Illinois MBB coach Brad Underwood gives perfect answer about state of Big Ten basketball originally appeared on The Sporting News.
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Illinois men's basketball coach Brad Underwood has immense respect for the Big Ten, taking the time to address the league as a whole following a 78-69 win against the Nebraska Cornhuskers this past Sunday.
The Illini, which have won 11 in a row and remain in the thick of the Big Ten title race entering a two-game week against the Northwestern Wildcats (Wednesday) and Michigan State (Saturday), recognize they are amongst the elite teams in the conference but also recognizes the entire league has mostly remained competitive to this point in the season.
"I think we've always been pretty dominant," Underwood said of Illinois."I think the Big Ten has been a badass league — for my nine years anyway."
Underwood admitted he's so locked in about his team that any of the outside noise doesn't matter.
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"I think we're excellent," Underwood said. "I don't pay attention to the polls, but I do the analytics stuff. This is a fantastic league."
Underwood said that Illinois had to make some adjustments defensively to secure the win, but there was certainly a learning experience too.
"We mixed in a little bit of zone. In the first half you just try to keep them off rhythm a little bit," Underwood said. "They're so good with their movement. And then I thought we did a nice job of really trying to take away layups for the most part throughout the meat of the game."
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The Illini now have a chance to keep making noise nationally, as long as they keep winning.
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