Illini AD: 'Feel-good story, feel-good year'

Mar. 15—SOUTH BEND, Ind. — He couldn't be there on New Year's, when Shauna Green's Illini women's basketball team stunned 12th-ranked Iowa at State Farm Center, snapping a 20-game skid against Top 25 competition.

So there was no way Josh Whitman was sitting out the program's first NCAA tournament trip in two decades, even with an Illini men's game to get to Thursday in Des Moines, Iowa.

The Illinois athletic director arrived in South Bend a day early, showing up to Notre Dame's Purcell Pavilion on Tuesday in an orange tuxedo T-shirt as he watched Green's team prepare for today's First Four matchup with Mississippi State.

Did he ever imagine being here one year ago next week, when he introduced Dayton's three-time Atlantic 10 coach of the year as the new leader of a UI program coming off a 7-20 season?

"I certainly envisioned this possibility," Whitman told The News-Gazette on Tuesday. "I don't know that any of us — if you would have put us in a dark room and forced us to tell the truth — would say we thought it would happen this quickly.

"I think just to see the progress that we've made and to watch the way the ladies have responded to her leadership — the vision that she's put in front of them — it's just been such a feel-good story, feel-good year, and I couldn't be prouder of the program."

Andy Green can relate. With Champaign schools on spring break, the Bottenfield Elementary teacher brought 8-year-old son Matteo to South Bend to see Mom's team tune up for today's 6 p.m. tournament tipoff.

It was Dad's first in-person practice in 10 years and "a dream come true," he said as his Bottenfield second-grader dribbled a basketball behind a bench during Tuesday's team workout.

"It was a little over 12 months ago that we talked with Illinois and I was intrigued from the get-go," the coach's husband said. "I just felt like it was the right time. ... I knew we'd get there. I knew we were going to get it going. I just didn't think it would happen this quickly. It has been unbelievable.

"I'm not going to lie — that (Jan. 1) Iowa win, I cried a little bit. That was unreal."

Whitman, who was in Florida at the time — to catch Bret Bielema's football team in the Reliaquest Bowl — said not being among the nearly 5,000 at State Farm Center that day was "the only regret" of the women's basketball season.

But having seen what Green's team did two weeks earlier, in a 76-66 win at Missouri, the Iowa upset didn't surprise him in the least.

"It's always felt like Illinois women's basketball is a rocket ship ready to take off," Whitman said Tuesday. "I remember that we took a group of people down to Columbia to watch the Missouri game and the way that we came out on their home court and played at a really high level. I think we all kind of looked at each other and thought, 'Boy, this could be something.'

"There were just several of those moments where you start to sense momentum building, you start to see self-confidence growing in the team. That Missouri game was a moment for me where I remember looking around and saying, 'OK, we may have something on our hands that can be really special.'

"They have delivered on that."