Illinois Year in Review Top coaches
· Yahoo Sports
Jul. 17—The bar keeps rising for Illinois coaches with Final Four runs on top of bowl wins on top of other levels of postseason success. Beat writer Scott Richey spotlights the 10 best Illini leaders from 2025-26:
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Nine years with Underwood at the helm has created a complete 180 for the Illinois men's basketball program. The Illini have gone from not even in the NCAA tournament picture for seven consecutive seasons (six if you don't count 2020) to a Final Four appearance this year, with Underwood posting his seventh straight season with at least 20 wins. A national title remains elusive, but the 2025-26 season was another step in that direction.
Two more top-eight finishes nationally for the Illinois women's track and field team gives Kyprianou and the Illini four during the course of the last two seasons. The third-place finish at the NCAA indoor championships in March marked the second-highest postseason result for any women's team in school history, and Kyprianou's method of loading up on multi-event athletes, jumpers and throwers is working out for both the men's and women's teams.
What Bielema has accomplished in five seasons at Illinois is starting to become without parallel in program history. Nineteen wins across two years, including a 9-4 mark last fall with a Music City Bowl victory, is a record. Three winning seasons in four years hasn't happened since John Mackovic was coaching in the late 1980 into the early 1990s. Bielema has turned the Illini into a competitive football team. A job his predecessors couldn't.
How big a whiff the Nancy Fahey era was comes into an increasingly clearer picture every season Green is on the sideline at State Farm Center. Last season marked a third 22-win campaign and third NCAA tournament appearance in four years. There's still ground to make up in a ridiculously loaded Big Ten, but Green has positioned the Illini as a competitor in that deep league with real growth potential for the 2026-27 season.
Dancer is in the early stage of his third decade at Illinois, but closing in on a quarter century with him as coach has come with impressive consistency. The Illini advanced to the NCAA tournament for the 19th time in Dancer's 21 seasons this spring. That included a Sweet 16 run for the first time since 2021 and 24 total wins that matched the most since 2018. A strong group of freshmen this past year bodes well for maintaining that level of success.
Hultin returned to Champaign ahead of the 2025 season to replace a legend following Janet Rayfield's retirement. Big shoes the former Illinois assistant had no trouble filling. The Illini had a 13-6-2 record to mark the most wins for the program since 2011, and their NCAA tournament appearance was a first since 2013. Hultin, who had impressive results at Division II Grand Valley State, managed all that with a team she mostly inherited from Rayfield.
No one has been named N-G Illinois Coach of the Year more than Small, with six wins since 2003. The expectations for his program are just as high. Expectations that weren't quite reached this past season with a runner-up finish at the Big Ten championship and an unexpected season ender at the NCAA regional in Athens, Ga. That said, the Illini won three tournaments, had six other top-five finishes and finished the year ranked 17th nationally.
Hunter didn't have it easy, taking over the program in late December when Mike Poeta was placed on administrative leave before Hunter became the full-time coach in February. Hunter led the Illini to a 12-5 record in dual matches with a 5-3 mark in Big Ten action. The Illini posted four ranked wins under Hunter, and finished sixth at the Big Ten championships behind eventual All-Americans Kannon Webster and Lucas Byrd.
The regular season wasn't Illinois at its best, with a 2-7-1 overall record and 0-4 mark in Big Ten dual meets more than a little rough. But Ribeiro's Illini peaked at the right time, with a third-place finish at the Big Ten championships and then fifth at the NCAA championships. A postseason run that yielded a Big Ten and NCAA title on pommel horse for Brandon Dang with the latter coming at State Farm Center in Champaign.
Slone's Illini also finished out their season on a high note, with a top-five finish at the Big Ten championships (the fourth in five years) in Glendale, Calif., and a seventh-place finish at the NCAA regional in Stanford, Calif. That postseason run came after Illinois won the Boilermaker Spring Classic with three golfers — Anna Ritter, Alexis Myers and Brielle Mapanao — in the top 10. A strong end to Slone's 20th season as Illinois coach.