As Illinois players and coaches packed up their belongings at Fiserv Forum on Sunday night, coach Brad Underwood shared his expectation of how he would spend the team bus ride from Milwaukee.
Underwood and his staff weren’t planning to dive into film of the 84-75, second-round loss to Kentucky in the NCAA Tournament. He planned to talk about the future instead – and what the Illini roster might look like in 2025-26.
That’s because less than 24 hours after the Illini completed their fifth straight tournament appearance under Underwood, the men’s college basketball transfer portal opened. The portal, which already was open for graduate transfers and players whose coaches left, will stay open for 30 days, through April 22.
Illinois must figure out which players on the current roster are staying – and which new players could replace those who departed. Underwood said he already had been making informational calls over the weekend in Milwaukee.
“It’s speed dating,” Underwood said of the weeks ahead. “It’s gathering information, figuring out what you’re trying to do. We have a pretty good idea. We have a lot of really smart people on our staff that have been working really hard at it, gathering information.”
After last year’s Elite Eight run, Underwood and his staff rebuilt almost the entire roster after key players entered the NBA draft (Terrence Shannon Jr.), ran out of eligibility (Marcus Domask) or transferred (Coleman Hawkins).
A year later, the Illini could have more departures as players consider their best paths to playing time, money and future career success. But some of the most likely candidates to leave weren’t ready to talk about their futures in the immediate aftermath of the loss to Kentucky.
Lithuanian freshman guard Kasparas Jakucionis and Canadian freshman forward Will Riley are both potential first-round NBA draft picks. Jakucionis, who led Illinois with 15 points, 5.7 rebounds and 4.7 assists per game, has been projected as a potential lottery pick.
“The only thing I am thinking about now is this game, about this family that is here in this locker room, and that’s it,” said Jakucionis, who went on to add he didn’t expect to have as much fun and find a family as he did at Illinois.
Riley, who averaged 12.6 points and 4.1 rebounds, was of a similar noncommittal mindset.
“The season just ended,” he said. “I have no idea.”
The timeline for declaring for the NBA draft — and withdrawing the declaration to return to college — is different than the transfer portal window, further complicating the roster puzzle for Illinois coaches.
“We’ll continue to have conversations with those guys and their people and see where that leads,” Underwood said. “We’ve also got a job to do, and that’s what makes being a college basketball coach really, really hard. You’ve got timing of the portal and you’ve got timing of the draft that don’t jive. So we’ll have decisions to make, as they will too.”
Underwood and players such as junior guard Kylan Boswell haven’t publicly created the illusion that they expect Jakucionis to stay.
Boswell said Thursday he expects both Jakucionis and Riley to be gone “for sure.” But he did allow himself to briefly dream about what it would be like if the Illini brought back their entire young team.
“We would make some stuff happen, for sure,” Boswell said. “We’ll be older. Everybody will have that chemistry that we built this year.
“I’ll be pissed if I see KJ and Will come back. They need to go and live out their dreams and do exactly what they’ve been doing all year, and that’s go playing professionally. But it would be awesome as hell if they came back too. The main guys, we’ll just chop it up in the summer, figure it out from there.”
Boswell, whom Underwood said had “an unbelievable tournament” in his first season after transferring from Arizona, spoke as a player who expects to return. He talked about how he plans to approach leadership in his senior season, even planning to consult Shannon. Tre White, a Louisville transfer who also served as a veteran presence, is another who might return.
The status of 7-foot-1 Croatian center Tomislav Ivišić, a first-year player who is classified as a sophomore, is one of the biggest to monitor, as the Illini were at their best when he was available and effective. His twin brother Zvonimir plays at Arkansas and has appeared in several NBA mock drafts in the second round.
“We’ve got to see what happens,” Ivišić said. “But I really like it here and really enjoyed it here.
“Next year if a lot of guys come back, everyone’s going to be a year older, a year of experience. There will be more consistency, better knowing each other, and it would be a pretty good environment.”
Meanwhile, Illinois coaches must examine what will make their roster better than the one that finished 22-13 this season.
Underwood said he planned to examine the shooting piece of Illinois’ puzzle. He thought the Illini shot great in practices and warmups, but that didn’t always translate to some games, potentially because of inexperience or illness and injury disruptions this season.
Along with examining the portal and continuing with high school recruiting, the Illini also plan to continue to recruit internationally, going overseas every month to six weeks for visits.
Underwood said international recruiting has always been an interest of his staff, though “NIL has changed maybe the quality of the player that we can get.” He believes international players fit the university well, and he likes coaching them because of their basketball maturity.
Underwood and players did spend time Sunday night examining a season that had some extreme highs and lows – and one Underwood said he had fun coaching.
But the business-like, next-steps talk dominated local reporters’ postgame conversation with the coach, and it was peppered into player’s exit interviews too. It was a sign of the times in an NCAA Tournament dotted with transfers.
“It’s a never-ending process,” Underwood said. “We’ve been making calls and checking the portal on a daily basis since we’ve been here, for the grads. But we’ll hope there is a nice group back, and we can build on this and try to win a national championship.”
