Rothstein 45<\/a>, an offseason list updated daily projecting the top 45 teams in college basketball ahead of the upcoming season.<\/p>\nIllinois has made some key additions between now and its round-of-32 loss in last year\u2019s NCAA Tournament. Head coach Brad Underwood brought in Andrej Stojakovi\u0107, son of former NBA all-star Peja Stojakovi\u0107, who will now play for this third team in three seasons. The Fighting Illini also brought in 7-foot-2 forward Zvonimir Ivi\u0161i\u0107, twin brother of 7-foot-1 Tomislav Ivi\u0161i\u0107 \u2014 the team\u2019s second-leading point scorer from last season. <\/p>\n
The news of the matchup has reaffirmed one thing: this will be a star-studded non-conference slate for head coach Dan Hurley and his squad, who will compete for their third national championship in four years. The Huskies will start their season with an exhibition match on October 13 against Boston College as part of a double-header in conjunction with the women\u2019s team.<\/p>\n
The finalization of the game against Illinois brings the number of known non-conference games next season to five. On Nov. 15, UConn will play BYU and No. 1 draft prospect AJ Dybantsa at TD Garden in Boston. On Nov. 19, it will face Arizona in the first year of a home-and-home series, with UConn hosting this year and Arizona next. During the Jimmy V Classic, also at Storrs South, the Huskies will face defending national champion Florida on Dec. 9 before taking on Texas on Dec. 12 at home. <\/p>\n
Outside of UConn\u2019s 25-point win over Illinois in the 2024 NCAA Tournament, the two programs have squared off only three other times. UConn took home two of those wins, once in 1992 and again in 1994, while Illinois claimed a 49-23 victory in 1938. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A 2024 Elite Eight rematch awaits the UConn men\u2019s basketball team as part of its 2025-26 non-conference schedule.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":72133,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3723],"tags":[2269,7,265,217,28,1630,2048,1628,736,231,772,1544,1222,42,7493,1629,64,63,922,3506],"class_list":{"0":"post-72132","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-basketball","8":"tag-at","9":"tag-basketball","10":"tag-blog","11":"tag-college-basketball","12":"tag-front-page","13":"tag-garden","14":"tag-illinois","15":"tag-madison","16":"tag-men","17":"tag-ncaa","18":"tag-ncaa-basketball","19":"tag-ncaab","20":"tag-play","21":"tag-s","22":"tag-set","23":"tag-square","24":"tag-the","25":"tag-to","26":"tag-uconn","27":"tag-uconn-huskies-mens-basketball"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/114614714083614617","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72132\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}