Good Morning, Illini Nation: Will Illinois get a high level game at home this season?
· Yahoo Sports
Jul. 4—The games Illinois has scheduled for the 2026-27 season already make it one of the most challenging nonconference slates of Brad Underwood's tenure in Champaign, and the Illini coach said earlier this week it would be "tougher when it's complete."
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Illinois' schedule already includes a road trip to Lubbock, Texas, to play Texas Tech — the return from last year's game in Champaign — another road game against Duke and neutral site games against Connecticut (Chicago), Missouri (St. Louis) and North Carolina (Nashville, Tenn.).
"I wish they were all like that, to be honest," Underwood said. "I wish we'd play a whole schedule of them. I wish we'd play more league games. I don't think those games ever hurt you. The system we're in now, you want to find out how good you are. You want to prepare yourself for the league."
A league schedule that does provide 20 opportunities for Illinois to test itself against high-level talent. But add in three more reported, yet unofficial, nonconference games against Fairleigh Dickinson, Penn and Eastern Illinois, and Underwood has just four spots to fill on the new 32-game schedule.
Whether or not one of those four games includes bringing a high-level opponent to State Farm Center is the question.
That's the glaring missing piece from Illinois' 2026-27 slate. Season tickets have already sold out. All that's left are some mini plan packages and single-game options that will be available at a later date and likely guarantee a sellout crowd of 15,544 for every matchup.
Neutral site games have become the de facto option to get two power conference teams to play each other, but the fans deserve to see a matchup of that caliber in a home court environment.
"I love the neutral sites, and I get it — TV is such a big part of those things," Underwood said. "The traditionalist in me, I love the home-and-homes. It's why I signed the Duke game."
Getting those games isn't straightforward, of course. Especially when you've got a group that won 28 games, reached the Final Four last season and is projected as a top five team nationally ahead of the 2026-27 season.
"We've got a team everybody thinks is pretty good," Underwood said. "A lot of teams want to shy away from that and won't play us on our home court. I truly wish we would have many many more home-and-home series that are these quality games than we do these neutral site games."