Illinois coach Brad Underwood has put in decades of dedication at his craft, and it culminates this weekend as he Brad guides the Fighting Illini to their first Final Four in 21 years. It's the first time Underwood has brought a team to the Final Four in his 40 years of coaching.
INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. — No one can ever question whether Illinois coach Brad Underwood has paid his dues in the college basketball coaching profession. He's seen it all — from the bottom to the top.
Underwood turned 62 years old last December, and he's been coaching since 1986, a full 40 years. He's had 10 jobs since he started as a graduate assistant at Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene, Texas and he's had his last job as the head coach at the University of Illinois since 2017.
He's been to the Final Four many times as a spectator, but he's never brought a team here — until now. Illinois won the South Region last weekend with wins over Iowa and Houston, getting the Illinois back to the school's first Final Four since 2005. The got their as a No. 3 seed, the lowest remaining seed in the field.
It's been a long wait — but worth every minute.
"It's been nine years of dreaming a big dream since I took the Illinois job,'' Underwood said Thursday at Lucas Oil Stadium here in Indianapolis. "There are a lot of people to thank along that. I'd be very remiss if I tried to mentioned them all because I would miss somebody. But I'm excited that this group of guys gets to experience this opportunity.''
The Illini, who are 28-8 on the season and finished in a three-way tie for second place in the Big Ten with a 15-5 mark, face Connecticut on Saturday night in the first of two national semifinals. Big Ten champion Michigan faces Arizona in the nightcap.
Illinois played UConn back on Nov. 28 at Madison Square Garden in New York, and lost 74-61. It was their lowest scoring game of the year — by far. Their next lowest output was 71 points — and that came in a 71-51 home win over Indiana in February.
No one kept them in check like the Huskies did. So Underwood is looking forward to the rematch — and a better outcome — agains Danny Hurley's team, who's 33-5 on the year and the East Regional winner with a shocker buzzer-beater against No. 1 overall seed Duke last weekend..
"We know that we've got a great, great opponent in UConn, a team that we saw earlier in the year,'' Underwood said. "I'm very, very grateful for Danny, sending a tweet out earlier in the year after I congratulated him on a win and him being able to foresee that we'd both be here in Indy.
"I'm excited for our fans, excited for our university. It's an incredible opportunity, and I'm looking forward to seeing all the orange and blue in Lucas Oil on Saturday night and looking forward to the challenge of playing a great, great UConn team and obviously one that is very, very tough and has no quit in them. We're excited to be here.''
Underwood has had some good teams at Illinois but they've always seemed to underachieve in the NCAA Tournament. He's made six straight tournaments but only got out of the first weekend once in five tries before this season.
So this run has been nice. For all involved in the orange and blue.
"Yeah, I think it was fun after winning the region to sit back and just think a little bit. I hope to get to do that in the future after all of this is over,'' Underwood said. "I think one of the really neat things for me has been all the stops along the way. So many people have reached out — the old friends and the old acquaintances and the people that are coming from all those stops — it all means a lot to me.
"I say it all the time, I hope I'm not known for wins and losses. I hope I'm known for impacting some lives of people and creating memories. That's come to fruition a little bit with some of the texts and phone calls I've gotten here in the last few days.''
The Illini have looked like a potential Final Four team for a lot of this season. They lost to three ranked teams — No. 11 Alabama, No. 5 UConn and No. 23 Nebraska — before the start of the new year, but then reeled off 12 straight wins to get to No. 5 in the country themselves.
They lost back-back overtime games to Michigan State and Wisconsin, and later lost to UCLA and Michigan before getting beat in the Big Ten Tournament quarterfinals — again by Wisconsin and again in overtime.
So the eight losses are a bit deceiving. They haven't really had a lot of bad nights. And they've really looked good in the NCAAs, winning four straight games impressively.
Getting all the way to the Final Four is something special — and the Illini Nation is going to enjoy it. It's a short ride for many of them
"Yeah, my hats off to the NCAA. This is incredible,'' Underwood said. "This is impressive, what they do in the hotels for the student-athletes. You've got blankets on your bed and pillowcases and the game rooms to help all of them, and the team rooms. And then you walk in here, and you've got your team picture plastered in your locker room and all the individual photos, and just the hallways, it makes it feel very, very special.
"You're always going to feel that when you walk on the court and you're in a football stadium that seats a lot more people than we play in front of. It was really neat just to see the kind of giddy smiling faces of a group of guys that worked really hard to get here and experience that. But yeah, it helps having an extra day (Thursday), and you kind of knock it all out and get a feel for it and understanding that it is a little bit different. But it's still business as usual, and we're going to conduct it that way.''
The loyal Illini fan base has waited a long time to get back to the Final Four. It's been 21 years, since Bruce Weber's 2005 team lost to North Carolina in the national championship game. They beat Louisville in the national semifinals to get there, and it's the only time Illinois has won a game at a Final Four in six trips.
And that, obviously, means there are no national championship banners hanging at the State Farm Center in Champaign. Underwood would like to change that.
Being here means a lot. Winning two more games would mean the world.
"I think it goes beyond the program. I think it's the university, I think it's the State of Illinois, I think it's Champaign-Urbana. I think it's continued next-step development — that's the way I look at it. We play in a lot of big games, we play a great schedule. We play on national television every single night, but not to this level.
"You've just got to keep knocking on the door and keep finding ways to improve, and to me this is a step that allows us to improve, and along the way it brings great memories, and it helps our university and brings it at the forefront. I'm excited about that.''
Underwood has built a roster with a strong European flavor, and all of his international recruiting has paid off.
"I don't think we've rebuilt, I think we just reload. It's looked different,'' he said. "I've said all along, you just have to keep knocking on the door and our opportunities were going to come.''
Underwood's best previous knock on the door came in 2024. They won the Big Ten Tournament that year, and were a No. 3 seed, just like this year. They cruised through the first weekend with 16-point wins over Morehead State Duquesne and then upset No. 2 Iowa State in the regional semifinals. They met No. 1 seed UConn in the regional final — and got clobbered 77-52. UConn scored 30 consecutive points to blow the game open, one that was tied 23-23 with a minute-plus to go in the first half. UConn would beat Purdue a week later for their second straight national title.
A bad memory, for sure. Very bad.
"We learned a lot from that game,'' Underwood said. "I thought that team was a Final Four team that just happened to play a damn good basketball team in the Elite Eight, so we didn't get there.
"But I think we grew from that from the standpoint of understanding how hard it is, what that looks like. But yeah, it's hard to argue with what Danny has done throughout his time there and the consistency, and that's the one thing we've tried to match is the consistency and not ever look at it as a rebuild but just a reload.''