Believe

Fighting Illini Basketball 2026–2027

The Associated Press released its preseason college basketball poll on Monday, and the University of Illinois Fighting Illini were ranked third in the country.

In case you didn’t realize the magnitude of this, the Illini haven’t started a season ranked this high since 2001.

If you’re new here, here’s the short version: Last year, the Illini’s Keaton Wagler was considered the 150th best player in his high school class, and Illinois was one of the only big programs to offer him a scholarship. This kid from Shawnee Mission Northwest, Kansas, had a nice jumper but wasn’t generating much of a buzz. Then, on January 24th, Wagler dropped 46 points on the road against a top-5 Purdue team. You can read more about that game here, if you want, because it was one of my favorite basketball games in the last decade.

Anyway, that game pretty much summarized the whole season.

The Illini knocked off Penn in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, beat VCU in the second round, and then pulled off one of the most unbelievable upsets in NCAA Tournament history by beating Houston in Houston. From there, they took down a surging Iowa and found themselves in Indianapolis for their first Final Four since 2005.