Green Street Just getting started
- Story byThe News-Gazette, Champaign-Urbana, Ill.
- Green Street Just getting started
Sep. 25—The Illinois women's basketball team took another major step toward the start of the 2026-27 season on Wednesday with the first official practice.
That meant the Illini were within a 42-day window of their first game — Nov. 4 against Detroit Mercy at State Farm Center — with Illinois allowed to have 30 practice days and 20-hour weeks.
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The summer was a productive one for coach 's latest Illini team, even if it did have some fits and starts to it. Illinois, after all, had to work a few players back from major injuries, with redshirt junior guard and redshirt freshman forward recovering from knee injuries.
Complicating matters was that the Illini had several players playing for their national teams this summer, as junior forward (Spain), sophomore forward (Canada), junior guard (Brazil) and redshirt junior center (Brazil) each missed parts of the eight weeks of summer workouts Illinois had.
But, now that the Illini have been fully back together for the past month since the start of fall semester classes on the Illinois campus in late August, it's allowed Green's team to ramp up toward this week's start of official practices.
That's important with freshman forwards and two of the last pieces to get moved onto campus on Aug. 19.
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There was enough new about this roster — even if the Illini did bring back the top nine players from last season's rotation when Illinois posted 22 wins and advanced to the second round of the NCAA tournament — to warrant some install of the offensive and defensive principles this summer and into the fall.
Illinois added four newcomers in the offseason. Not to mention basically a new piece in Alves, who missed all of last season with a knee injury after the Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, native sustained a torn ACL in preseason workouts ahead of the start of the 2025-26 season.
A few things became clear this summer about how the Illini see what's to come during this upcoming season.
For one, it's expected that Illinois will play faster in 2026-27 as Green hopes to take full advantage of the team's Phoenix transition offense. It's also evident the Illini view their depth and positional versatility as the best it's been in Green's time as Illinois coach.
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But the Illini also understand expectations are high.
And Illinois is embracing the hype that comes along with that heading into the 2026-27 season.
"It's really cool," Parchment said. "I mean not a lot of people had high expectations last year, so coming into this year, I think it's going to be great. You know, there might be a little more pressure, I guess you could say. But I think we keep it pretty (much) in the building, in the family and just focus on us and use every day to get better. And when the games come around, we'll use every game to get better, as well."
