Fighting Illini and the Balkan Five: How Illinois found a new path to the Final Four
fighting illini did not arrive at this Final Four by accident. In a season built on urgency, Brad Underwood made a call that changed the direction of the program, and the result is a roster that feels unlike anything Illinois has fielded before.
What changed for Illinois this season?
Underwood knew his teams had reached high levels before, but never the one place that had stayed just out of reach. Before this season, he had taken nine different teams to the NCAA Tournament, yet none had advanced past the Elite Eight. So he looked beyond the usual recruiting map.
That search led him to Miško Ražnatović, a 59-year-old Serbian agent whose clients include Denver Nuggets star Nikola Jokić. Ražnatović told Underwood he had several players from the Balkans who might be interested. Underwood did not want one. He wanted all of them.
The result was a roster with David Mirković, Mihailo Petrović, Zvonimir Ivišić, Tomislav Ivišić and Toni Bilić, plus Andrej Stojaković. The five Balkan players have become central to the team’s identity, accounting for 53. 9% of Illinois’ scoring and 57. 4% of its rebounding this season. In another version of college basketball, that kind of international concentration would have seemed unlikely. In this one, it became the foundation of a Final Four run.
Why did the recruiting model shift now?
The answer starts with NIL, the system introduced in 2021 that allows student-athletes to be compensated for their names, images and likenesses. That change altered the calculation for top teenage European players, many of whom once would have bypassed American colleges and played professionally before the NBA draft.
Fran Fraschilla, an basketball analyst, said NIL has “opened the floodgates” for international players because they can make more money in college than they might over long professional stretches in Europe. He also noted that college coaches now watch European under-18 and under-20 tournaments in huge numbers, looking for talent that can change a roster quickly.
Illinois was ready to take that chance. Underwood said the fit has worked because the players brought both skill and experience. The coach framed the move as a marriage of opportunity and need, one that gave the program a new way to build around talent without depending only on the old recruiting lanes.
How does this connect to Illinois’ history?
The fighting illini have long been tied to Chicago-area talent. Lou Henson’s 1989 Final Four team leaned on players from the city, and Bruce Weber’s 2005 Final Four team did the same. Deon Thomas, Illinois’ all-time leading scorer, came from the Chicago Public School League, and so did Ayo Dosunmu.
But the history also carries missed chances. Jalen Brunson, Jahlil Okafor, Cliff Alexander, Tyler Ulis, Jabari Parker, Anthony Davis, Jon Scheyer and Derrick Rose all chose other paths. Weber said the frustration around Chicago recruiting was a constant during his tenure, even as the roster-building environment has changed with the portal and NIL. Now, Illinois still values Chicago, but it also casts a much wider net.
That wider net has helped the program get back to the Final Four for the first time in 21 years. It has also changed the makeup of the team in a way that reflects the modern game more than the old one.
What does this mean for the moment on Saturday?
On Saturday, Illinois faces UConn for a chance to play for a national championship. The game arrives with emotional weight in Indianapolis and on campus in Champaign, where fans, former players and students have gathered with the sense that history is within reach.
That emotion is built on more than one season. It comes from seeing a program that once searched mainly close to home now finding a new identity across the Atlantic. It also comes from the reality that the roster is not built on one story alone. Keaton Wagler and Kylan Boswell have played major roles too, and the team’s success rests on the blend of local and international pieces.
Still, the biggest shift is hard to miss. The fighting illini found a different route, one that started with a phone call, a new recruiting vision and five players from the Balkans who changed the ceiling of the season. Whether that ceiling rises again will be decided on the floor, but the path to this point already says something about where college basketball has gone, and where Illinois chose to go with it.
