PHOENIX — When Brad Underwood took over the Illinois basketball program in 2017, he inherited one potentially annoying game on his 2019-20 schedule.
At Grand Canyon, first Friday of the season. A 1,400-mile flight to play against an upstart mid-major program, inside a rowdy midsize arena where purple-bathed students take half of the seats, standing, yelling and waving for the entire 40 minutes.
In short, a no-win situation. If the Illini made it out alive, as they did with an 83-71 win Friday, it would be an expected victory. If they didn’t, well, it wouldn’t be a good look.
There’s a reason why power conference teams rarely agree to face mid- or low-major teams on their home courts anymore. But former Suns boss Jerry Colangelo, a former Illinois star player and major GCU benefactor, made this one happen.
So Underwood looked at the GCU game on the schedule, anticipated what it would take … and doubled down.
He called Sean Miller.
Then Underwood arranged yet another tough road game for the Illini on Sunday against Arizona at McKale Center.
Two true road games, for the first weekend of the season, no less. Only one other major conference team, Florida State, is playing two true road games in the first week of the season.
“Let’s find out. Let’s figure out early what we’ve got to work on and then we can start to resolve it,” Underwood said. “There’s nothing worse than playing a bunch of patsies and get a false sense of who you are. We’re definitely not going to do that.”
In an era where multi-team events, other neutral-site games and less competitive home guarantee games dominate the nonconference schedules of most power conference teams, that philosophy is an outlier — although Underwood says part of the reason for the road swing is that Illini is not playing in a multi-team event this season.
As it turned out, the first part of the Illini’s trip turned out to be fun. Illinois survived the crazed atmosphere of Grand Canyon Arena, which hadn’t hosted a power conference team since Louisville arrived there three seasons ago, when then-coach Rick Pitino said it was the “toughest crowd I’ve had to face.”
Underwood said the loudest place he’s ever been was Kansas’ Allen Fieldhouse, though he rated GCU highly.
“It’s spectacular. It’s spectacular,” Underwood said. “I’m a huge fan of extremely loud. … I mean, the louder, the better.”
The crowd may have helped Illinois receive a few, will-testing moments during the game: The Illini led just 41-37 at halftime after giving up 5 of 9 3-pointers. Illinois led by 15 points in the second half, then allowed the Lopes back in the game late.
GCU cut it to 71-67 with just over four minutes left before Illinois finally quieted down the sold-out crowd two minutes later. Freshman 7-footer Kofi Cockburn’s dunk gave Illinois a 77-67 lead. Andres Feliz followed with a turnaround jumper in the lane to give Illinois a 79-71 lead with 44 seconds later, celebrating wildly as the crowd began to thin out.
“Andres down the stretch was sensational,” Underwood said.
A 6-2 senior guard, Feliz had 21 points on 7-for-14 shooting, getting inside with strength, and speed and confidence. The flare of the Dominican Republic native’s game also brought a notable accent to the floor.
“That’s what I did to make the team keep going,” Feliz said of his celebrations. “The atmosphere, it was crazy, all the people here were so loud and that’s great.”
While Feliz, Trent Frazier and Ayo Dosunmo are combining this season for one of the Big Ten’s best backcourts, Cockburn will be a different challenge for UA’s Chase Jeter and Zeke Nnaji, especially after the Wildcats opened against NAU’s undersized post players on Wednesday.
A native of Jamaica who played at Oak Hill Academy, Cockburn finished with 23 points and 14 rebounds against GCU, shooting 8 for 12 from the field — and took 13 trips to the free throw line, making seven of them.
Much like Nnaji was against NAU, Cockburn was a focal point of Illinois’ offense because of the Lopes’ lack of comparable size inside.
“The thing that excites me about Kofi is he’s got so much more to learn and so much more to garner in terms of his development,” Underwood said. “He’s an imposing figure and we’ve got to be able to utilize that. It was our game plan going in.”
Cockburn and Dosunmo, who could have left as a freshman last spring to explore the NBA Draft, are among the new foundations Underwood has added to a program that won only 26 games combined over his first two seasons but is now considered a potential NCAA Tournament team.
Underwood said Orlando Antigua, his Dominican-born and Bronx-raised assistant coach, led the recruitment of Cockburn while Feliz once committed to Antigua when he was South Florida’s head coach. Dosunmo came from Chicago’s Morgan Park High School, which now features four-star guard Adam Miller, a top recruiting target of both UA and Illinois.
“We’re better. There’s no doubt,” Underwood said. “We keep enriching our program with good players and as guys become more experienced, our culture is established. I really felt like in year one (2017-18) we had such drastic turnover. We’re really trying to still formulate and develop our base culture.”
Maybe now, a long weekend in Arizona can help solidify things further for the Illini.
Or maybe the Wildcats will make them think twice about where they are going.
“It’s a long trip, but no sense just playing one,” Underwood said.
“Let’s get ourselves the best prepared we can for two Big Ten road games in about three weeks. What better way to do that than with Grand Canyon and Arizona?”
