Brad Underwood’s pivot to recruiting largely internationally at Illinois has received a lot of attention in recent months thanks to names on his roster like Andrej Stojakovic, Mhihalo Petrovic, Zvonimir Ivisic, Tomislav Ivisic and David Mirkovic. It’s sparked some funny memes and deep discussions about whether something is broken in the development system here in the United States, as one of the Big Ten’s best coaches, at one of the Big Ten’s best programs, has decided that it’s just smarter for him to build his team around Eastern Europeans for a variety of reasons.
That’s a discussion for another day. On this day, I’m just here to tell you that the Illini bounced back from their midweek loss to Alabama with a 98-58 win over Long Island.
Stojakovic, a native of Greece, led all scorers with 20 points. Mirkovic, born in Montenegro, added 12. The Ivisic brothers are from Croatia. One of them (Tomislav) had nine points and four rebounds, the other (Zvonimir) had eight points and four rebounds. Mihailo Petrovic, born in Serbia, scored four points and a steal.
Illinois is now 5-1 with one more buyout game (UT Rio Grande Valley) on the schedule before things heat up. The Illini play UConn on Friday. Eight days after that they play Tennessee. They then open the Big Ten portion of their schedule with games against Ohio State and Nebraska.
The Illini are 14th in Sunday morning’s updated CBS Sports Top 25 and 1 dally college basketball rankings, where Arizona remains No. 1 for the fourth consecutive day. Why Arizona at number 1? It comes as Tommy Lloyd’s Wildcats are 5-0 with three wins over other teams in the Top 25 and 1 – most notably wins over No. 4 Uconn, No. 6 Florida and No. 15 UCLA. No one can match that body of work, even though, as I explained Saturday, I expect Purdue to remain No. 1 in the Associated Press Top 25 poll when it’s updated Monday, which, as I explained Saturday, is perfectly reasonable even if it doesn’t match the Top 25 And 1.
Is Purdue college basketball’s best team?
Maybe.
But right now, Arizona has undeniably the best body of work in college basketball, thanks to the development of Jaden Bradley as a true First Team All-America candidate and Koa Peat emerging as one of the sport’s top freshmen. Once again, Purdue is arguably the best team in the sport. But after 21 days this season, it’s easy to see a ‘No. 1′ next to the Wildcats’ name to defend.
Their next game is Monday against Denver.
Top 25 and 1 rankings
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