Illini Basketball 2025-2026

IlliniFan42 · Aug 3, 2025

lstewart53x3 said:
I agree. In terms of priority i’d go:

1. National Championship Game
2. Final Four
3. Regular Season Championship
4. Elite 8
5. Sweet 16
6. Conference Tournament Championship
7. Round Of 32
8. Round of 64

I can't understand ranking the regular season so highly when you can win it going 14-6 and schedules are extremely imbalanced. You could be handed a schedule where you play the three worst teams twice and the next 7 worst teams at home and that should get you 13 guaranteed wins. All you need is to win an away game or two against the remaining 7 teams and you win the regular season.

I say this like it's easy (it's not) but you could be the fourth or fifth best team talent-wise and still win the regular season because of this imbalance.

lstewart53x3 · Aug 3, 2025

IlliniFan42 said:
I can't understand ranking the regular season so highly when you can win it going 14-6 and schedules are extremely imbalanced. You could be handed a schedule where you play the three worst teams twice and the next 7 worst teams at home and that should get you 13 guaranteed wins. All you need is to win an away game or two against the remaining 7 teams and you win the regular season.

I say this like it's easy (it's not) but you could be the fourth or fifth best team talent-wise and still win the regular season because of this imbalance.

But how fun is a 14-6 season? I’d prefer to have a fun 3 months in the regular season than a fun 3 days in the post season.

IlliniFan42 · Aug 3, 2025

lstewart53x3 said:
But how fun is a 14-6 season? I’d prefer to have a fun 3 months in the regular season than a fun 3 days in the post season.

But if you're making it to the Elite Eight you've got two weeks of high-level joy from Selection Sunday to your eventual loss.

If you went, say, 12-8 in the conference regular season and had 3 non-con losses (for an 11-loss season and also meaning you won most of your non-con games), you'd still feel decently good throughout the season and then have the rush at the end on the Elite Eight run.

It's not exact, but would you prefer St John's season last year or our season last year if we beat Kentucky and then whoever was in the Sweet 16?

21ChampaignSt · Aug 3, 2025

IlliniFan42 said:
I can't understand ranking the regular season so highly when you can win it going 14-6 and schedules are extremely imbalanced. You could be handed a schedule where you play the three worst teams twice and the next 7 worst teams at home and that should get you 13 guaranteed wins. All you need is to win an away game or two against the remaining 7 teams and you win the regular season.

I say this like it's easy (it's not) but you could be the fourth or fifth best team talent-wise and still win the regular season because of this imbalance.

I'm usually the first one to object to the "the tournament is a crap shoot" argument. To win 4, 5, 6 games in a row against high quality competition isn't luck. So, in that sense, I agree with you. The tournament separates the wheat from the chaff. But tourney schedules can potentially be way more imbalanced than conference schedules.

Back to the hypothetical in question, when it gets down to Elite Eight vs Conference Tournament Championship, you're really starting to split hairs. Like lstewart above, I rank an E8 higher than a conf tourney championship. But not so much higher that I'd trade 7 regular season wins for it in this example.

Fly Illini Fly! · Aug 3, 2025

IlliniFan42 said:
But if you're making it to the Elite Eight you've got two weeks of high-level joy from Selection Sunday to your eventual loss.

If you went, say, 12-8 in the conference regular season and had 3 non-con losses (for an 11-loss season and also meaning you won most of your non-con games), you'd still feel decently good throughout the season and then have the rush at the end on the Elite Eight run.

It's not exact, but would you prefer St John's season last year or our season last year if we beat Kentucky and then whoever was in the Sweet 16?

The latter, by a mile.

Illinicpa14 · Aug 3, 2025

Second place is 1st loser said:
B, no question. It's elation from November through Selection Sunday and a banner being raised vs mediocrity for 5 months and absolutely nothing to show for it.

Whether you lose in the 2nd around or the Elite 8, you leave the tournament with the exactly the same thing that you had going in......which is absolutely nothing.

If you add Final Four to option A...that's a different story.

I feel like all 8 seed seasons are not created equal - if it was the skyy, Mayer year we were in the 8-9, the entire season sucked besides the 2 crazy non-con wins. I wanted to pull my hair out every game and the NW game I went to in Evanston is hands down worst game I’ve seen live.

If it was the Covid year where the tourney was canceled (yes I get we were probably on the 6 line) of a team coming together in the second half of the year that we were all excited about, then yes 100 times over.

EmeraldCityIllini · Aug 3, 2025

PleaseMakeABowlGame said:
https://twitter.com/x/status/1946999863691841593

Probably A just in a vacuum.

B typically would indicate a much healthier program and trajectory. Basically B is our 2020-21 team and option A was that Oregon State team that predicatably was going nowhere fast and went 3-28 (no seriously, 3-28) the following year while Illinois won the Big Ten and has been back every year since, with an elite 8 of their own. And some awesome program legends and NBA pros to show for it.

Second place is 1st loser · Aug 3, 2025

EmeraldCityIllini said:
Probably A just in a vacuum.

B typically would indicate a much healthier program and trajectory. Basically B is our 2020-21 team and option A was that Oregon State team that predicatably was going nowhere fast and went 3-28 (no seriously, 3-28) the following year while Illinois won the Big Ten and has been back every year since, with an elite 8 of their own. And some awesome program legends and NBA pros to show for it.

That's a great take. When you're stringing solid seasons together year after you, you're going to hit gold. If it wasn't for playing probably the best college basketball team since Florida in the 2000's..... we're in the Final Four two seasons ago. I don't want to be in a situation where we're pulling our hair out for four months, then get stuck in the 8/9 game, which is two mediocre teams facing off......hoping we catch lightning in a bottle a couple of times.

I'll take health of this program 100 times out of 100 versus a one off.

Mobi · Aug 3, 2025

PleaseMakeABowlGame said:
https://twitter.com/x/status/1946999863691841593

I pick 2 seed and Final four appearance.

fuggles · Aug 3, 2025

LouHenson said:
Not sure where to put this, but does anyone remember about when the balance of the 2025/2026 schedule will be released based on lasts year?

Thanks!

Dan put this info in the first post of this thread.

Brosky · Aug 4, 2025

IlliniFan42 said:
A for sure. Regular season means nothing, it's guaranteed money and the schedule is imbalanced. There's 30+ conference champions every year. Being a 2-seed and losing early makes you a choke-job/seeding mistake.

March Madness is the true judge of a team's value and getting to the Elite Eight means you're for real. And you got your conference a good deal of money.

I'd ratther just win the BIG regular season and conference tourney. And let the NCAA tourney shake out as it will.

Brosky · Aug 4, 2025

What do we know about Petrovic eligibility? I know we'll have two years left for Big Z, Tomi, Davis, Stoyakovich, and Rodgers. I've probably missed some. The trick is to make them NIL happy so as to lure them back into the fold.

LouHenson · Aug 4, 2025

I pick neither? We should be consistently looking for a protected (4 seed or better)? Illinois is for sure in the best say 16-20 teams of all time, no reason we should settle for less.

Lou put us on this trajectory in the 1970’s and we have been there the entire time except for the bad Weber years and then of course JG was the worst basketball coach in my lifetime at Illinois. That includes Harv, bartow, Lou, Lon, Bill, Bruce, the giant black hole and now Brad?