Illinois fans need to make the State Farm Center a nightmare for opponents

At this time next week, the Illinois Fighting Illini men’s basketball team will make its first appearance in the Associated Press Top 25 poll for the 2026-27 season.

Rumor has it they’ll likely appear somewhere in the top five.

In case you were curious, the last time the Illini were ranked in the top five nationally to start a college basketball season, the guys pictured below were playing. Remember them?

They were pretty good.

But I have bad news for the millennials and older readers of The Champaign Room:

There are kids walking the University of Illinois campus today who weren’t even alive for “Illinois-Arizona.”

So let’s not be nostalgic. It will only make us feel old.

Instead, let’s take a look at the more recent past so that we might learn for the future. And maybe, just maybe, we can finally move on from 2005.

In the past six years, the Illini have:

• Made six NCAA Tournament appearances in six seasons

• Won a Big Ten championship

• Won two Big Ten Tournament championships

• Reached the Elite Eight

• Reached the Final Four

It goes without saying, but there’s something missing from that list that we’re all thinking about. Something that’s been missing for as long as Illinois basketball has existed:

A national championship.

To achieve such a thing, any team needs a lot working in its favor:

• You need a competent coaching staff, which Illinois has.

• You need talented players, which Illinois has.

  • You need them to stay healthy, which remains to be seen.

• You need to win every regular-season game you can to ensure the highest possible tournament seed and, hopefully, the best path available to a national championship.

• You need to go undefeated from about mid-March onward.

That being said, you can have nearly all of this go in your favor and still come up short. That’s one of the aspects of this pursuit that is so maddening.

Conversely, you can come up short to some degree in one of the first three realms and still find a way to win it all.

But that’s rare.

NCAA Tournament seeding is a significant indicator of the likelihood that a team will cut down the nets when all is said and done. Over the past 10 seasons of college basketball, here are the seeds of the national champions:

• 2026 Michigan: No. 1

• 2025 Florida: No. 1

• 2024 Connecticut: No. 1

• 2023 Connecticut: No. 4

• 2022 Kansas: No. 1

• 2021 Baylor: No. 1

• 2019 Virginia: No. 1

• 2018 Villanova: No. 1

• 2017 North Carolina: No. 1

• 2016 Villanova: No. 2

You might look at this list and think, “Well, yes, I would assume the national champions are almost always No. 1 seeds. They’re just really good teams.”

And that’s true. They are really good teams. But they’re not perfect, especially when playing on the road.

Here are the total losses at neutral sites or on the road for each of these national champions during the season they won the title:

• 2026 Michigan: 2

• 2025 Florida: 3

• 2024 Connecticut: 3

• 2023 Connecticut: 6

• 2022 Kansas: 5

• 2021 Baylor: 2

• 2019 Virginia: 2

• 2018 Villanova: 3

• 2017 North Carolina: 7

• 2016 Villanova: 4

On average, that’s about four losses on the road or at neutral sites in a given year.

Conversely, here’s how those teams did at home:

• 2026 Michigan: 14-1

• 2025 Florida: 15-1

• 2024 Connecticut: 16-0

• 2023 Connecticut: 15-2

• 2022 Kansas: 15-1

• 2021 Baylor: 11-0

• 2019 Virginia: 15-1

• 2018 Villanova: 12-1

• 2017 North Carolina: 15-0

• 2016 Villanova: 15-1

On average, these teams suffered fewer than one loss per season while playing in front of their home crowds.

Now you might be thinking, “Sure, that’s not surprising either. It’s easier to win at home than on the road.”

Which is also true. But here’s my concern:

Illinois isn’t winning its home games at a national champion’s level, even when it’s a great team.

• 2026 Illinois (a Final Four team): 14-3 at home, sixth-best in the Big Ten

• 2025 Illinois: 13-4 at home, eighth-best in the Big Ten

• 2024 Illinois (Big Ten Tournament champions, Elite Eight): 15-3 at home, fourth-best in the Big Ten

• 2023 Illinois: 15-2 at home, second-best in the Big Ten

• 2022 Illinois (Big Ten champions): 13-3 at home, sixth-best in the Big Ten

• 2021 Illinois (Big Ten Tournament champions): 11-2 at home, sixth-best in the Big Ten

So why is this happening?

We could blame Underwood. There’s an argument to be made that he hasn’t done enough to have the team mentally prepared for some of its home contests over the past six seasons.

We could blame the players. Either due to a lack of focus or a deficiency of talent, one might say they didn’t do their part to be ready to go.

We could blame having to play a Big Ten schedule, except you’d have to ignore the many other inferior Big Ten teams with better home records.

Or

We, as fans, could review the only thing that we ourselves can control:

Are we doing as much as we can to make the State Farm Center a difficult place for opponents to play?

During this wonderful run of basketball over the past six years, I have had the opportunity to attend my share of games at the State Farm Center. I have seen firsthand how the fan base operates.

When a solid team comes to town, I feel the nervous energy. I sense the excitement and the hope of seeing the Illini notch a “big win” for the program.

When things are going well, the crowd is enthusiastic. The Orange Krush’s energy is contagious. The entire venue feels like a big Illini party.

But when Maryland or Rutgers arrives and things aren’t going perfectly, things turn quiet.

Too quiet.

The orange glow of the arena turns from a raucous inferno into a cozy bowl for basketball. The loudest noises you’ll hear are the chirps coming down from the 200 level. There is no intensity, just criticism. It’s not a game filled with fans but rather viewers. The environment becomes more hostile toward the home team and the referees than any opposing foe.

This is how:

• No. 15 Illinois lost at home to No. 22 Ohio State in the 2021-22 season.

• No. 17 Illinois lost at home to unranked Penn State in the 2022-23 season.

• No. 9 Illinois lost at home to unranked Maryland in the 2023-24 season.

• No. 13 Illinois lost at home to unranked USC in the 2024-25 season.

• No. 8 Illinois lost at home to unranked Wisconsin in the 2025-26 season.

Are the fans solely responsible? Of course not.

But as we tiptoe into the 2026-27 season, the Illinois men’s basketball team is staring at an opportunity we haven’t seen in nearly two decades. The stars are aligning for the program to achieve something the entire Illini community has yearned for over the past century.

And even with the pieces falling into place, it’s still going to be extremely difficult to do.

No matter how badly we all might want this, we can’t control the decisions Underwood makes.

We can’t influence how hard the guys practice.

We can only control how we support this team.

I’m not saying we can’t wish for better play when the guys don’t do their best. But sitting in our seats in disgust when they don’t do everything just right isn’t going to do a darn thing to make this dream a reality.

When we walk through the doors of the State Farm Center in 2026, we all need to do our part to help this team win games.

That means cheering the great things.

Shaking off the bad.

And making sure it’s hard as hell for anyone to have a happy visit to Champaign this year, no matter who it is.

Support our everyday guys. They need everything we can give them.

If we do, I think they have a lot they can offer us.

And by the way, in 2004-05, Illinois was 15-0 at home.

I-L-L