How Brad Underwood's message and Keaton Wagler's response powered Illinois past Houston

HOUSTON -- Illinois star freshman Keaton Wagler is a dynamic playmaker and a gifted three-point shooter. He will soon be one of the top picks in the 2026 NBA Draft. But on Thursday night, the moments after Illinois' 65-55 win against Houston in the Sweet 16, the spotlight fell on one of Wagler's skills that doesn't get discussed often or mentioned in mock drafts. 

"He's a great listener," Brad Underwood said of his star freshman guard. 

All week, Illinois was working on a game plan to deal with one of the most notoriously difficult teams to play in all of college basketball. Kelvin Sampson's Houston program has been at the top of every league they're in and regularly made runs into the second weekend and beyond in the NCAA Tournament. The defense, discipline and execution of his Cougars teams wear opponents down by making a game into a war. Underwood knew that if Illinois was going to win against an opponent of this caliber, there were some battles in the war that had to be victories for the Fighting Illini. 

One of those battles was the rebounding battle, and to win it Illinois was going to need all five players involved in those efforts. 

"Coaches were telling us before the game, it's going to be a guard game to get rebounds," Wagler said after the game. "We need 10-plus [rebounds] out of the guards. So I took that challenge on. I went in there, tried to play as tough as I could, not let them get any second-chance rebounds. So I went in there and tried to get every rebound I could." 

Wagler finished with a career-high 12 rebounds in the game, with nine of them coming on the defensive end. He drifted down into the paint to snag Houston misses and push the pace the other direction, allowing for Illinois to either make a run at the rim in transition or simply get into its offense before the Cougars could get set. Houston played well defensively in the game -- after all, Illinois' 65 points scored was the second-lowest output of the season -- but a massive piece was missing from their offensive diet without offensive rebounds and second-chance opportunities. Wagler's 12 rebounds were the most on the team, and Illinois as a team finished with offensive and defensive rebounding percentages than the Cougars. 

"We needed a big, big rebounding game from our guards," Underwood said. "I thought Keaton just takes everything to heart. He's had some big rebounding games this year, but to do this in this moment -- you guys got to understand what a joy it is to coach him, and he doesn't worry about needing to score points.

"I thought his job defensively was equally as good, but his job on the glass, offense finds him, and he's going to score some points, yes, but he's always going to make the right play and he's going to do whatever it takes to win. Tonight it was defend and rebound at a really high level and he did that."

The fact that the rebounding battle flipped the game was a sentiment shared by Houston in the devastating moments after the Cougars' season ended in their home city. 

"They won the rebound battle," Houston senior guard Emanuel Sharp said. "I think we just didn't grab enough. We didn't defensive rebound well enough. Wagler had 12 rebounds. That's crazy. Yeah, we needed to do better on the boards."

"Yeah, that's what hurt us, defensive rebounding from the guards," Milos Uzan said with a sigh. "I mean, yeah."

Drilling the importance of rebounding took with Wagler, but also with fellow freshman David Mirkovic, who had 10 rebounds (nine on the defensive glass). Those two players accounted for more than half of Illinois' defensive rebounds, and they also made history as the first freshman duo ever to both record double-doubles in the same NCAA Tournament game. 

Wagler is a good listener, but Brad Underwood is also a good teacher

This victory gives Underwood nine NCAA Tournament wins in his career as Illinois' head coach, which is tied for second all-time with Bruce Weber and Harry Combes in program history. Only Lou Henson, with 12 NCAA Tournament wins as Illinois' coach, has more, and Underwood has the team and path to add to his total before the end of the season. 

Underwood has evolved throughout his career, which included decades of experience in the junior college circuit and lower levels of Division I. He joked this week about not being too thrown off by having to play Houston in Houston, because as a coach he used to drive his team in a 16-passenger van from Dodge City, Kansas to Mesa, Arizona for a tournament. 

"If you had told me back then that I'm getting to coach basketball in the Sweet 16 and play Houston, I would sign up for it," Underwood said. "I would crawl to get there."

The 62-year old finds perspective in his journey, which has come a long way from those days in Dodge City. 

But Underwood has also evolved throughout the relatively small sample set of his nine-season run as Illinois' head coach, and that has made him the perfect kind of leader for this era. His ability to marry scheme with skill and adapt from year-to-year based on his personnel matches a world where rosters are transient and transactional. Underwood's Illinois teams have been up-tempo and also slower, they've been up-and-down in both three-point shooting percentage and how often the team takes threes. College sports is a year-to-year proposition, and so is trying to figure out exactly what kind of style you're going to get Underwood's Illini on a yearly basis. There's no cookie-cutter style or "book" on him, because after assembling the roster he's going to teach to their skill set. 

This year's Illinois team has great size, skill, future NBA Draft picks and solid program players that have improved throughout their time in Champaign. But it's also a group of good listeners, and with Wagler taking lessons to heart they've put themselves in the position to play for a spot in the Final Four on Saturday night. 

That matchup will put teaching, listening and executing back in the spotlight, as Illinois faces a team in Iowa and a coach in Ben McCollum who have been out-scheming opponents during this NCAA Tournament run. There's no full week of practice back home to put in this game plan. This will have to be done on a quick turnaround, but luckily it is an opponent that Illinois has seen this season. The Fighting Illini beat Iowa 75-69 in Iowa City back on Jan. 11, but that was when Illinois was in the midst of a 12-game winning streak and Iowa was careening to a 2-4 start to Big Ten play. 

Now the rematch is good-on-good, with Wagler against Bennett Stirtz and Underwood engaged in a chess match with McCollum. We've got two great teams and two great teachers in the South Regional final. But the team that gets to cut down nets in Houston will likely be the one that does the best job listening.