Big-move offseason reveals Underwood going big with Illini: ‘Ambitions to win a national championship here’

CHAMPAIGN — Brad Underwood already has had a couple of Illinois teams that looked capable of contending for a national championship.

The 2020-21 Illini earned a No. 1 seed, won a Big Ten Tournament championship and had 12 Quad One wins before infamously getting upset by No. 8 seed Loyola Chicago in the second round of the NCAA Tournament.

This season, Illinois won another Big Ten Tournament and finished as a top-six team the AP Top 25. But UConn — the back-to-back national champion and statistically most dominant team in NCAA Tournament history — kept the Illini from its first Final Four appearance since 2005 with an Elite Eight drubbing.

But Underwood clearly isn’t content simply being on the periphery of national contention. This offseason, Underwood and Illinois athletics director Josh Whitman are pushing for more.

After losing most of his best players from last season’s team — Terrence Shannon Jr. and Coleman Hawkins have declared for the NBA Draft, and Marcus Domask is waiting on whether the NCAA will grant him a waiver for a sixth season — he’s over-recruiting role players (four transfer out) to upgrade his talent — the type UConn had — through the portal (four transfers in), continuity be damned.

“I’m the keeper of [the culture],” Underwood said. “I’ve got to be able to pass that on and push that through.”

Underwood also pushed to upgrade his staff. He and assistant Chester Frazier, a former Illini player and team captain, parted ways. Frazier is now the assistant at West Virginia in a part of the country that suits his recruiting ties with an associate head coach title that could get him one step closer to becoming a head coach.

Meanwhile, Underwood just stole away blue-blood assistant Orlando Antigua from John Calipari to give Illinois another recruiting jolt — as well as a proven track record of developing elite big man talent — to further the Illini’s push toward the national elite.

Make no mistake, Underwood is making big-boy moves, the types the blue bloods make. Underwood is pushing hard to do the one thing Illinois men’s basketball has never done: win a national championship.

He doesn’t hide from it. He’s had this expectation for the last four years of his seven-year Illini tenure. But entering Year Eight, Underwood has seemed even more willing to publicly pronounce such a lofty goal.