Illini Power Rankings: Why Can't It Go On Like This Forever?

My Fighting Illini, your Fighting Illini, debuted in the AP Top 25 this year at the No. 3 spot. As has been pointed out ad nauseum, this is the highest the Illini have been in the preseason poll since they were No. 3 exactly 25 years ago, a team that had Brian Cook, Frank Williams, Corey Bradford, Lucas Johnson, the late great Robert Archibald (rest in peace, big man, and I'll always treasure those beers I had with you before that Braggin' Rights game) and a couple of freshmen I'd never heard of named Luther Head and Roger Powell. The Illini have only been higher than No. 3 once, back in 1984, the year after their crusher of a loss to Kentucky in the Elite Eight, when they were No. 2.

What those two years in which the Illini were so heralded having in common is that they were disappointments. They were hardly disasters: Each team made the tournament, easily won 20-plus games, gave us all sorts of fun moments. But they did not live up to those preseason expectations. The 1984-85 lost in the Sweet 16 to Georgia Tech; the 2001-02 team fell to Kansas, also in the Sweet 16; neither team finished the regular season in the AP Top 10. They were teams that came into the season with national championship expectations but didn't come particularly close to meeting them. The three Illinois Final Four years of my lifetime came when Illinois was ranked No. 9, 5 and 15, respectively, in the preseason. We all knew they'd be good. But the joy of discovery each of those years was learning just how good. Those disappointing teams only felt disappointing because we expected so much more. It's always the hope that gets you.

I've noticed, then, that the expectations that come with this year's No. 3 spot preseason, and our Illini regularly mentioned as legitimate national title contenders, seem to have some Illinois fans already in a bit of a defensive crouch. What if it's like 2002? What if it doesn't come together? What if last year is as close as we're ever gonna get? And that is fair. It's scary to believe. You always want to protect yourself. With the injuries we've already seen on this team, and some ugly defensive performances in the preseason, you can already see people covering their flanks. It can sometimes hurt too much when you care.

I'll confess, though: I am having a difficult time contorting myself into that protective crouch.

That is not to say that there aren't reasons to be concerned about this team, which we'll get into when we actually start ranking these guys below. It's not perfect. Duke and Florida and Connecticut, to my eyes, are clearly better, at least at this point, and I've need seen a lot of evidence so far that David Mirkovic, our beloved Mirk, our best player and All-American, is going to be on the court anytime soon. (I'm emotionally prepared for him to be out until New Years, honestly.)

But I'm not concerned about the program. This does not feel like a culmination year, a season in which everything has aligned perfectly, one where we have to win a title or now because we'll never have a better shot than this moment. It just feels ... like a year when we're going to be awesome again, just like I think we're going to be awesome again next year. That's what Brad Underwood and everything he has put together has done to me. He makes me think we can just keep this train rolling.

Underwood has talked often about how being a JUCO coach prepared him for this new era of college basketball, how roster turnover doesn't scare him after years of coaching dudes who only had two years anyway. And you can see it. This thing is constantly shifting on the fly, not just all offseason but even during the season. In March, I did not know who Quentin Coleman was, and even if I did, he would have just been a kid about to play for Wake Forest; now he's the centerpiece of everything. We have major, deeply lovable pieces from last year's team back, but we also have six freshman and a transfer, none of whom I'd ever seen in my life until about a week ago. Some of these guys will be back next year; some won't. There are pieces I will be screaming my head off for in 13 months that I currently have no idea exist. I just know, whoever they are, they're gonna be good. And I know that because Underwood brought them in. I know that because I trust him.

And why wouldn't I? The guy is on an absolute heater right now, not only knocking out first-round picks every year like it's the easiest thing in the world (rather than something we'd have, like, twice in 20 years) but also keeping continuity while also integrating new talent. Last year's team was famously slow and methodical, thanks to Keaton Wagler's otherworldly processing skills. A year later, with many of the same players, Underwood and his staff are freaking flooring it. (I assume you have all read that CJ Moore Athletic piece about the offensive changes the Illini are making this year, but if you haven't, you really have to. It's free, just click it, honest, you won't regret it. Moore is the writer who did that hilarious piece on Mirk last year too. He's the good stuff.) Get to the Final Four with one of the best offenses of all time, and then just rip the whole thing up and do something entirely different the next year? And have the entire basketball world assuming it will work splendidly? That's a heater.

