(670 The Score) After a spectacular regular season and a Big Ten Tournament championship crown, No. 1 seed Illinois (23-6) is a trendy pick to not just make the Final Four but also to win the national title.
If the Illini were to accomplish that, it would be a first in program history. The school has a strong basketball tradition but has never won a national championship, a fact star guard Ayo Dosunmu is aware of and one that he and his teammates use as a source of motivation. And they also notice when outsiders bring up that storyline.
“Definitely, definitely, that’s on my list of motivation,” Dosunmu said on the Parkins & Spiegel Show on Monday afternoon. “Whenever I see somebody say anything negative about our team or about myself, I just put it on my list. I block it out, but at the end of the day, I keep it in the back of my mind. Winning a national championship is definitely something that I think we can accomplish. It’s something that can be done. It starts one game at a time.”
The Illini won the Big Ten Tournament after controversy marred how the conference awarded its regular-season crown. Michigan went 14-3 in Big Ten play in the regular season but had three games cancelled as its school shut the program down for a couple weeks midseason over COVID-19 concerns. Illinois went 16-4 in league play. Winning percentage had previously been agreed upon as the deciding factor, and the Wolverines edged the Illini in that department despite Illinois being a half-game better in the traditional games/ahead behind column. Athletic director Josh Whitman asked for the Big Ten to honor Illinois as Big Ten co-champions of the regular season, but his request was rebuffed.
That too was a driving factor for Illinois, Dosunmu said.
“We felt a sense of disrespect, I would say,” Dosunmu said. “Not by anyone in particular, but we just felt that any time it came to something controversial for Illinois, Illinois always got the short end of the stick. We still have that mindset – we’re motivated to go out there and just prove everyone wrong.”