Brad Underwood Details the Unique Way Illinois Operates Like an NBA Franchise

In less than a decade, the college basketball world has been flipped upside down. For a head coach in the sport, there are two choices: adapt or lose. Illinois’ Brad Underwood has done the former. His ability to adjust to an era driven by the transfer portal and NIL can't be understated, as Underwood has crafted some of the best rosters the game has seen in the past half decade.

Naturally, a lot of talent evaluation goes into that process. How players’ games and attributes meld on the floor is a key piece of the puzzle. But there is another piece, one that is perhaps often overlooked: personalities. The on-court product can be that much better if players are less concerned with their individual accomplishments and, instead, dead-set on winning.

How accurately can that be measured in offseason recruiting evaluations? Believe it or not, there is as much science as art involved, and the Illini have committed to making the most of each. Based on this year’s Final Four run, they seem to be doing a pretty solid job of it.

How Illinois basketball runs like an NBA franchise under Brad Underwood

Andrej Stojakovi — Mar 28, 2026; Houston, TX, USA; Illinois Fighting Illini head coach Brad Underwood reacts in the first half against the Iowa Hawkeyes during an Elite Eight game of the South Regional of the men's 2026 NCAA Tournament at Toyota Center. Mandatory Credit: Maria Lysaker-Imagn Images | Maria Lysaker-Imagn Images

“We’ve gone from recruiting guys when they were freshman and recruiting them for four years and you get to know what their favorite toothpaste is. Now, it’s speed dating,” Underwood said on the Big Ten Network before his club faced UConn in the Final Four.

“And we’ve become very much like an NBA franchise in terms of trying to find as much background as we can. We have a general manager. We use personality testing. We do all kinds of processing testing with guys to make sure they fit. We’re not for everybody. That’s for sure.

“We want guys that want to play for the name on the front. We want guys who winning is important [to them]. We try to bring that up as often as we can in the process and figure that out. And, again, we’re not for everybody. We’ve had one McDonald’s All-American in my nine years here. And that was Andrej Stojakovic, who is a double transfer. It just is what our program is about. It fits our university. [The] European market has been great to us. Those guys fit us. So we try to be pretty detailed and pretty specific.”

Take Stojakovic, for example. He is the son of Peja Stojakovic, a three-time NBA All-Star and one of the greatest shooters to ever set foot on the hardwood. The younger Stojakovic is also a former McDonald’s All-American, as Underwood mentioned. Last year, as a sophomore at Cal, he averaged 17.9 points on 13.9 field-goal attempts per game.

On the surface, the idea of convincing Stojakovic to sacrifice a chunk of his individual production in exchange for the best team outcome might have seemed a tall task.

Stojakovic, Cal's top scorer a year ago and Illinois' second-leading scorer this year, taking on a reserve role? Preposterous, right? Yet he has not only willingly taken a step back in terms of shot volume, but he has happily come off the bench for the Illini. (He is, worth mentioning, playing at an unbelievably high level in the NCAA Tournament.)

Whether it’s the personality tests or Underwood’s psychological abilities – or some combination of both – there is clearly something to be said for Illinois’ team-building and developmental approaches. Nothing better reflects that than the role Stojakovic has taken on – and, more impressively, how admirably he has taken it in stride.