And that's why I don't sweat this year too much, why I'm not terrified about the No. 3 ranking, about all the preseason expectations. This is not a group of seniors doing one last lap together, or a top-rated freshman class that's all going to be gone in a year. A lot of these guys will be back next year, and the ones that leave, I have total faith that Underwood and his crew will find the right people to replace them. This is what sustained success looks like. It's not having to feel like any particular year has to be the year. It's knowing that every year is the year. You just have to keep giving yourself chances, because one of these years, you'll break through. And if you have to adjust midstream, you'll do that too. Don't forget: Over Thanksgiving last year, we were watching Mihailo Petrovic get smoked by Connecticut guards and figuring the whole year was gonna be like that.

The whole year was not like that.

It was like this.

I believe it's all going to work out. Maybe this year. But if not this year, next year. If not that year, some year after that. But soon. You can see it all coming together. Brad Underwood has turned Illinois into a blueblood. This is what happens when you are a blueblood: You're just always good. That's what we are now.

So yeah: Color me unbothered. This--right now--is as good as it has ever been as an Illini fan since the 1980s ... and I think it's about to get even better. You can make an argument it already is.

There will speed bumps along the way. There will be frustrating nights. Watching these games, I will throw several objects across the room, like always. But this team is good. Very good. Just like last year's. Just like next year's.

These are the good ole days. They're happening right now. Soak it all in. This is what we wanted. This is what we were waiting for.

So let's get it started, shall we?

This is the third season I have written sporadic, semi-regular Illini Power Rankings for IlliniBoard. These rankings are ridiculous, uninformed and written primarily as a nervous tic--think of them almost like me lancing a boil. There may be nothing I think about more than the Illinois men's basketball team. My name is Will Leitch, a contributing editor at New York magazine, a columnist at The Washington Post and for The Athletic, national correspondent for MLB.com and author of seven books, including the novels How Lucky, The Time Has Come and Lloyd McNeil’s Last Ride.

I also write a free weekly newsletter about parenthood and living through these tumultuous times that you might enjoy: You can find it here. I also host a podcast with the great Bernie Miklasz about the St. Louis Cardinals, if you can stomach such a thing. I am (somehow, still) perhaps best known as being the founder of the late sports website Deadspin, though I’d prefer you think of me as “former Daily Illini sports editor” and "forever Mattoon Green Wave."

Now let's get down to ranking human beings.

15, 14. Quintin McCoy, Blake Fagbemi.

With this many freshmen on the roster--this is definitely the deepest roster Underwood has ever had, which does not make me think he's any more likely to play more than eight or nine guy in a tournament game than he has ever been--it doesn't look like a great year for walk-ons to get a lot of minutes. McCoy only got two minutes in the UIC exhibition wipeout, a game in which four regulars sat out, so I don't see many garbage minutes for him this year. Nevertheless, to honor walk-ons everywhere, here is a souvenir gas station mug from the early '90s that I bought off of eBay that has a drawing of Steve Roth on it.

I am so glad I found this eBay listing before you did.

13. Landon Davis.

A big who only got 16 minutes and got only one rebound in an exhibition game that didn't have Zvonimir, Andrej or Mirk? (And only five minutes from a hobbled Lincoln Williams.) I'm not sure we're going to see much Landon Davis this year. I'm actually curious how many of these freshman are still on the team next year. You always want to be careful about not getting over your skis here--in the opener last year, I thought Brandon Lee was going to be a four-year defensive stopper--but I don't know a guy who is 6-foot-9 (which is big but not big) doesn't get recruited and transferred over constantly. He's the top of the list of Guy Who Shows Up In A Game For, Like, Oregon State in five years and you only vaguely remember him ever wearing an Illini uniform.

12. Zavier Zens.

Speaking of which, it's time for our annual check-in of former Illini at other schools this year. I counted 10.

• Carey Booth: Colorado State. He'll be forever immortalized by Underwood's diss of him when talking to that camp in Europe.
• Skyy Clark: LSU. Yeah, these two deserve each other.
• Dra Gibbs-Lawhorn: Texas Tech. Am I a little worried he's gonna put up 35 on us in a couple of weeks? I am.
• Amani Hansberry: Virginia Tech. He's a stealth all-ACC player this year
• Sencire Harris: Eastern Michigan. From Illinois to West Virginia to Cincinnati to Eastern Michigan, in case you were wondering if he ever learned to shoot.
• Brandon Lee: James Madison. I actually really liked Lee and wonder if he'll transfer up after a good year this year.
• Niccolò Moretti: Lamar. It would be fun if he actually changed his name to Lamar.
• Mihailo Petrovic: Seton Hall. I am absolutely going to tune into Seton Hall games to watch him. This seems like a perfect place for him.
• Ty Rodgers: Boise State. Got hurt again. Just a freaking shame, all the way around. I hope he coaches for us someday.
• Tre White: Kansas. He is not older than Tyler Underwood, it just feels that way.

