Jonathan Koon

One of my favorite Illinois basketball moments. Watching the men’s team advance to the Sweet 16 while at the women’s game with a 5 point halftime lead

With now 1,006 career rebounds in the NBA, Ayo has more rebounds in the league than: Marcus Liberty (Illinois) - 925 rebounds Trey Burke (Michigan) - 878 rebounds Jalen Suggs (Gonzaga) - 877 rebounds Denzel Valentine (Michigan State) - 857 rebounds Pat Riley (Kentucky) - 855 rebounds Luther Head (Illinois) - 845 rebounds Ziaire Williams (Stanford) - 797 rebounds Jaden Ivey (Purdue) - 767 rebounds Bol Bol (Oregon) - 709 rebounds Tre Mann (Florida) - 602 rebounds Steve Novak (Marquette) - 591 rebounds Luka Garza (Iowa) - 483 rebounds Sean May (North Carolina) - 481 rebounds And 3,000+ others that have ever played in the NBA

Ayo Dosunmu over the last 4 games: 19.3 PPG 7.0 RPG 4.0 APG 53.7% FG 55.0% 3P 88.9% FT 32.9 MPG Don’t sleep on Ayo. 🔥🔥

Our reward for having to play 8 seed Loyola Chicago in the second round in 2021 (though they were #10 KenPom and #13 BartTorvik with the #2 defense per both sites), and 5 seed Houston in the second round in 2022 (though they were #2 KenPom and #2 BartTorvik with a top 10 offense and defense per both sites)

Brad Underwood is 6-0 in his career against double digit seeds, including 2-0 vs 11’s After years of horrific draws, the basketball gods have been setting us up nicely recently. Gotta take advantage

Illinois reaches 25+ wins for just the 10th time in program history, has its most points ever in an NCAA Tournament game, has two of the best freshman in program history leading the team, and has the best offense in the country... but the feature story is John Groce's success at Akron. Ok then

The Sun-Times Sports cover, featuring Akron coach John Groce, who has crushed it since Illinois fired him in 2017, by @SLGreenberg. mrf.lu/r0Qg

Amongst freshman in Illinois program history, David Mirkovic is now 4th in points and 2nd in rebounds. Illinois freshman leaderboard points: 1) Keaton Wagler, 591 points 2) Kasparas Jakucionis, 494 points Cory Bradford, 494 points 4) David Mirkovic, 457 points 5) Deon Thomas, 452 points Illinois freshman leaderboard rebounds: 1) Kofi Cockburn, 272 rebounds 2) David Mirkovic, 265 rebounds 3) Efrem Winters, 213 rebounds 4) Deon Thomas, 203 rebounds 5) Morez Johnson Jr., 200 rebounds

With 15 made three-point field goals in last nights game Illinois broke the program record for most in a single season with now 349 made! The previous record was 344 in 2004-2005. Most three-point field goals single season: 1) 349+, 2025-2026 2) 344, 2004-2005 3) 330, 2024-2025 4) 317, 2023-2024 5) 295, 2021-2022 6) 280, 2012-2013

Per CBS Sports research, #illini David Mirkovic and Keaton Wagler are just the second freshman duo in the last 40 years to each have 18+ points and 7+ rebounds in an NCA Tournament game. The other duo: Michigan State's Miles Bridges and Nick Ward in 2017.

#illini have set a program NCAA Tournament record with 100 points. The previous high was 96 points vs. Northwestern State on March 18, 2001.

Illinois enters tomorrow with its largest 1st Round spread of the Brad Underwood era #illini

Most points by a rookie since Feb 1st: 393 - Kon Knueppel 310 - Will Riley 309 - Maxime Raynaud 282 - VJ Edgecombe 260 - Cooper Flagg 257 - Ace Bailey 252 - Nique Clifford 227 - Danny Wolf

Can't really point out the valley any more clearly than this. Illini honored jerseys this century. 2002: Frank Williams 2003: Brian Cook 2005: Deron Williams 2005: Luther Head 2006: Dee Brown ... 2021: Ayo Dosunmu 2022: Kofi Cockburn 2024: Terrence Shannon Jr 2026: Keaton Wagler

This makes Keaton a Consensus Second-Team All-American and qualifies him to have his jersey honored in the rafters of State Farm Center #Illini

This is what happens when ticket prices are in the price range of normal humans not celebrities and the 1%

@rforan23 Just 1-17 from three this season though 😬

Chicago kid that this staff recruited…

With now 507 career points in the NBA, Will Riley already has more points in the league than: Rob Dillingham (Kentucky) - 462 points AJ Guyton (Indiana) - 442 points Walter Clayton Jr (Florida) - 413 points Johnny Davis (Wisconsin) - 395 points Robbie Hummel (Purdue) - 379 points Mark Pope (Kentucky) - 285 points Terrence Shannon Jr (Illinois) - 265 points Frank Williams (Illinois) - 253 points TyTy Washington (Kentucky) - 213 points Oscar Tshiebwe (Kentucky) - 194 points Drew Timme (Gonzaga) - 181 points Kobe Bufkin (Michigan) - 167 points Brandon Paul (Illinois) - 147 points Dee Brown (Illinois) - 140 points Jalen Hood-Schifino (Indiana) - 140 points and 2,000+ others who have ever played in the NBA

I'd imagine though that the total expenses in FY26 will be very similar to FY25, making the original point about the results this season being in-line with our expenses true. Would hate to be in a situation like Indiana, Mississippi, Rutgers, Minnesota, etc. that are seriously underperforming relative to how much they're spending.

Duke is a private school so that information wouldn't be available through FOIA. But yeah, interesting that Michigan is only at 25th in expenses at $14.4M. Reading the linked article under the original post shows that revenue sharing is not part of the total expenses: "That number includes all the money a school spends on coaching salaries, administrative salaries, scholarships, travel, software, recruiting, and all sorts of other operational expenses. It does not include athlete revenue share payments. The numbers we are talking about here are not the “salary cap” for each team." Although, I should've gone about referencing the results of last season as this data is for FY25 (July 2024-June 2025). Looking at the appropriate season, Illinois' result was lower relative to the total expenses: unranked in final AP Poll 6 seed 17th final NET ranking

Illinois' results going in to the NCAA Tournament are right in line with the program's FY25 total expenses: 12th in total expenses at $18.6M 13th in AP Poll 3 seed (10th overall) for NCAA Tournament 8th NET Rankings