By Larry Smith - Co-Host & Executive Producer, IlliniGuys Sports Spectacular

January 10, 2025

(Cover photo courtesy Joe Clark/IlliniGuys)

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Numbers are fascinating.

In 1952, a man from Danville, Illinois named Charles graduated from the University of Illinois with a degree in mechanical engineering. He promptly hopped a train to Los Angeles and, with his fiancee joining him soon after, enjoyed a long career as an aeronautical engineer at Lockheed.

Over the decades, the couple invested well and amassed a small fortune. It was all in the numbers, he would tell me.

I last spoke to Charles in early 2020, a few weeks before the COVID pandemic gripped our planet and several months before he would pass away at the age of 90. As we sat in his suburban home and watched a freshman quarterback named Trevor Lawrence lead Clemson to an upset win over Alabama in the national championship game, I asked the diehard sports fan how he landed on his career.

He answered "it came down to numbers. I had a choice of choosing a science or math field when I entered the U of I. I chose math, because there is no gray area when it comes to numbers". He smiled and winked and pointed to the large flat screen and the images of orange jubilation that filled it.

"Numbers don't lie", he concluded.

Given his love of digits, Charles would be thrilled with what his alma mater is doing in basketball this winter. Their numbers are staggering.

Champions aren't determined in early January and anyone buying a Final Four ticket based on what happens in the first few days of the calendar year would be considered foolish.

However, the numbers that are being left behind by this Illinois basketball team in the opening week of 2025 are enough to make even the staunchest cynic pause.

Let's review:

--Illinois makes its first Big Ten trip west of the Rockies last week and puts on an offensive performance for the ages, taking down the 9th ranked Oregon Ducks by a 109-77 score. They did it without star freshman and leading scorer Kasparas Jakucionis putting a single point on the board in the first half due to foul trouble. Still, the 32-point rout set a Division I record for the most lopsided home loss ever for an Associated Press top 10 team.

--After tying a season-high with 16 three-pointers in shooting down the Ducks, Illinois' three-point game abandoned them on their next stop at Washington. So, they counted on a much smaller number: 1. That's how many turnovers they committed in the final 14 minutes to squeeze out a victory in their first game in the Huskies' home arena since they were in town for its opening 97 years earlier...or three years before Charles was born.

--With Jakucionis missing the first game of his brief collegiate career with an arm injury, his teammates picked up the slack and toyed with visiting Penn State in a 91-52 rout that felt even more lopsided than that. The Nittany Lions had been the thorn in Illinois' side, winning four in a row in the series. But the Illini strongarmed them into a season-low point total, 35 below their season average.

--Wednesday's 39-point victory marked Illinois' largest blowout in a Big Ten game since beating this same Penn State team by 43 points in 2004.

--Three players - Ben Humrichous, Tre White, and Morez Johnson - scored 20 points each, marking the third time in the Brad Underwood era that three Illini have hit for 20 or more in the same game.

I don't know the reason or if there is a catalyst behind it all, but it feels like something is starting to click with this Illini team. The back-to-back wins on the Pacific Coast lifted them nine spots to a season-best #13 in the AP poll. One CBS Sports writer has grouped them on a lengthy list of national championship contenders. Not a surprise for a team coming off an Elite Eight appearance, but very much an eye-opener with just one contributor from that team still in action on this squad.

It's a unit that has played 15 games - five of them vs. other ranked teams - and yet have only been outplayed once and that was against an Alabama team fresh off its first Final Four appearance and it was pre-Thanksgiving, when these Illinois transients were still wearing nametags. This is a much different team; more balanced, more mature, more aggressive.

There is one more number that, to me, stands out above the others and one that I think may cause opposing coaches to lose sleep.

It's the number...9.

In their last five games against power conference teams - Tennessee, Missouri, Oregon, Washington, and Penn State, nine different Illini have scored in double figures, with Johnson becoming the latest with a career-high 20 points Wednesday night.

15 games into the season, this is an Illinois juggernaut with an arsenal like we have never seen. In all, five different players have already led the team in scoring at least once. Seven have scored at least 20 points in a game. Three players - Jakucionis, Johnson, and Tomislav Ivisic - have recorded double-doubles and Kylan Boswell put up the program's seventh triple-double last month against Chicago State.

What's becoming clear is Underwood's dream may finally be coming to fruition. In his eighth season, it appears he has assembled his highest-scoring, most physical, deepest roster yet. Last year's Illini hit the 90-point mark 11 times; this group has already done it seven times less than halfway through the regular season. Only top-ranked Tennessee has out-rebounded them. And, as illustrated above, this is an Illinois team that forces you to pick your poison. Oregon probably thought they had grabbed an advantage with Jakucionis' early foul trouble, only to see Jake Davis and Dra Gibbs-Lawhorn come off the bench to each score double-digits in ten minutes. No Jakucionis against Penn State, no problem...Humrichous can throw in yard darts from across the street.

There are plenty of challenges ahead; at the moment, there are six ranked teams still on the schedule, including a New York City showdown with #4 Duke late next month. So, there will be ebbs and flows, and highs and lows.

But this is feeling like something special. Even the numbers agree.