INDIANAPOLIS – The final scores were in and Brad Underwood, coach of the Illinois Fighting Illini, was a happy man.
“We won,” he said. “You can’t compete with winning.”
So what was it, a crucial Big Ten game? A survive-and-advance moment from March?
Nah, the Illinois State Fair. His heifer had just won the cattle show competition. One mooing moment.
Now, according to son Tyler, if you walk in the Underwood home, you’ll find a championship plate, and a framed picture of the two winners, man and cow. One of them is coaching in the Final Four this weekend.
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An interesting collection of coaching journeys have gathered in Indianapolis.
There’s an ex-student manager. Michigan’s Dusty May, who recalled Thursday another Final Four in Indianapolis, hopping in a car with his fellow Indiana University student managers and driving around town, hoping to run into coaches so they could ask for a job after graduation.
A former world history high school teacher. Connecticut’s Dan Hurley, the hard-charging man already with two titles, who reminded Thursday that “we don’t hang banners for Final Fours at UConn, we hang national championship banners.”
The son of a carpenter who, before he took his first college assistant’s job, backpacked around Europe and Egypt with his wife. When the money ran out he helped run a motel in Australia. Arizona’s Tommy Lloyd.
And the Kansan who picked up the passion for showing cattle from a family friend.
Brad Underwood hoists the South Region trophy in a cowboy hat as the #Illini return from Houston @WCIA3sports pic.twitter.com/K3LqgYWbqL
— Peter Hanson (@_peterhanson) March 29, 2026
Four guys whose lives have been more than X’s and O’s, except maybe not this week.
Underwood’s story is the one most like a Hallmark movie. He’s 62 in his first Final Four, nine years older than any other coach here, and it was starting to get a little late. Two more victories and he will become the ninth-oldest man to ever win a national championship.
As a high schooler, Underwood considered playing for Oklahoma State. He even visited campus, where a Cowboys freshman was assigned to show him around. Guess who? Bill Self. From that meeting, Self would eventually go on to coach a bunch of Final Fours at Kansas. Underwood’s road from there — he didn’t pick Oklahoma State — would one day curve through nine coaching stops. Let him give a tour, starting with his birthplace.
“It’s something I reflect on. A little town of 13,000 people in McPherson, Kansas, which is an unbelievable little basketball community in Kansas. But 26 years to become a Division I head coach, the junior college ranks, longtime assistant, spent 10 years at Western Illinois University.
“The rock star in this isn’t me. It’s my wife. Living in Macomb, Illinois, for 10 years and, to be honest, not making very much money and raising three kids and literally being gone five days a week while raising a family, then back to the junior college ranks to Daytona Beach.
“So it’s been maybe a different path than most, but there’s not one step of it that I would give up because I’ve been beyond blessed to work for great people who helped prepare me to get to these moments.”
His players have an idea of what this means. “Brad’s been talking about the Final Four and national championship his whole career,” junior forward Jake Davis said Thursday. Guard AJ Redd was saying how “it’s hard to crack Coach Brad. He’s always got a sense of seriousness to him. He doesn’t like to let people see his emotions too much.
“It’s such a sense of relief… just to see how much he puts into this on a daily basis year after year after year. He’s a journeyman. He’s had a lot of stops. It hasn’t always been pretty, it hasn’t always been on the biggest stage. But I’m happy for him to finally get to the stage where he belongs.”
📺 WATCH: Illinois’ road to the Final Four
See the young assistant coach standing in the corner of the locker room Thursday in an Illinois sweatshirt? He’d be good to ask.
Tyler Underwood was talking about the 2017 Final Four, and attending with his dad.
“He had just taken the job at Oklahoma State and it was 2017 and we actually went to the championship game. I remember sitting in the stands and him saying, `we’ve got to get here. We’ve got to get here.’ That’s a moment I’ll never forget, reflecting back on our journey now, that’s a moment that stands out.
“I haven’t brought it up to him this week. I’d be curious if he remembers it.”
Now Tyler is the offensive coordinator for an Illini attack that has toasted some opponents and is part of the vehicle that carried Brad Underwood to his dream.
Brad Underwood and Tyler Underwood embrace as the buzzer sounds. The father-son duo are taking the #Illini to the FINAL FOUR.
📹TBS pic.twitter.com/w1q6X6SL3t
— Glenn Kinley (@glenn_kinley) March 29, 2026
“I couldn’t write a better script,” Tyler said. “It’s hard to put into words. Maybe when we get removed from it, it will really set in. When the time ran out against Iowa (in the Elite Eight) and we got to share a hug. It’s moment I’ll never forget, just knowing how hard he’s worked.”
Worked through Hardin-Simmons and Dodge City Community College and Western Illinois and Daytona Beach Community College and Kansas State and South Carolina and Stephen F. Austin and Oklahoma State. The wife and kids tagged along, in a way traveling their own transfer portal. Tyler went to three different high schools. But the family was all in and that’s why — after all so many miles and years — Tyler said that this week “means the world to them.”
They finally landed in Illinois, with its Big Ten pedigree and resources. Underwood hoped it was the land of opportunity.
“We play in the best league in the country, so anything’s possible when it comes to winning a national championship. I never doubted — and I don’t want to sound arrogant — I’ve never doubted us getting to a Final Four would happen. But I also know how doggone hard it is to do it. For that, I just say thank you. I say thank you to everybody involved. And I’m going to get emotional, but I’ve been doing this 39 years, and you dream about this as a kid, and I dreamt about doing it at Illinois.”
Now the dream has led to Connecticut, and a fiery opposing coach in his third Final Four in four years. It only gets harder. Still, it’s a week for Brad Underwood to cherish, and all those close to him.
“I think it was fun after winning the region to sit back and just think a little bit,” Underwood said. “I hope to get to do that in the future after all of this is over. I think one of the really neat things for me has been all the stops along the way. Some of the people that have reached out and the old friends and the old acquaintances and the people that are coming from all those stops — it means a lot to me.
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“I say it all the time, I hope I’m not known for wins and losses. I hope I’m known for impacting some lives of people and creating memories. That’s come to fruition a little bit with some of the texts and phone calls I’ve gotten here in the last few days.”
And if the man who has waited so long for this shot wins two more games? It’ll be even bigger than the Illinois State Fair.
