How Years of March Disappointments Built This Illinois Final Four Team

It has been a long time coming for Illinois basketball, which waited 21 years between Final Four appearances. In that time, the program endured plenty of miserable seasons while searching for the coach who could restore it to national relevance. That coach arrived in 2017 in Brad Underwood, but even his rebuild didn't happen overnight.

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For the first time since 2005, we're heading to the FINAL FOUR. pic.twitter.com/1lduiaqLhW
— Illinois Men's Basketball (@IlliniMBB) March 29, 2026

Illinois missed the NCAA Tournament in each of Underwood's first two seasons, then lost an opportunity in 2020 when the tournament was canceled because of COVID. And even after the Illini finally got back to the Big Dance, they still had to endure several heartbreaks before returning to college basketball’s biggest stage.

2021: The start

This was Illinois’ first NCAA Tournament appearance in eight years and Underwood’s first tournament run with the program, so the anticipation was understandably high. The Illini entered as a No. 1 seed with legitimate national title hopes, only to run into a severely under-seeded Loyola-Chicago team (No. 8) in the second round.

The Ramblers ranked 10th in KenPom, had an outstanding game plan and were led by Cameron Krutwig, who seemed to have an answer for everything Illinois tried against them. It was a brutal loss and an ugly way for Underwood’s first March run at Illinois to end, especially for a team that looked talented enough to make a deep push.

2022: More heartbreak

The next year, Underwood again had an elite squad, this time led by All-American Kofi Cockburn. Illinois earned a No. 4 seed and barely survived a serious first-round scare against Chattanooga, which probably should have been a warning that the road ahead was not going to be smooth.

Unfortunately for the Illini, they then ran into a sneaky-good Houston team that looked very under-seeded for a No. 5, and physically overwhelmed them down the stretch. It was another frustrating March exit, and another reminder that Illinois still hadn't found the formula for handling the kind of toughness and pressure that tournament games demand.

2023: A step back

Underwood had to reload, and that showed for most of the season. Behind first-year star Terrence Shannon Jr., Illinois never really found the consistency or upside of its previous teams and limped into March as a No. 9 seed. Any hope of a surprise run disappeared quickly, as Arkansas took the Illini to the woodshed in the first round and exposed a simple truth: This was not a team built to contend.

2024: Knocking on the door

Luckily for Illinois, this team brought back many of the key pieces from the season before and used that experience to build something much stronger. Led by Shannon, an All-American second-teamer, and one of the oldest rosters in the country, the Illini put together an excellent regular season, won the Big Ten Tournament and entered the NCAA Tournament as a No. 3 seed.

They cruised through the first two rounds and then survived a blood-and-guts battle against Iowa State in the Sweet 16. But the run was ended there when Illinois ran into a sleeping giant in UConn, which steamrolled everyone on the way to another national title.

2025: Building the foundation

The Illini unveiled a new roster-building strategy last season after welcoming back a former assistant coach, and at its best, the approach showed the outline of a team with an extremely high ceiling. Unfortunately, illness and youth kept Illinois from ever fully putting it all together, leaving the season feeling more like a glimpse of what could be than a finished product.

Still, Illinois earned a No. 6 seed and won its opening-round game before laying an egg in the Round of 32 against a banged-up Kentucky team. Even with the early exit, the foundation was being set for a team that looked capable of making a deep March run.

2026: The Illini breakthrough

All of those lessons and all of that heartbreak have helped turn Illinois into a machine this season. The coaching staff built a roster with experience (tip of the hat to Kylan Boswell, Ben Humrichous and Jake Davis) blended it with European size and skill (hey there, Tomislav Ivisic, Zvonimir Ivisic and David Mirkovic) and then added two more elite newcomers in Keaton Wagler and Andrej Stojakovic. Combined with a staff that has learned from its mistakes and shown a real willingness to adjust when needed, the result is a team that looks fully capable of winning it all.

The Illini (28-8) have cashed in on that ceiling and taken advantage of a bracket that broke almost perfectly to reach the Final Four. All of those years of failure helped drive Illinois to this point. But the job is not finished. Two more wins would turn this group into legends in Champaign and deliver the first national title in program history.