Any reasonable fan might say, “The jersey your team wears has absolutely no effect on performance.” To that, I say: You’re crazy for thinking it doesn’t.
When you’re as committed to Illinois basketball as I know many of you are, our superstitious beliefs can sometimes feel like the difference in a game. I am a firm believer of the famous Deion Sanders’ quote: “If you look good, you feel good. If you feel good, you play good.” If there’s even a 1% edge to be found, I’m all in.
With the offseason lull in full swing, what better time to dive into a completely unserious (but also kind of serious) project: tracking how Illinois has actually performed in each of their jerseys: standard white, standard orange, standard blue, Flyin’ Illini retro orange, and the script whites. The results I found are genuinely shocking and create a compelling rebuttal to the idea that the uniforms have zero impact on the outcome. And I’ll show you.
Here’s what I did: I went back and logged every game the Illini played in each of their current jerseys, from the start of the 2019–20 season through this past year—the beginning of the program’s modern resurgence. I wanted to study this through the lens of a successful era, not an irrelevant or rebuilding program, since those days are, hopefully, behind us.
Brad Underwood and Illinois basketball record, starting from the 2019-20 season to the 2024-25 season, come out to a very respectable 139-62 (including the Big Ten Tournament and the NCAA Tournament).
From the best-performing to the least, let’s see how each jersey held up over the past 6 years.
#1: Standard White Illinois Uniform (53-4 overall, 5-1 in tournaments)
93% Winning Percentage
Are you kidding me? 53-4?! That’s a record so absurd I had to double and triple-check it. Unless I’ve completely butchered my data collection, this is the truth.
Visually, I don’t think anyone would call these their favorite jersey—including me. But after seeing this, how could they not be? You can’t argue with the results.
My initial thought was maybe they wore these during the cupcake portion of the schedule, like non-conference tune-ups to save the fan-favorite retros or scripts for the bigger matchups. But the 5-1 tournament record throws that theory out the window. This is the most frequently worn jersey over the last six seasons and the second-most worn in tournament play behind the white script.
Now that we know this, Brad Underwood should never have Illinois wear anything else. I’ll happily sacrifice aesthetics for a .930 winning percentage. Over a third of Illinois’ wins since 2019 have come wearing these standard whites. They even went three full seasons without losing in them. Unreal.
Photo by Michael Hickey/Getty Images
#2: White Script Illinois Uniform (31-17 overall, 7-2 in tournaments)
64.6% Winning Percentage
My personal favorite, as well as many other Illini fans, checks in at #2 best-performing jersey. Clean, classic, and nostalgic. It’s hard not to associate these jerseys with any big game over the past six years. They’ve appeared in more tournament games than any other jersey, and with a 7-2 record in those games, they’ve more than held their own. Whenever I think of the 2020-21 team and their Big Ten Tournament run, I think of these.
While 31-17 isn’t quite elite, it’s still solid enough to make you feel good whenever they pull them out.
When in doubt, go with the white uniforms.
Photo by Justin Casterline/Getty Images
#3: Flyin’ Illini Retro Orange Uniform (24-14 overall, 0-2 in tournaments)
63.2% Winning Percentage
These go head-to-head with the white scripts as fan favorites. They bring a perfect blend of throwback flair with a modern edge, and I won’t argue with anyone who says they’re the best looking of the bunch.
They’ve shown up in plenty of high-profile matchups over the past six seasons. Every orange out at the State Farm Center comes to mind.
The 63.2% win rate is respectable, but it trails Illinois’ 69% overall winning percentage since 2019, likely due to the tougher opponents usually associated with these games. What’s surprising: they’ve only been worn twice in tournament play—and Illinois lost both times. That stat alone might make me rethink seeing these in March.
Photo by Justin K. Aller/NCAA Photos via Getty Images
#4: Standard Orange Uniform (28-18 overall, 1-3 in tournaments)
60.9% Winning Percentage
These jerseys are just meh for me. My least favorite of the bunch, visually. If you’re going orange, why not go retro? The Flyin’ Illini version is objectively cleaner and carries more juice. I cannot see how one can argue the opposite.
These also fall short statistically of their retro cousin—both in win percentage and tournament performance. At 1-3 in the postseason, the resume isn’t doing them any favors.
If results and appearance both underwhelm, we might have to start the discussion of whether or not we can trust this uniform going forward. Standard orange, you’re on the hot seat.
Photo by Michael Hickey/Getty Images
#5: Standard Blue Uniform (3-9 overall, 0-0 in tournaments)
25% Winning Percentage
Torch these.
To the program’s credit, it seems like they already realized how cursed these were—they haven’t been worn in more than a year and haven’t appeared more than twice in any season since 2019–20, when Illinois went 1-5 in them. That year, half the team’s losses came in these jerseys alone.
Visually, I think it’s a good jersey. However, numbers never lie, and the numbers say that Illinois is a terrible basketball team when wearing these. Aesthetic appeal can’t mask a 25% win rate.
If Illinois ever decides to wear blue again, it needs to be a brand-new design. These just need to go.
Photo by Mitchell Layton/Getty Images
Coincidence or Pattern?
If your biggest takeaway isn’t that you believe Illinois turns into some form of the ’96 Bulls in the standard whites and should never wear anything else, while at the same time, morphing into a bad JV squad in the standard blues, we are simply not wired the same.
You can call me crazy for believing it matters. But based on the data, it looks like I might be onto something.