When Brad Underwood committed to bring Illinois to face No. 3 Duke in a Saturday night main event at Madison Square Garden, it sounded like a magnificent marketing opportunity thanks to the national FOX audience — and a fabulous measuring stick to find out how far the Illini might go in March.Instead, given his team’s string of injuries and illnesses that have contributed to seven losses in its last 12 games, Underwood might be wondering whether he can get the broadcast switched to local cable access.Perhaps Aurora’s TV-10 — which came to life from the Saturday Night Live studios not too far from Madison Square Garden — might want the rights to Duke (23-3) and Illinois (17-10)?”In 38 years, I’ve never seen anything like what’s gone through our team,” Underwood said. “Tomi’s literally practiced maybe once in a month.””Tomi” is 7-foot-1 sophomore center Tomislav Ivisic. He has dealt with everything but the plague over the last month.He contracted mono that cost him three games (including two losses). Then he suffered a high ankle sprain Feb. 5 that he’s still hobbling through. His most recent issue has been his turn with the team-wide flu that limited him to 21 minutes in Tuesday’s 21-point loss at No. 11 Wisconsin.Illinois’ current frontcourt issues are compounded because 6-foot-9, 250-pound freshman power forward Morez Johnson Jr. went from looking like the team’s breakout star of the second half to breaking his wrist last Saturday against Michigan State. Johnson landed hard after swatting a shot out of bounds with both hands.”We don’t know who we have from day-to-day,” Underwood said. “But we’ll be fine. Eighteen-year-olds gotta grow up and deal with some adversity. It’s David playing Goliath in the next one and we’ll show up and we’re gonna fight.”In a perfect Illinois world, its pair of freshmen with lottery-pick potential — point guard Kasparas Jakucionis and wing Will Riley — will rise to the occasion and give Duke’s trio of expected lottery picks — Cooper Flagg (19.7 ppg, 7.7 rpg), Kon Knueppel (13.2 ppg) and 7-2 Khaman Malauch (8.0 ppg, 6.2 rpg) — a run for their money.
