2019 is in the books. More importantly, the 2010s are in the books. When looking at the total history of Illini Athletics, it was a decade to forget.
The basketball program went 181-159 over the past 10 seasons and only made two NCAA Tournaments, never reaching the second weekend. The football team went 46-78 and reached four lower tier bowl games over that span.
Josh Whitman was hired in 2016 to put back together a program that had been beaten down to a pulp over the first half of the decade. The Whitman Era got off to a slow start, with the fanbase promising to be patient in return for long-term success and stability.