Illinois head coach Brad Underwood chats with Seth Davis on The Hoops HQ Show about going from JUCO to the Final Four, the joys of coaching Keaton Wagler and the Illini’s affinity for talented players from the Balkans.
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Seth Davis: We are very pleased to be joined on the Hoops HQ show by the head coach of the Final Four bound Illinois Fighting Illini, Brad Underwood.. Brad, so grateful for you taking the time to join us. You were saying that you just got off the court for practice: Does a Final Four practice feel a little bit different than the others that you’ve done over your extensive career?
Brad Underwood: Yeah, there was pretty good energy. It’s always a good thing when you’re still practicing on March 30th. You know there’s going to be a little different energy and buzz in the gym. And we had it today. We didn’t go real long, but it was good to get the guys back holding the basketball.
Seth: So, I’m wondering if you’ve talked to other coaches who’ve coached in the Final Four or gotten advice. I’ve covered a couple of these now and there’s two camps. One batch of coaches feels like we gotta be locked in. Let’s stay 30 miles away. Let’s really not get distracted. And then a lot of coaches seem to be increasingly of the mindset, hey, I want you guys to soak this up and enjoy this. We can still be about business, but this is maybe a once in a lifetime experience.
Have you talked to anybody about that and which camp you’re gonna fall into?
Underwood: Yeah, I’ve talked to a couple of people and everybody says you have to enjoy the moment and I agree with that. And it’s so unique, you’re one of four teams that are still playing. You’ve got a chance to win a national championship and that doesn’t come along every day. And you sure don’t want to take that for granted. We’ve celebrated winning after every game this year that we’ve been fortunate enough to win. And it’s kept our team loose. I think that’s important. Yet we understand the distractions. And I think every coach I’ve talked to has talked about managing the distractions. And we’ve got a lot of people. We’ve got a lot of support people who will help do that. We’ll try to get tickets and all that knocked out as early as we can and understand that a lot of our preparation will be done here before we get to Indy.
Seth: One thing I’ve often said, Brad, about the NCAA tournament, especially as you get in the later rounds, you’re not just playing against good teams, you’re playing against teams that are playing well, right? There’s a reason why you keep advancing. A lot of times it has to do with health and injuries or chemistry or role definition or whatever. You guys have been playing well all season. You did lose four games, three of them in overtime. In February, you went out early again in overtime in the Big Ten tournament.
What do you think you guys are doing well now that maybe wasn’t the case, say three or four weeks ago?
Underwood: No, you’re exactly right. You don’t see a bad team, and you usually see a hot team. And that’s what it takes. You’ve got to play well or you go home in the NCAA Tournament. And I think one of the big things for us has just been the reacquisition of Kylan Boswell back in the lineup. And Andrej Stojakovic. Both of those guys midway through the Big Ten season are out. One (Stojakovic) with a high ankle sprain, where you lose conditioning, you lose timing. There’s not much you can do with that kind of injury. And then Kylan breaks his hand and it’s a shooting hand. So, it was a reacclimation with those guys. It took a little bit. It’s much harder than most people think. We had Jake Davis and Ben Humrichous playing great. We’ve kind of hit our stride with that. And Andrej fell in love with the sixth man role. He’s been playing great. And we’ve found a nice continuity that’s helped us sustain things better, especially on the defensive side..
Seth: I want to ask you about Keaton Wagler. I know you’ve told the story a lot. You’re going to tell it a lot this week. You’re going to get a lot of reporters who are in the nuts and bolts of college basketball during the season and a whole new audience. I think he was 261st in the 247Sports composite coming out of high school. And that the first time you saw him play, he had already committed. That just doesn’t happen anymore. There’s all these internet sites and social media. There’s no more diamonds in the rough, but somehow he slipped under. Tell me a little bit about the story of how he got there and just how much better he really is than you thought he was going to be.
Underwood: I think one of the things that we bought into is trust your eye and not fall in love with the stars next to a guy’s name. We’ve gone full bore into positional size and shooting. You can watch him on film and see that he can really shoot the basketball. Tyler (Underwood) went to watch him play, fell in love with his passing and his unselfishness and we signed him. And here’s a kid who won two high school championships. I knew his AAU coach Victor Williams very well who was just a tough hombre and played at Oklahoma State. He ranted and raved about all of the characteristics that we didn’t see.
