Good Morning, Illini Nation: How good could Illinois be?

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Sign up for our daily basketball newsletter here Welcome to Good Morning, Illini Nation, your daily dose of college basketball news from Illini beat writer and AP Top 25 voter Scott Richey.

Hell offer up insights every morning on Brad Underwoods team and college basketball at large: Projections for the 2025-26 season whether they be "too early" top 25s or early snapshots from an analytics perspective are still just projections.

How the coming season actually plays out is to be determined.

But those projections at least paint a positive picture of what Illinois could be next season.

Take Bart Torvik's T-Rank projections .

The Illini check in as the No.

8 team in the country behind Houston, BYU, Purdue, Duke, Michigan, UCLA and St.

John's.

Those same projections have Illinois as the No.

6 offense (seems legit) and the No.

15 defense (not so sure about that).

The Illini's high overall ranking, though, has real roots in the strength of their returning players.

Getting Kylan Boswell, Tomislav Ivisic and Co.

back for another year was a pivotal offseason moment for Illinois.

That returning group means Illinois returns 45 percent of its minutes from a year ago (and that doesn't even include Ty Rodgers).

It's in stark contrast to the Illini's situation last offseason where Rodgers and Dra Gibbs-Lawhorn were the only returning players.

The only teams in the Big Ten that return a higher percentage are Purdue, which is way out in front at 10th nationally, Ohio State and Northwestern.

The addition of transfers Zvonimir Ivisic and Andrej Stojakovic also gives Illinois a boost in terms of experience.

Something last year's team didn't possess an endless supply of with multiple first-year players factoring so heavily into the rotation.

What's notable about all these projections is they only include players who will either return for another season or have signed on as newcomers.

That means the numbers being run don't include Illinois' pair of committed Balkans.

Odds are a couple of pros 22-year-old Serbian guard Mihailo Petrovic and 19-year-old Montenegrin forward David Mirkovic could propel the Illini further up the rankings..

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