday.
- at Michigan
- vs. Michigan State
Tier 2 - The road wins that define an elite resume and win you conference championships. A loss won't hurt you, but stacking these wins is what gets a team a top 3 seed and a good path to the Final Four. Including Maryland due to a history of bad juju, lol...
- at Purdue
- at Wisconsin
- at Indiana
- at Maryland
Tier 3 - Classic "protect your home court" games. These teams are definitely capable of beating us on paper, but none of them is so good that we should allow them to waltz into the House of 'Paign and walk away with a W.
- vs. USC
- vs. UCLA
- vs. Nebraska
Tier 4 - Purdue is a good team, but we should beat them in Champaign. Minnesota is a lot worse than us on paper, but they're scrappy and it's on the road. We might not go undefeated in these games, but in isolation ... we'll all be expecting a win heading into each one, and a loss would be a Sportscenter-worthy upset.
- vs. Iowa
- vs. Purdue
- vs. Wisconsin
- at Minnesota
- at Washington
- at Oregon
- vs. Ohio State
Tier 5 - For one reason or another, we simply must win these games. And I expect we will win all of them.
- at Northwestern
- at Rutgers
- vs. Northwestern
- vs. Penn State
So if you took my categories as meaningful whatsoever, you could put our expected wins / losses something like this.
Tier 1: 1-1 (just roll with it!)
Tier 2: 2-2 (could easily be better or worse, of course)
Tier 3: 3-0 (need to protect home court in these ones)
Tier 4: 6-1 (upsets happen!)
Tier 5: 4-0
That would get us to 16-4, and this is obviously assuming that we get upset in one of the Tier 4 games and split the Tier 2 road games ... and we can obviously do better in both of those. For context, these are the records that earned a Big Ten regular season championship since 2019-20:
2026: 19-1 (Michigan)
2025: 17-3 (Michigan State)
2024: 17-3 (Purdue)
2023: 15-5 (Purdue)
2022: 15-5 (Illinois and Wisconsin)
2021: 14-3* (Michigan) and 16-4* (Illinois)
2020: 14-6 (Wisconsin, Michigan State and Maryland)
2026 Michigan was a pretty obvious fluke as far as what we usually expect for a Big Ten champ, and the jumbled mess of 2020 is also unlikely to be repeated with this year's lineup of teams, IMO. So I would say the Big Ten champ will have between 2-5 losses, with 3-4 being the most likely. Do we think a 16-4 record gets us a share of the title? Or do we think MSU, Michigan or some other player would force us to need to get to 17-3?
1) I was thinking today how other than some of the obvious talking points (e.g., Illinois and MSU will be very good), I really don't have a good feel for how the Big Ten pecking order will shake out, at least to start the season. So, I took some time just comparing a few preseason rankings I found to try to come up with a composite for the top of the league.
2) Obviously making it back to the Final Four and of course winning the National Championship are the main goals, but I personally would really like to take advantage of this season to hoist another Big Ten regular season championship banner, myself! So, using the rankings I could find, I tried to group our Big Ten games into tiers.
1) Preseason Rankings
DISCLAIMER - I might be woefully ignorant of which sources I should have included vs. my rather lame method of simply Googling preseason rankings and looking for links people have posted here, AND a lot of these could be outdated given news that came out since these rankings were published regarding certain players.
CBS Preseason Top 25 and 1
#3 Illinois
#7 Michigan State
#16 Michigan
#20 UCLA
#22 USC
#25 Purdue
#26 Indiana
EvanMiya Preseason Top 30
(IL Post With Full Big Ten Rankings)
#3 Illinois
#8 Michigan State
#15 Michigan
#21 UCLA
#25 Nebraska
#33 Ohio State
#34 Purdue
#36 USC
#37 Wisconsin
#41 Maryland
#47 Iowa
#51 Indiana
#54 Oregon
#61 Minnesota
#67 Washington
#92 Rutgers
#93 Northwestern
#101 Penn State
Bart Torvik T-Rank
#6 Illinois
#10 Michigan State
#14 Michigan
#16 Nebraska
#17 Ohio State
#22 Purdue
#23 UCLA
#29 Indiana
#30 USC
#32 Oregon
#37 Maryland
#46 Iowa
#49 Wisconsin
#66 Washington
#72 Rutgers
#76 Northwestern
#78 Minnesota
#106 Penn State
Andy Katz's Power 44
#3 Michigan State
#4 Illinois
#16 Michigan
#20 USC
#25 Nebraska
#26 Purdue
#29 UCLA
#35 Wisconsin
#37 Indiana
#43 Iowa
ESPN's Way-Too-Early Top 25
#3 Illinois
#8 Michigan State
#11 USC
#20 Michigan
#23 UCLA
CBK Report August Power 40 (Instagram - cbkreport)
#3 Illinois
#8 Michigan State
#16 Michigan
#19 Nebraska
#24 UCLA
#25 USC
#27 Ohio State
#28 Purdue
#30 Indiana
#35 Maryland
#39 Wisconsin
#40 Iowa
Anywho, it seems things BROADLY break down into these tiers:
Tier 1 - Illinois and Michigan State ... consistently top 5 or top 10 and significantly higher than the rest of the league.
Tier 2 - Michigan ... nearly always third behind MSU and us but also less speculative than, say, a USC.
Tier 3 - UCLA, USC and Nebraska ... usually ranked ahead of the rest of the pack, though it depends on the rankings.
Tier 4 - Purdue, Indiana, Iowa, Wisconsin, Maryland and Ohio State ... teams forming the middle of the league that at least some analysts have predicted will be better than expected.
Tier 5 - Everyone else.