Anyway, I love the Zens-as-Jake-Davis-in-training thing, but right now, all he can do is shoot. If there's only one thing you can do, that's a good one.

11. Jason Jakstys.

Considering his health issues--he lost a rib! They just took a whole rib out of him!--it's impressive that he's back on the court at all. He looks like he'll be occasionally useful, when we need some fouls anyway. But this team is making a big deal out of how it's not a screen-oriented team anymore, and if Jason Jaskstys isn't supposed to be setting screens, I'm not sure what he's supposed to be doing. I do think we should give him a better haircut, something more exciting, he looks like a really tall insurance adjuster. Don't tell me you wouldn't lean forward in your seat every time he came in if he had the Birdman.

10. Lucas Morillo.

Yeah, I'm already concerned. By rankings, Morillo is the second-highest-rated freshman, but he looks lost, reckless and even a little perturbed already. Defense is not going to be the strength of this team, but he looks utterly unplayable on that side of the court; he has to be averaging a missed assignment a minute in the preseason so far. It's obviously only three preseason games, and it's not like a lot of these freshmen are going to get that many minutes anyway. But it doesn't strike me as surprising that Morillo has fallen behind some other guys. They may need his size to grab some rebounds until Mirk gets back and everybody else gets back up to speed, but his rebounding strategy is something close to "hope the guy you just lost on defense misses the shot you just left him wide open for."

9. Lincoln Williams.

It's a shame he couldn't play more than five minutes against UIC, because I'm intrigued. It's sort of impressive to have an athlete of this caliber this far down on your bench. I don't know how much run he's gonna get, but I bet he has a couple of jump-off-the-couch-and-scream-like-crazy highlights in him. But he also seems like a guy who might get a little restless if he gets as few minutes as he's probably going to get.

8. David Mirkovic.

This is where he goes until he's back. So hopefully this is the last time we see him here. I'm curious how this new fast-fast-fast style will work with him recovering from a foot injury. But he's Mirk. Our worlds are all a little bit more dark and forlorn without him.

7. Zvonimir Ivisic.

He didn't play against UIC, but, honestly, I noticed him about as much as I did in the Baylor exhibition, which is to say not at all. You can definitely see why he was so frustrating at Kentucky and Arkansas. There are times that he looks like the most dominant player on the court, someone who can shut down anyone who dares to drive the lane and then splash a three from the corner on the other end. You look at that guy and he looks like a 10-year NBA player waiting to happen. And then there are times--more times--where he might as well not be on the court at all. This is his fourth year of college basketball. Expecting the light to turn on at this point is probably fooling yourself. I love him. He's going to have games that he wins for us. He's who I want on the floor defensively at the end. But I worry we're always going to have that "is Z sleepy tonight or something?" sense more often than not.

Still worth it. And not just because as long as he's here, I can have an excuse to post this again.

I do not know what my last words on this earth will be, but you could do a lot worse than "Take me to the Balkans, please."

6. Ethan Brown.

You can tell this team is huge because he's 6-foot-4 and still somehow seems small. Of all the things he does–and it's already obvious there are so many things he does so well--it's the purity of his shot that I like the most. You know how it looks when Andrej shoots, when you're like, "Uh, there is no way that is going in, how in the world, with the father you have, is that how you learned to shoot a basketball?" Brown's shot looks the opposite of that. The athleticism is an issue, and I worry he's going to get alternately knocked around and sped past by some of those Big Ten guards, but I am very intrigued. He's another guy who could use a Birdman haircut though.

5. Stefan Vaaks.

One of the most important questions of the season might be whether Vaaks truly is comfortable coming off the bench--which, considering he didn't even start the UIC game despite a third of the team being hurt, he's definitely going to do--because I have to say, it's kind of a genius move. I hadn't even thought about Vaaks, the streak shooter who is widely considered one of the top transfers in the country, coming off the bench, but I guess that's why Brad Underwood is a coach and make jokes about Ben Humrichous looking like the cover of a Radiohead album.

