In the portal age, Brad Underwood and Illinois are winning the roster-building race

OMAHA, Neb. — One day after Selection Sunday, college basketball’s transfer portal opened. Why wait? Straight into the madness of March erupted a different kind of madness altogether, as 2024 as it gets. It’s a zoo out there — the wild West — and nothing as important as Illinois’ run to the Sweet 16 is going to put it on hold.

“The profession is changing,” Illini coach Brad Underwood said. “It’s getting harder. It’s not getting easier. We’re dealing with the portal right now. Right now, the portal. Really? This is the greatest moment in time for a college coach and a team. All of that takes from other things.”

But Illini staffers are scouting the next opponent, Iowa State, and monitoring the portal all at once because what other choice is there?

The portal brought, after all, Terrence Shannon Jr. to Champaign after his three years at Texas Tech. And Marcus Domask after his four at Southern Illinois. And Quincy Guerrier after two at Syracuse and two at Oregon. Dain Dainja came to the Illini from Baylor and Justin Harmon (Curie) from Utah Valley.

If anyone is winning the roster-building race in this fraught time for coaches attempting to sustain success, it might be Underwood and the Illini. When he says this team might be his favorite of all he has coached, it’s a real mouthful — old-fashioned relationship-building being a relic as a concept.

Just think of how different the team that was a No. 1 seed in the 2021 NCAA Tournament was. Ayo Dosunmu was in his third season as an Illini from the jump. Trent Frazier and Da’Monte Williams were in their fourth. Kofi Cockburn was in his second of three seasons at his only school. They were Illinois guys or, as Underwood calls them, “Every Day Guys.”

And just think of how different it was with Illinois’ gangbusters squad in 2005, the school’s last one to get past the first weekend of the tournament and one that reached the national final. Dee Brown came from Proviso East and was in his third of four Illini seasons. Luther Head, from Manley, was in his fourth year, as was Roger Powell Jr. from Joliet. Deron Williams, from Texas, and James Augustine, who played at Lincoln-Way Central, were third-year Illini. The whole beautiful experiment was mostly homegrown even if it was Bill Self and not Bruce Weber who had recruited them.

Underwood has won big with Illini “originals” and now with a team thrown together by necessity. It’s impressive. This 28-win Illini team could win the national championship and not come close to the 37 victories of the 2004-05 squad, but crafting a roster like the one from back then might not be possible anymore.

Still, Illinois not going to the Sweet 16 for 19 years is hard for Underwood to believe.

“That’s mind-numbing,” he said.

It’s certainly not all on him. Illinois is the winningest team in Big Ten play over the last five seasons.

“This program is elite,” Underwood said.

It’s not so easy to argue with that.

THREE-DOT DASH

Sorry, is my bias showing? Because Illinois-Iowa State will be the best matchup of the tournament so far, and it isn’t all that close. Illinois’ offense is humming like it’s 1989. Iowa State defends at a level only Houston can approximate. The second-seeded Cyclones are favored ever so slightly over the third-seeded Illini, but it’s a coin-flip game. And it can’t get here quickly enough. …

The Cyclones’ TJ Otzelberger is another coach who has crushed it in the portal. Keshon Gilbert came from UNLV, Tre King from Eastern Kentucky, Curtis Jones from Buffalo, Robert Jones from Denver. It all came together incredibly well. …

Lost in the hubbub: The Illini’s Dainja has made 19 straight shots from the field. They’re coming on dunks and layups, but still — that’s a lot. …

Best thing about the opening weekend, Part 1: Yale’s marching band was unable to get to Spokane, Wash., to support the Bulldogs — surprise winners of the Ivy League tournament — in the Big Dance. The band director at the University of Idaho, a little over 80 miles away, heard about this and sent 29 members of the Vandal Marching Band on an unexpected assignment. Calling themselves the “Vandogs,” they donned Yale shirts, learned the Yale fight song in a day and played their hearts out for an unfamiliar team for two games. …

Best thing, Part 2: Amid talk from the most powerful conferences about expanding the tournament field or altering the mix to make it even less accessible to smaller leagues, Oakland coach Greg Kampe made a touching plea to keep things as they are.

“Please don’t change it,” he said. “Please, please don’t change it. It is one of the three greatest sporting event in the world [with the World Cup and Super Bowl], and Oakland and my players are a part of it and they get to cherish that for the rest of their lives.”

And that was before Oakland went out and upset Kentucky on the strength of 10 threes from Jack Gohlke. That result and Yale’s upset of Auburn felt good to a lot of people who didn’t appreciate SEC commissioner Greg Sankey’s complaints to ESPN about “giving away highly competitive opportunities” to automatic qualifiers. …

Best thing, Part 3: After Morehead State lost to Illinois, coach Preston Spradlin and players Riley Minix, Kalil Thomas, Jordan Lathon and Drew Thelwell took questions from the media in a session that was more like a sad goodbye. This was it for an old team with four graduate students and a senior in the starting lineup. At the end, point guard Drew Thelwell, seated in the middle of the five, asked if he could add something.

“I just want to say, Coach P, I love you,” he said. “Riley, I love you. Kalil, I love you. Jordan, I love you.”

For someone lucky enough to be there, it sure was something.