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Mills' Illinois Fighting Illini men's basketball team featured only 5 returning letterman. Along with team captain Tom Nisbit, the Illini also featured a starting lineup of Lewis Dehner at the center position, John Drish , Joe Frank and William Hapac at forward and George Wardley, and Colin Handlon at guard.
Phillip went on to become a member of the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame. Four of the five, minus Mathisen, returned to Illinois and tried to recapture the glory for one more season in 1946–47 after the war ended, but the chemistry had changed as well as their talent. Illinois went 14–6.
The most significant recruit of the first three years of Head Coach Lou Henson's tenure at Illinois arrived this season. Eddie Johnson was considered to be the most significant piece to reviving the Illini basketball program, a program that had not been to a post-season tournament for 16 years.
A new decade had begun for the Fighting Illini, a decade which brought much success to Illinois basketball. Head Coach Doug Mills led the Illini to consecutive Big Ten titles in 1942 and 1943. The Illini would add another league championship under Harry Combes in 1949. The Illini were the 13th-winningest Division I team in the nation in the 1940s.
The 1942–43 Illinois Fighting Illini men’s basketball team represented the University of Illinois. The Illinois Fighting Illini finished the season with a record of 17 wins and 1 loss. The season was cut short as three of the five starters headed off to active duty in the armed forces.
The 1930–31 season was head coach Craig Ruby's 9th at the University of Illinois, establishing the first time in the history of Illinois basketball that a head coach remained longer than 8 years. Ruby had 10 returning lettermen from a team that had finished in a fifth place tie in the Big Ten the year before.
The team gave the head coach his first of 11, 20-win seasons at Illinois. That year, Illinois made its first postseason appearance since 1963, finishing third in the NIT . During the course of the season, the Illini would defeat eventual NCAA Tournament Champion , Louisville
Head coach Harv Schmidt, in only his fourth season at the helm of the Fighting Illini men's basketball team, saw the longest losing streak of his career, 8 games. After starting the year by winning 9 of their first 12 games and 10 of their first 14, the Illini started their losing streak at Ohio State on February 13, and continue for a month.