Illinois men’s basketball head coach Brad Underwood extends contract through 2028
Illinois men’s basketball head coach Brad Underwood looks over some plays in the playbook during the game against Indiana at the Big Ten Tournament on March 11. Underwood will be extended his contract with the team for the 2027-2028 season.
March 30, 2022
Although pending approval by the University of Illinois Board of Trustees, Director of Athletics Josh Whitman announced that head coach Brad Underwood’s contract is set to be extended through the 2027-2028 season.
This becomes the third extension to Underwood’s contract during his tenure at Illinois with his initial contract slated to run through the 2023 season and was worth a total of $18 million dollars.
In March of 2020, Underwood was extended through 2026 and, at the time, moved his base salary to $3.4 million with an increase to $4 million in the final year of that extension.
In September of 2021, he was re-extended through the 2027 season, after a season that saw Illinois win the Big Ten tournament. This moved his annual compensation to the top 10 nationally among collegiate basketball coaches.This most recent extension maintains Underwood in a six-year contract with Illinois, increasing his annual compensation by $300,000 while also increasing his annual retention bonus by $200,000.
Whitman feels confident that Underwood will continue to guide Illinois through the Big Ten gauntlet given his 44 Big Ten victories in the last three seasons with each season notching at least 13 Big Ten wins.
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“Brad Underwood has led a remarkable resurgence of our men’s basketball program,” Whitman said to Illinois Athletics. “Under his strong leadership, we have won Big Ten championships, posted one of the best three-year runs in the history of Fighting Illini men’s basketball and the Big Ten Conference and re-established ourselves on the national stage.”
Underwood led Illinois to a Big Ten tournament title in the 2020-2021 season, beating Ohio State and later securing a number one seed in the NCAA Tournament. Illinois later fell to Loyola Chicago in the Round of 32.
In the 2021-2022 season, Illinois shared the Big Ten Regular Season title with Wisconsin but then fell in the second round to Indiana in the Big Ten Tournament. Illinois was then defeated by Houston in the second round of the NCAA Tournament as a No. 4 seed.
While seeing some success on the Big Ten stage, Underwood has been unable to translate that success on the national stage, the six-year extension gives him the cushion to continue to build the program off their recent rise.
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