And so I’ve known Victor for a long time. We bought into that and then I go see him play after we’ve signed him and he scores two points in a game. And I could not wait to get Tyler on the phone after the game because I was just all smiles. He played the game the right way. They played a high profile prep school team and the night before he’d had 36. This team trapped him every time. They forced the ball out of his hand. He never played selfish. He was never out of character. He just made the right plays. And there was so much maturity in that game. That day.
wasn’t his time to score. They took it out of his hands. There were five high-major players on the court. And I just knew then that we had something a little bit different from a maturity standpoint and understanding. So did I think a year later he was going to be MVP of the South region? You’re crazy. I had no clue. But he’s just been a blessing to coach.
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Seth: It’s interesting, Brad, if you look at this final four, all four programs and rosters were constructed a different way, right? Michigan has total roster turnover from a year ago, second year in a row. UConn, I think four starters were on the team last year, maybe only one or two freshmen and a couple of transfers. Arizona has a lot of freshmen, which is against the grain as well.
And you guys have a lot of internationals. I remember early in the transfer portal cycle, not that Illinois fans or any fans tend to panic, but there was let’s say high concern amongst your fan base saying, “where’s our dudes?” And you got a lot of them out of the Balkans and really put a stress on international players. How much of that was by necessity and how much of that was by intent and design?
Underwood: It was mostly by intent and design. First of all, Orlando Antigua, Jeff Alexander and my staff go over every month. And so they’ve been over there for years. You know, we didn’t expect necessarily to have Zvonimir (Ivisic). You know, that one kind of fell in our lap.
But we recruited David Mirkovic. We recruited a point guard. We recruited others that, you know, that we didn’t take. We had an intent to go get those guys. We also had an intent to get a little older, especially in our wing position, which led us to Andrej Stojakovic. And we zeroed in on him early in that process and recruited the heck out of him. So you paired him with a Ben Humrichous and Jake Davis. And we get Kylan Boswell back so we felt good about our veterans. We felt good about those guys coming back. Tomislav Ivisic had such a great year last year. So it was with intent to continue to get positional size in shooting. And we were invested heavily in the European kids. We loved them.
Seth: I’m gonna place a bet somewhere in Vegas on the number of times you use the phrase this week – old JUCO coach. You’re an old JUCO coach. And I love that about you, because you are who you are. And I’ve seen this in so many situations in so many different areas, people who’ve had huge amounts of success, and wealth and what have you – you are who you are. And you are an old JUCO coach. Five years at Dodge City in Kansas and then three years in Daytona. I’m sure that you dreamt back in those days of being where you are, but there’s a difference between dreaming and planning. When you’re a JUCO coach, are you really thinking, okay, my goal someday, I’m gonna be a head coach in the Final Four, or did that seem so far away and maybe unreachable for you that it maybe wasn’t quite in your plan?
Underwood: I’m probably dumb enough to believe that I could get there. And I mean that in a good way. Don’t we all? I mean, you know, I was the kid in the driveway shooting hoops that wanted to play and wanted to hit the shot. And you always dream that. And I’ve always been a big dreamer. And you’re sitting at Dodge City. And I was the coach who stayed up all night watching every single game. And it was what you hoped, it was what you dream about. My path is obviously different – 26 years to become a head coach. And you’re excited when you make a tournament at Stephen F. Austin. And it’s the reason I came to Illinois, is the belief that we could get there and do that.
And this place is special to me that way. I believe that we’ve had some good teams, Seth, as you know, that didn’t get there. But I just feel like you have to keep knocking, you know, and every race is run at a different speed and now’s our time. It’s better in real life than it was in my dreams.
When I was at Stephen F, a shirt I had made that said “Dream Big.” And we won a game. That year we beat VCU. And then I just put “Dream Bigger” on it. And it was something I’ve always done. Sometimes I think you truly have to believe it yourself. And there are times it’s frustrating, there are times it’s challenging. You know, when’s my time coming? I don’t know if I’ve ever looked at that because I’ve had such love and passion for the job and what I get to do. We got beat as a No. 1 seed and everybody wants to end the world. And to me, you just keep knocking on the door. You lower your head and you keep doing the right things and treat people the right way. And hopefully you get another chance and fortunately we’ve got another chance and here we are.
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