The 2020–21 Illinois Fighting Illini men's basketball team represented the

University of Illinois The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC, U of I, Illinois, or University of Illinois) is a public university, public land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Champaign–Urbana metropolitan area, Illinois, United ...

in the

2020–21 NCAA Division I men's basketball season The 2020–21 NCAA Division I men's basketball season began on November 25, 2020, and concluded on March 14, 2021. The 2021 NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament culminated the season and began on March 18 and concluded on April 5. Season ...

. Led by fourth-year head coach

Brad Underwood Bradley Cole Underwood (born December 14, 1963) is the current head coach for the Illinois Fighting Illini men's basketball team. Previously, he served as head coach at Oklahoma State Cowgirls basketball, Oklahoma State, Stephen F. Austin Lumber ...

, the Illini played their home games at the

State Farm Center The State Farm Center is a large dome-shaped 15,544-seat indoor arena located in Champaign, Illinois, owned and operated by the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. The arena hosts games for the Illinois Fighting Illini men's basketball, ...

Champaign, Illinois Champaign ( ) is a city in Champaign County, Illinois, United States. The population was 88,302 at the 2020 census. It is the List of municipalities in Illinois, tenth-most populous municipality in Illinois and the fourth most populous city in ...

as members of the

Big Ten Conference The Big Ten Conference (stylized B1G, formerly the Western Conference and the Big Nine Conference, among others) is a collegiate List of NCAA conferences, athletic conference in the United States. Founded as the Intercollegiate Conference of Fa ...

. They finished the season 24–7, 16–4 in Big Ten play to finish in second place. They defeated

Rutgers Rutgers University ( ), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a public land-grant research university consisting of three campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's College and was aff ...

Iowa Iowa ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the upper Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders the Mississippi River to the east and the Missouri River and Big Sioux River to the west; Wisconsin to the northeast, Ill ...

, and

Ohio State The Ohio State University (Ohio State or OSU) is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio, United States. A member of the University System of Ohio, it was founded in 1870. It is one of the largest universities by enrollme ...

to win the

Big Ten tournament Big Ten Tournament can refer to any Big Ten Conference sport that has a tournament or championship game: * Big Ten Football Championship Game * Big Ten men's basketball tournament * Big Ten women's basketball tournament * Big Ten baseball tournamen ...

and receive the conference's automatic bid to the NCAA tournament. Making their first tournament appearance since

2013 2013 was the first year since 1987 to contain four unique digits (a span of 26 years). 2013 was designated as: *International Year of Water Cooperation *International Year of Quinoa Events January * January 5 – 2013 Craig, Alask ...

. They entered as the No. 1 seed in the Midwest region, they defeated Drexel in the First Round before being upset by No. 8-seeded Loyola–Chicago in the Second Round.

Previous season

The Illini finished the 2019–20 season 21–10, 13–7 in Big Ten play to finish in fourth place. Their season ended when the

and the NCAA tournament were canceled due to the

coronavirus pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

Offseason

On April 7, 2020, freshman big man

Kofi Cockburn Kofi Mazeze Cockburn ( ; born 1 September 1999) is a Jamaican professional basketball player for the Hiroshima Dragonflies of the Japanese B.League. He played college basketball for the Illinois Fighting Illini. Early life Cockburn was born in ...

declared for the

NBA draft The NBA draft is the National Basketball Association's (NBA) annual event, dating back to 1947 BAA draft, 1947, in which the teams in the league can Draft (sports), draft players who declare for the draft and that are Eligibility for the NBA dr ...

, but did not hire an agent, leaving open the chance that he would return to school for his sophomore season. On April 16, sophomore guard Ayo Dosunmu also declared for the draft. Dosunmu did not hire an agent, but stated that he intended to stay in the draft. On July 31, Cockburn and Dosunmu announced they had withdrawn from the NBA draft and would return to Illinois for the season.

Departures

2020 Recruiting Class

Roster

Schedule and results

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, - !colspan=9 style="", NCAA tournament Source

Rankings

*AP does not release post-NCAA Tournament rankings
^Coaches did not release a Week 1 poll.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Illinois Fighting Illini men's basketball team 2020–21 Big Ten Conference men's basketball season 2020-21 2020 in sports in Illinois 2021 in sports in Illinois 2021 NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament participants 2020-21