Construction regularly interrupts the flow of traffic along I-80 and I-74, the two thruways between Iowa City and Champaign. The Iowa-Illinois college basketball series mirrors that 250-mile drive: In stretches, it’s smooth. Then without warning, it gets ugly and contentious.
One of the sport’s most combative rivalries reaches its apex on Saturday when the No. 9 seed Hawkeyes battle the No. 3 seed Illini in the Elite Eight. Illinois, a top-10 team all year, harbored championship expectations. Iowa, which has a first-year coach in Ben McCollum and a completely new roster, lives in the moment. And both sides occasionally work blue.
Ask an Illinois fan to sum up the Illini’s rivalry with Iowa and they’ll derisively utter two words: “Bruce Pearl.”
An Iowa fan’s two-word response? “(Expletive deleted).”
Constant recruiting wars along with some incredible matchups and off-court issues have at times turned the border feud to a boil. Each program has several other rivalries and significant series both inside and outside the Big Ten, but coaches learn quickly that this one involves a little more disdain for the opponent.
“When I got to Illinois, I said, ‘Who’s the rival school?’” said former Illinois coach Bruce Weber, who led the Illini to the 2005 NCAA title game. “And I actually knew, but Purdue is less than two hours away. Indiana is close. But they said, ‘No, no, no. Make sure you know that it’s Iowa.’ That’s the one we want to beat, going way back to the slush fund era and then obviously the Bruce Pearl situation.”
Illinois leads the series 95-77 and has won nine of the last 10 matchups. The teams have played 21 matchups as ranked opponents, in which the Hawkeyes hold an 11-10 edge. It’s a competitive series with 12 decades of history. What turned it into the Big Ten’s feistiest feud was the league’s most infamous recruiting scandal. Interpretations still vary depending on school allegiance nearly 40 years later, but there’s no question that Pearl, a former Iowa assistant, remains the most reviled figure in Champaign by a margin wider than the Mississippi River that separates the states.
“You don’t see Ben McCollum and Bennett Stirtz and this great story because these guys are easy to like,” media personality David Haugh said Friday morning on the “Mully & Haugh” show in Chicago. “If you’re an Illini fan, you see … the ’80s, you see the ’90s and you see ‘The Devil.’ And you don’t like it.
“I don’t want to say it’s like Bears-Packers, but if the Bears had lost at the end of their season to the Packers, it would have hurt a lot more in the offseason than if it were the Rams or 49ers. I think likewise if Illinois gets eliminated with a team that’s good enough to be in the Final Four by an upstart Cinderella candidate like Iowa, it might be acceptable … if it weren’t Iowa.”
Pearl, who is working as a studio analyst for the NCAA Tournament, was unavailable for comment, according to a CBS spokesperson.
From 1987 through 1989, five out of six Iowa-Illinois contests matched top-20 teams. