Illinois' Brad Underwood teases wild text thread to Fran McCaffery before NCAA Tournament
Illinois men's basketball coach Brad Underwood had a little fun in the lead-up to the NCAA Tournament, as he is set to reunite with his ex-Big Ten rival, Fran McCaffery, in the opening round Thursday night in Greenville, South Carolina.
Illinois' Brad Underwood teases wild text thread to Fran McCaffery before NCAA Tournament originally appeared on The Sporting News . Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here . If the third-seeded Illinois Fighting Illini want to validate their status as a popular Final Four pick, they first have to exorcise a very familiar ghost.
Before Illinois can look ahead to Indianapolis in early April, they have to survive a Thursday night opening-round matchup in Greenville against the No. 14 Penn Quakers (TNT, 9:25 p. m.
ET)—a team led by a man who knows Brad Underwood’s system intimately. Welcome back, Fran McCaffery. After 15 seasons turning the Iowa Hawkeyes into a Big Ten offensive juggernaut, McCaffery briefly retired before taking the reins at his alma mater.
Now, he stands directly in the path of an Illinois program he spent over a decade warring against. For years, Underwood and McCaffery traded blows in the Big Ten, engineering the kind of high-possession, emotionally charged matchups that defined the conference slate. But this specific reunion carries heavy baggage.