Good Morning, Illini Nation: Illinois and the SEC

Aug. 17—An 18-team Big Ten is apparently not enough. Illinois is clearly angling for at least a partial membership in the SEC this coming season.

Regular season games against Alabama, Arkansas and Tennessee are already on the Illini’s 2024-25 schedule. Before all that? Looks like Illinois will play at Mississippi in a charity exhibition game, per a Friday evening report by CBS Sports’ Jon Rothstein.

Maybe it got worked out in Chicago last month. Illinois coach Brad Underwood and Ole Miss coach Chris Beard were both at Terrence Shannon Jr.’s draft party. Beard, of course, coached Shannon at Texas Tech for three seasons.

Illinois has played a pair of charity exhibition games in the Underwood era with a loss at Eastern Illinois in 2017 and a win against Kansas this past season in Champaign. Now the Illini will head to Oxford, Miss., for another at a still to be determined (or at least announced) date.

Ole Miss returns three of its top four scorers from last season in Matthew Murrell (16.2 ppg), Jaylen Murray (13.8 ppg) and Jaemyn Brakefield (12.9 ppg) from a team that went 20-12 and finished 10th in the SEC. The Rebels also added Seton Hall transfer guard Dre Davis, Virginia Tech transfer guard Sean Pedulla, Belmont transfer big man Malik Dia and Sam Houston State transfer wing Davon Barnes in addition to 7-foot-2 four-star freshman center John Bol.

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/good-morning-illini-nation-illinois-144800078.html

Author : The News-Gazette, Champaign-Urbana, Ill.

Publish date : 2024-08-17 14:48:00

Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source.