The University of Illinois men’s basketball team, currently ranked No. 20 in the AP poll, will face Southern University on Monday, December 29 at State Farm Center in Champaign. The game is scheduled for a 2 p.m. CT tip-off and will be broadcast on the Big Ten Network.
Illinois enters the matchup with a 9-3 record overall and a 1-1 mark in Big Ten play, while Southern holds a 4-8 record this season. This contest marks the final nonconference game for Illinois before resuming conference play against Penn State on January 3.
The Illini are coming off a significant win over Missouri, defeating their rival by a score of 91-48 to extend their Braggin’ Rights winning streak to three years. The victory was notable as it represented the largest margin in series history between Illinois and Missouri.
Coach Brad Underwood’s squad features five players averaging double-digit points per game: Keaton Wagler (15.7), Andrej Stojakovic (15.5), Kylan Boswell (15.3), David Mirkovic (13.3), and Tomislav Ivisic (10.4). This ranks them among national leaders for teams with multiple high-scoring players.
Illinois is also ranked No. 19 in the coaches poll and has been included in the AP Top 25 for seven consecutive seasons under Underwood’s leadership. The team is positioned at No. 10 in the NCAA NET rankings through games played December 26, trailing only Michigan and Purdue within the Big Ten Conference.
So far this season, Illinois has secured three Quad 1 wins—tied for sixth-most nationally—and remains one behind programs such as Arizona, Duke, Gonzaga, Michigan State, and UConn that each have four Quad 1 victories.
Offensively, Illinois is averaging 88.1 points per game after leading the Big Ten last season with an average of 83.6 points per contest. Should they maintain this pace, they would become just the third team in program history to average more than 87 points per game over a season.
Defensively and statistically, Illinois ranks among top programs nationally across several categories including fouls committed per game (13.8), free throw percentage (.784), blocks per game (5.4), defensive rebounds per game (28.5), and scoring average (88.1).
Freshman guard Keaton Wagler recently earned Big Ten Freshman of the Week honors after strong performances against Ohio State and Nebraska where he averaged over twenty points and seven assists while shooting efficiently from both field goal range and beyond the arc.
Freshman forward David Mirkovic stands out as one of only four freshmen nationwide averaging at least thirteen points and eight-and-a-half rebounds per contest so far this year.
Senior guard Kylan Boswell leads all active Illini players with over eleven hundred career points—including eight games surpassing twenty points—and also tops his team in assists statistics this season.
Junior transfer Andrej Stojakovic has contributed four twenty-point performances since joining Illinois this year—including key efforts against top-ranked opponents such as Alabama and Texas Tech—while twin centers Tomislav Ivisic and Zvonimir Ivisic are recognized among college basketball’s most effective shooting big men from long range.
In historical matchups against Southern University, Illinois leads the series two games to none—all played at State Farm Center—with their most recent meeting resulting in an eighty-eight to sixty win during November of last year when Illinois was ranked No. 23 nationally at that time.
Head coach Brad Underwood now holds a career record of nine wins without loss versus SWAC opponents—including six wins while coaching at Illinois—and continues to climb program records with his current total of one hundred seventy-four victories at Illinois across nine seasons.
