Sometimes, the most intense rhetorical battles you fight are the ones you fight at home.
Before I dive into this screed against the commentariat segment that inspired it, let’s be clear: I am not declaring a fatwa on a generation of sports thinkers. I’m here to empty multiple clips into a speculative school of thought of which I was unaware.
It’s a belief that, apparently, the Illinois Generation X fanbase is incapable of logic in judging the current Illinois roster. They are so intoxicated by memories of Dee Brown that acknowledging the brilliance of Brad Underwood is impossible, and that the era of Illinois’ greatest success is in the past, AND THAT’S ALL THERE IS TO IT.
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Wow, I had no idea. Thanks for telling me that my fellow “obnoxious” Gen X fans feel this way. We’ll address it at the next Gen X meeting, where we sit around and discuss how the book Fight Club is so much better than the movie.
Again, I am not saying all people who identify as Millennial or younger feel this way. I don’t even know if this is a prevalent perspective. But I encountered this particular bit of half-witted punditry, and it was spoken as if it were a real, established generational divide. So, if this divide only exists in the minds of the mindless, then I apologize sincerely to my editor for wasting on-page real estate.
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The 2025-26 Illinois Men’s Basketball Team has been spectacular. They won 24 regular-season games in a top-heavy Big Ten that has looked largely effective in the NCAA Tournament. They maximized the versatile talents of freshmen David Mirkovic and Keaton Wagler. They scorched the nets for some of the most elite offensive performances of the season. They rose to the top of KenPom’s historical offensive efficiency rankings.
And so far, they have won four games in the NCAA Tournament.
Despite the underwhelming nature of some of the losses down the stretch, Brad Underwood’s squad has had an excellent season.
But that hasn’t stopped the mouth-breathing knuckle-draggers of the pundit class from saying extraordinarily stupid things.
This isn’t a generational argument. Stop making it one.
This Illinois roster certainly has the potential to make a deep run. The 2024 squad made an Elite Eight run, which ended thanks to Donovan Clingan and eventual champs UConn.
The 2005 Illini were the standard-bearers for a generation. They were the best Illinois team for a very long time. Their star players are some of the most beloved and successful players in program history. Their comeback win against Arizona looms large as one of the top basketball games of the century.
I’m not saying that because I am some neanderthal Gen Xer. I’m saying it because I have two eyes and enough common sense to either tie my shoes or buy loafers.
The Underwood era rebuilt the program to national prominence.
Ken Blaze-Imagn Images
Wonderful guy John Groce had his struggles. And another noted wonderful man, Bruce Weber, didn’t close on a high note. The Illini were in mid-major shape when Brad Underwood arrived, fresh off an FBI Scandal excellent first season as a power conference head coach.
Bill Self inherited a really good situation and made it even better. Brad Underwood inherited a program that no longer made consistent tournament appearances. Now, Illinois is a national program.
But in this era, where rebuilding on the fly is paramount to annual success, Underwood has demonstrated a tremendous ability to move Illinois forward.
That’s what makes this special. Sure, 2005 was amazing. But Illinois has had a top seed and an Elite Eight with Coach Underwood already. His era is just getting started (hopefully). He’s pivoted from leaning on Chicago AAU teams to being a portal-forward roster to exploiting the European professional hoops market.
FightingIllini.com
This era has been phenomenal. Terrence Shannon Jr., Ayo Dosumnu, Kofi Cockburn, Kasparas Jakucionis, Will Riley, and David Mirkovic have all been players who represented roster-construction philosophical stands/shifts and have created the high standard at Ubben.
This isn’t a matter of generations. It’s a matter of fact.
Pundit-class fans of a certain…more recent vintage tend to think their esoteric knowledge of the here and now makes those of us of a previous era out of touch. It’s like only they can decode things like “winning records” and “tournament runs.”
An example of dummy punditry (and again, this is completely hypothetical) is when a writer who thinks he is smarter than all of his colleagues decides that when another writer says that “Illinois needs to hit more threes to win more games,” he makes accusations of plagiarism. Clearly, this writer, born in the 20th century, invented the notion that a high shooting percentage is better than a low one.
While the aforementioned argument wasn’t generational, it was similarly smooth-brained and self-righteous.
Well, I’m here to tell those fans who chose to make this a smug, back-patting exercise of self-appointed generational superiority…go f…I mean, I have some numbers.
Being candid, Underwood has won 64% of his games as Illinois coach. And that includes the time he spent rebuilding the program and getting the roster from Matic Vesel to Kofi Cockburn.
That run has included six consecutive NCAA Tournament berths after multiple years of absences from the big dance.
Illinois won the Big Ten Tournament and made the Elite Eight in 2024.
They also won the Big Ten Tourney in 2021.
They broke the meter by setting the best KenPom OER in history in 2026.
Three players have had their jerseys elevated to the rafters.
Two players have been First-Team All-Americans.
Oh, and currently, they are in the Final Four for the first time in 21 years.
In an era with less continuity, it doesn’t take a brain surgeon to see that Underwood has ushered in a tremendous era for Illini basketball. The Illini play a fast, fun, offense-forward style of basketball that draws more national eyes.
And while you don’t get Keaton Wagler, Will Riley, and even Terrence Shannon for three years like the coaches in the 1999-2007 did, this program has made the most of shifting landscapes.
Hell, the Euro pivot was a market inefficiency that Illinois has exploited as well as any modern school.
Remembering the greatness of the 2005 squad doesn’t make me unappreciative of the Underwood era and the unparalleled consistency. Oh, wait, I forgot about the most arrogant part of your arrogant assumption.
Saying that the people of my generation are clueless about the history and trajectory of the Illini ignores something so obvious that even peak Jessica Simpson would be capable of pointing it out.
The rise of Brad Underwood has come during the era of Josh Whitman.
Two great gentlemen of the University of Illinois. TCR // Jack Jungmann
The current renaissance of Illinois basketball is a part of a much broader evolution spurred by the arrival and embedding of the actual smartest guy in the room.
To claim that older Illini fans can’t identify the differences between the Ron Guenther and Mike Thomas regimes and the Josh Whitman tenure at the top is the kind of arrogance that would make 2008 Kanye blush.
(Gen Xer Josh Whitman, with whom I crossed paths as an undergraduate student at the flagship public institution of the state of Illinois.)
“Golden Age” vs. Contemporary Illini
Yes, Illinois won more games from 1999-2007 than they have during the Underwood era.
But there was no COVID-19 year during the “golden age” that nobody of substance identified as such.
There was also no rebuild needed. The program started that time frame as an excellent program and maintained much of that excellence in the early Weber years.
This era has Orlando Antigua globetrotting and getting five-star prep prospects to choose Illinois over Kentucky.
This era has Tyler Underwood running the most efficient offense in the history of sophisticated analytics.
This era has Kofi Cockburn, Ayo Dosunmu, Terrence Shannon Jr. and Keaton Wagler as All-Americans.
This era has Brad Underwood resetting the entire talent acquisition game in the NIL era.
Frankly, fans cannot have enough gratitude and appreciation for what they can currently enjoy:
The most innovative Illinois basketball has ever been.
(And I’m even including the Flyin’ Illini in that mix. Because that was a groundbreaking, exciting style. But please, don’t harangue me for commenting on basketball that took place before MTV stopped focusing on playing music videos.)
Innovation can breed success. It can introduce complacency. Hell, it can bring resentment.
But for the 2025-26 Illini team, the mix of innovation, resilience, togetherness, and philosophy has brought one important thing: success not seen in…generations.