Speaking of which, one last time for the current Long Island Net:

Vaaks could absolutely wreck some stuff off the bench, like Andrej last year but as a pure shooter (and not bad passer either). You can hide some of his defensive deficiencies if he's your Dennis Johnson (or, if you're not old, Will Riley) too. It's possible he ends up our second-leading scorer and I don't think he should start a single game.

4. Jake Davis.

Jake Davis! You know what my favorite thing about Jake Davis is He plays the exact same way, all the time, no matter who he is playing with. Whether he’ s playing in the Final Four or in an exhibition game with four freshmen, he just plays exactly like Jake Davis. I assume he would play like that if he was the one adult on a team of eight-year-olds, just him constantly draining the open three, not turning the ball over and connecting little Joey and Becky so that the offense keeps running smoothly. I love him so much: It may be impossible to appreciate him enough. And so you know: He can play another year after this one. We have so much more Jake Davis in our life yet to come!

3. Tomislav Ivisic.

It is possible I have Tomi too high. That's not because Tomi isn't good, he's Tomi, he's great, particularly because he hasn't gotta mono or scurvy or rickets or croup or quinsy or whatever strange ailment Tomi seems to get for a couple of weeks every year. I'm more concerned about how where, and how, he fits in exactly with this fast new offense. “A little tiring,” Ivisic said about the new offense in that CJ Moore piece. “A lot of running.” Is that really the best use of Tomi? Let's not forget how valuable he was in the tournament by being, essentially, a traditional post player, almost a Euro Deon Thomas. In the piece, Tyler Underwood essentially has Tomi running out and being the guy who hits corner threes, which we've seen a few times in the exhibition games. And while I'm glad if there's a 7-foot dude shooting threes it's him, are we sure this is the optimum use of a Tomislav Ivisic? I'm sure a lot of this is an adjustment I need to make as a fan after watching Wagler run such a slow offense last year, but I kind of loved how Tomi (and Mirk) was able to hunt mismatches last year. He can do a ton of things, including hit threes. We're going to ask him to do more than that in this offense, right? Right?

2. Quentin Coleman.

This, however, is the biggest adjustment for us all to make from last year. Coleman rebounds well for a guard and can shoot, so those are two things he has in common with Wagler. But they are otherwise such, such different players. Coleman is unquestionably a better athlete, and he plays with a ferocity that Wagler didn't. This is not to say that Wagler wasn't a killer. He was--and is. But he just was very chill about it. There is nothing chill about Coleman. He goes hard, he goes fast, he leaps into double teams, he takes the tough shot, he is reckless and wild and young and awesome. I already love him. But I loved Wagler too--maybe as much as I've loved an Illini player since Dee Brown. (Though Mirk might end up passing him this year anyway.) Coleman is going to turn the ball over more, he's going to drive you more crazy, he's going to make some very dumb mistakes. And then he's going to do something spectacular, and then he's going to do it again. But we need to be patient with the mistakes. Because, especially early, I think there's going to be a lot of them. He's not Wagler. That's not entirely a bad thing. But it's certainly not a good thing either. I'm excited. But I don't trust him yet. Which, you know, is totally normal: He is about to play his first-ever college basketball game, and it's not like I trusted Wagler before his first game either. But Coleman is, instantly, vital for everything this team wants to do. It feels like they're building this team around him the way they did around Wagler. I hope it works.

1. Andrej Stojakovic.

Yeah: He's playing like Terrence Shannon Jr. That's what I loved the most about watching him in the exhibition: He's driving, he's posting, he's taking dudes off the dribble and underneath, he's finding a lane and hitting it fast. He's not Shannon: He's not as fast, he's not as big, he doesn't shoot as well. But Shannon had to do everything for that team two years ago: Honestly, he dominated that Big Ten Tournament in a way I've never seen an Illini player do before. (He's also having a Leap season in the NBA this year too.) Andrej doesn't have to do everything. He just has to hit his lanes, he has to get fouled, he has to hit his free throws, he has to play great perimeter defense (he was incredible at that in the tournament) and he needs to settle everything down when everything needs settled down. Right now, until Mirk comes back, that's what we need most from him. Is he a star? Is he an NBA player? I'm not sure he is. But he's the guy to count on. And until Mirk comes back, that's what we require the most: Someone to count on.

I'm ready. Are you ready?

Will Leitch is a columnist for The Athletic, contributing editor at New York Magazine, columnist for The Washington Post, national columnist for MLB, and the founder of the late sports website Deadspin. Subscribe to his free weekly newsletter and buy his novels “How Lucky,” and "The Time Has Come” and Lloyd McNeil’s Last Ride from Harper Books.