COLUMN: Let's All Welcome Illini Basketball Back to Relevance

Nearly three years ago, Josh Whitman warned everybody that 10 years of irrelevance could turn to 30 quickly. This season proving that simply won't happen now.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — It’s becoming more and more difficult not to go back to the exact words of Illinois athletics director Josh Whitman said on the day John Groce was fired.

“I was here 10 years ago. I saw the energy,” Whitman said on March 11, 2017. “I felt the environment at State Farm Center when you couldn’t find a ticket. When every game was an event. When everyone was in an orange shirt. When the list was thousands of people long to get a season ticket to an Illinois basketball game. I remember standing in the crowd and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up when the pre-game video went on the board of ‘The champ is here’. You guys remember that? The Ali video from the movie, ‘The champ is here’. I’ve never forgotten the feeling of that place when the team took the floor and that video was on the board. That’s what we’re striving for year in and year out.”

And then Whitman paused for a bit in a moment of gravity and regret.

“That was 10 years ago,” Whitman said. “And if we’re not careful, it’ll be 30 years ago. That’s what I can’t allow to happen.”

In those 152 words, which in hindsight almost now sound like Whitman giving himself a pep talk as he embarked on his first and most important coaching search, the leader of Illinois athletics was talking about one concept, which had been unfortunately lost: relevance. And good luck finding it once it is gone. Ask Nebraska football fans, Tennessee football fans and Miami (Fla.) football fans about a past that has withered away and may never return again. Find a UCLA basketball fan or an Arkansas basketball fan whose age begins with the number 2 and ask them what they remember.

Halfway into the 2020 Big Ten basketball season, Illinois (16-5, 8-2) stands in a tie for first place with Michigan State. Following its 59-51 win Thursday night over Minnesota, Illinois has eclipsed its pathetic Big Ten win total from last year. After two head-scratching seasons that led you wondering if this place would ever find the winning formula again, head coach Brad Underwood’s program has fans, analysts and (even though they won’t likely admit it) players closely following NCAA tournament projections. Underwood has found the flux capacitor that has allowed Illini basketball to go back to the future.

Less than three years removed from Whitman making that very poignant and sobering statement about a once-revered college basketball program, Illinois is important again locally, regionally and nationally.

Remaining home games that were seen as afterthoughts at the end of the Bruce Weber era, and the entire Groce era, are now sold out. Whitman wanted to credit a tough ticket. Check.

Illinois basketball is back to being nationally relevant again after winning seven straight Big Ten Conference games and leading the league halfway through 2019-20 season

According to ESPN Stats and Research, when Illinois (15-5, 7-2) defeated Michigan 64-62 in Crisler Arena on Saturday, that was the latest into the season the Illini found itself atop the league since 2006, when it led the conference on Jan. 31. Fans are starting to envision what it could and might take for Illinois to add another year to its Big Ten championship banner that hangs in State Farm Center.

Underwood’s roster has all the elements of what fans want to see in Illinois basketball. A major Chicago presence and a go-to player late in games who has everybody spelling leader with letters: A-Y-O. A 7-foot monster (Kofi Cockburn) who is unlike anybody who has ever stepped on the U of I campus. A sharp-shooter (Trent Frazier) who has gotten better each year he’s been in an Illini jersey. And a fan favorite from a foreign land who might be the beloved member of the locker room and anywhere in Champaign country in Giorgi Bezhanishvili.

Illinois is also starting to recruit the ways Bill Self’s staff and Lou Henson’s staff were known for so you’re not desperately trying to hang on to talent that want to leave early for the NBA draft. Andre Curbelo is going to be someone to watch as he runs this show next season from the point. Adam Miller is a hybrid of the Chicago and Peoria connection that Illinois has been known for and a nationally-recognized scoring guard that the Illini won a commitment from when in years past they would’ve been a signing day loser.

Welcome back to the concept harder than ever for any program to find: Retrieved Relevance. 

Is the champ here yet? Maybe, maybe not. But they’re coming. And they’ll get here long before Whitman’s worst fear of it becoming a 30-year memory.