Illinois vs. Iowa Elite Eight matchup highlights chances for Big Ten to snap 26-year national title drought

HOUSTON — For just the 17th time since seeding began in the NCAA Tournament in 1979, the Elite Eight will feature a matchup between two teams from the same conference when No. 3 seed Illinois and No. 9 seed Iowa square off for the South Regional championship and a spot in the Final Four. While having this intra-conference rivalry on one of the game’s biggest stages is not an anomaly, the matchup highlights what has been a strong year for the Big Ten as the conference looks to snap its 26-year drought without a national championship in men’s college basketball.

Michigan State was the last Big Ten team to win it all, claiming the title back in 2000, and it just so happens that was the same tournament that saw the last time the Big Ten had two teams playing each other in the Elite Eight. Wisconsin beat Purdue in the Elite Eight that year, then went on to lose to the Spartans in an all-Big Ten national semifinal. In total there the Illinois-Iowa matchup will be just the third Elite Eight showdown between Big Ten teams, with the other being a Michigan win over Ohio State in 1992 with the Fab Five. 

In the 26 years since the last all-Big Ten Elite Eight there have been eight regional finals between conference foes, most recently with NC State knocking off Duke in 2024. The ACC is responsible for three of those eight meetings, the most of any conference, followed by the SEC and Big East with two each and the Big 12 with one, a Missouri-Oklahoma matchup in 2002 long before both programs made the move to the SEC. 

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With three of the four teams in the South Regional coming from the Big Ten, the odds were always decent that we could reach this result as it only required Illinois to beat Purdue with the other Sweet 16 game being Iowa’s third game against Nebraska this season. But now that the spotlight has arrived on the game and the conference, the coaches and players here in Houston were quick to mention how the league’s tournament success is reflective of a strong season across the board. 

“It’s exciting to see the success of the Big Ten,” Illinois coach Brad Underwood said Friday as the Fighting Illini turned their attention to Iowa and Saturday night’s game. “I thought that the league was as good as it’s ever been top to bottom, and that’s being played out.”

Underwood spoke prior to Michigan and Michigan State squaring off in their Elite Eight games, but noted that the league already has three teams through to the weekend with both of the finalists in Houston and Purdue in the West Region. But what he pointed to when it comes to the league’s strengths speaks to the bigger culture of basketball in the Big Ten, which has always been strong and now seems to be matching its passion with results. 

When people talk about “sleeping giants” in college sports the reference is often about programs that have yet to unlock their full potential. At the conference level, the Big Ten celebrates college basketball at a different level. The league’s size and the makeup of its membership creates big stages, and those big stages create a different environment even for run-of-the-mill regular season games. 

“It is, [in] my opinion, the best basketball league out there,” Underwood said. “We’ve got tremendous fans. We’re a league that the fans are very informed, very intelligent, very passionate. You go on the road, almost anywhere you go, and you got a sellout crowd. The games are more like events. 

“They’re bigger than just kind of a game. They’re events. I think that they encompass more than just the community and the campus. They encompass states.” 

When Underwood arrived at Illinois nine years ago he sat his staff down and highlighted the pillars of the conference. Michigan State has decades of an identity thanks to Jud Heathcote and Tom Izzo, and the same can be said for Purdue with Gene Keady and Matt Painter. Competing with and hoping to pass those kind of institutions would be a major challenge even for a program with passion and history like Illinois, but the challenge seems to bring out the best in the Fighting Illini as they are playing in the Elite Eight for the second time in three years. 

The challenge has also brought out the best in Iowa, which is thriving in its first tournament with head coach Ben McCollum at the helm and is led by All-Big Ten guard Bennett Stirtz. When McCollum was hired from Drake he brought Stirtz and a handful of other players to transfer in and make the move with him from Des Moines to Iowa City. Not every player is able to replicate their success when transferring up a level from a mid-major to a power conference, but Stirtz has been able to remain at the top of his game. 

Still, he recognizes a far different challenge from playing in the Big Ten than playing in the Missouri Valley Conference and does not seems surprised to see the league have this tournament success. 

“I think it’s great for the Big Ten, great for the conference, just to see this many teams in the Sweet 16 and the Elite Eight,” Stirtz said Friday when asked about his impressions of the conference. “But, yeah, it’s a physical league and I knew that coming into it … Every game’s going to be tough, especially on the road. You’re never going to have a game off, so you had to bring it every night. Obviously it was a step up from the Missouri Valley. Yeah, but not really any surprises [to see the conference’s tournament success].” 

It’s the first matchup of Big Ten teams in the Elite Eight since 2000, which was the last time a Big Ten team won the tournament. That Final Four was in Indianapolis, the same city where this year’s Final Four will be held. As the Big Ten stares down its odds to win it all with several pieces on the board and at least one guaranteed spot, the frustrations of being unable to convert undeniable passion and history into postseason success has flipped to anticipation. 

The Big Ten has objectively rated as one of the top conferences in college basketball during this period of evolution for college sports. The conference has rated as a top-two nationally league at KenPom in six of the last eight seasons and never lower than third, powered by smart hires and changes in the landscape that provide advantages to big schools with fund raising power. The changes in college sports have benefited the Big Ten in a big way, and we have seen it in college football with the conference snapping the SEC’s hold on the sport with three consecutive national titles from three different schools (Michigan, Ohio State, Indiana). The way things have been trending, it seems like a matter of when, not if, the Big Ten finally breaks through in men’s basketball as well. 

As conference realignment has become more like conference consolidation and leagues have ballooned to anywhere from 16-18 members, the odds of getting more matchups like this will increase. Even tracing the history of this phenomenon revealed more than a handful of Elite Eight games between schools are currently conference rivals, though since they were not at the time the game did not carry the same familiarity of impact on a league’s reputation. 

But this matchup, and the current outlook for Big Ten teams elsewhere, puts the league’s title drought on front street as one of the headlines going into the Final Four. Because while there’s still a lot of basketball left to be played elsewhere, the South Regional Champion will head to Indianapolis representing not just themselves a conference that has produced high-level basketball throughout the season. The coaches and players from both Illinois and Iowa are prepared for whoever they face in the Final Four, because after enduring the Big Ten schedule and this tournament run they all have been through wars that can match the difficulty of any potential opponent.