2) Winning a Big Ten Regular Season Championship
So, while crazy stuff happens every single year and that's why we love college hoops, I'll use these rough tiers (along with other factors like where the games are being played, etc.) to group our schedule into tiers.
Tier 1 - Whether we are favored or not, these are the losses you can absolutely afford but the wins that solidify a #1 seed come Selection Sunday.
- at Michigan
- vs. Michigan State
Tier 2 - The road wins that define an elite resume and win you conference championships. A loss won't hurt you, but stacking these wins is what gets a team a top 3 seed and a good path to the Final Four. Including Maryland due to a history of bad juju, lol...
- at Purdue
- at Wisconsin
- at Indiana
- at Maryland
Tier 3 - Classic "protect your home court" games. These teams are definitely capable of beating us on paper, but none of them is so good that we should allow them to waltz into the House of 'Paign and walk away with a W.
- vs. USC
- vs. UCLA
- vs. Nebraska
Tier 4 - Purdue is a good team, but we should beat them in Champaign. Minnesota is a lot worse than us on paper, but they're scrappy and it's on the road. We might not go undefeated in these games, but in isolation ... we'll all be expecting a win heading into each one, and a loss would be a Sportscenter-worthy upset.
- vs. Iowa
- vs. Purdue
- vs. Wisconsin
- at Minnesota
- at Washington
- at Oregon
- vs. Ohio State
Tier 5 - For one reason or another, we simply must win these games. And I expect we will win all of them.
- at Northwestern
- at Rutgers
- vs. Northwestern
- vs. Penn State
So if you took my categories as meaningful whatsoever, you could put our expected wins / losses something like this.
Tier 1: 1-1 (just roll with it!)
Tier 2: 2-2 (could easily be better or worse, of course)
Tier 3: 3-0 (need to protect home court in these ones)
Tier 4: 6-1 (upsets happen!)
Tier 5: 4-0
That would get us to 16-4, and this is obviously assuming that we get upset in one of the Tier 4 games and split the Tier 2 road games ... and we can obviously do better in both of those. For context, these are the records that earned a Big Ten regular season championship since 2019-20:
2026: 19-1 (Michigan)
2025: 17-3 (Michigan State)
2024: 17-3 (Purdue)
2023: 15-5 (Purdue)
2022: 15-5 (Illinois and Wisconsin)
2021: 14-3* (Michigan) and 16-4* (Illinois)
2020: 14-6 (Wisconsin, Michigan State and Maryland)
2026 Michigan was a pretty obvious fluke as far as what we usually expect for a Big Ten champ, and the jumbled mess of 2020 is also unlikely to be repeated with this year's lineup of teams, IMO. So I would say the Big Ten champ will have between 2-5 losses, with 3-4 being the most likely. Do we think a 16-4 record gets us a share of the title? Or do we think MSU, Michigan or some other player would force us to need to get to 17-3?
It seems like we have a pretty lucky draw this year in terms of strength of schedule home/road, especially compared to MSU. If you reference current Torvik rankings, we have 5 current top 25 opponents at home and only 2 on the road. Conversely, if you look at MSU's home/road schedule, they have 1 current top 25 team to play at home and 5 on the road.
Lots of work... Thanks, Bro! Must be a latent Cubs fan ....
Not sure I completely buy MSU ahead of us, but ehh whatever. Locker room material
lstewart53x3
- Scottsdale, Arizona
That’s simply because you aren’t taking into account teams forfeiting ahead of their MSU game on behalf of avoiding kicks in the nuts.
Andy Katz has been an Illini fan(without being an actual, literal fan, of course) for a loooong time. I take it him ranking MSU right ahead of us is exactly that - locker room/white board material and he's trying to get our guys extra motivated to fight their hearts out. What a guy!
Andy Katz is just sidestepping being accused of loving the Illini too much. He knows we are better, but has to hide it a smidge.
Kid is an impressive athlete.
How strong is Tomi? Good gravy. He lifted a 190 pound player like he was a 30 pound child.
alamocityillini
- San Antonio
Illinois Basketball Could Be Set for Home-and-Home Series With Texas
Illinois and Texas could be adding another marquee non-conference matchup to their schedules, with a home-and-home series reportedly close to being finalized.
Homecoming 2019
- Chicago
More meant like they've never had a D1 basketball player ever, let alone the most famous D1 basketball school ever.
ptgrd23
- orange county CA
11 ppg 6 rbg playing for Belmont against Drake, Bradley, SIU, Evansville. Duke must be getting desperate.
Illini in Italy
- Illini HQ, Florida Panhandle
Username checks outDang kids with their phones! When I was their age a phone at a game would have been as useless as a toaster. They are missing life because they are looking at a 2" screen showing what someone else is doing. The crap on the screen will still be there in a couple of hours. Raise your heads and look around!
Essentially, merely a translation of analytical talent grades into dollar figures based on macroeconomic market trends. So a “what it’s worth” and not a “what was actually paid”. I’d love some transparency though, Calipari recently ranted that 9 of his players make more than his staff members and the other 3 make more than all of them combined.
This would then have a direct correlation to his roster strength ranking, no?
Likely a bit more nuanced than that.
Even if it's a direct translation of talent to dollars, the lists aren't going to just match up because there are probably other factors being weighed. The market doesn't price positions or archetypes equally. The dollar list likely just stacks cash cumulatively across the whole bench, where a team ranking cares about diminishing returns on the court and how it fits together.
It is still a "what its worth" list and not a "what was actually paid" list, because the actual NIL numbers are a black box. They can be estimated, as he's done, which is valuation rather than an actual financial record, was all I was saying.
Dan
Admin
Illinois Basketball Media Day 2026
Video: Illinois Basketball Media Day 2026. Men's Basketball
fightingillini.com