Indiana men’s basketball is set to face off with Illinois this weekend in the first and only regular season matchup between the Hoosiers and the Fighting Illini of the 2025-26 season.
It’s Indiana’s first year in a program rebuild under Darian DeVries and arguably the culmination of Illinois’ long-term project under Brad Underwood. The Hoosiers are looking to snap an NCAA Tournament drought while the Illini are figuring to finish the season in the Final Four.
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Is it a rivalry matchup? Maybe. It depends on who you ask.
Fans have rejected that notion as of late, particularly on Indiana’s side. The rivals are Purdue and Kentucky, especially so now that the latter series is removed. Ask those who were around the Hoosier-Illini games in the 2000s and you’ll get a slightly different story.
Those matchups had very real heat to them with Eric Gordon at the center. He may have spent just one season in Bloomington but the animosity he created in Champaign after spurning Illinois for Indiana has lingered ever since.
The programs have traded barbs historically but never at the level of Indiana and Purdue or Kentucky. But there’s been more heat than with just about any other Big Ten team.
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So, with regionality dying as a concept in major college sports as super conferences rise, why shy away from a rival with decades of history? If Illinois wants to call this a rivalry, as it did ahead of the matchup in Champaign back in 2023, why not just embrace that?
The fact of the matter is this: the Illini are light-years ahead of where the Hoosiers are right now as a program. Illinois was a more favorable matchup away from a Final Four back in 2024, trounced Indiana on its home court in 2025 and is looking to go on a deep run this season. Indiana’s spent that time just trying to make the tournament at all. That’s not the kind of thing Hoosiers fans wanna hear, but that’s what it is. Indiana can catch up, more quickly than ever with the transfer portal and NIL, but that’s still just a hypothetical.
Lots of programs have several rivals, for a while there Indiana only regularly played one in Purdue. Illinois and Indiana has always felt a bit more intense than other non-Purdue Big Ten games, so why not embrace that?
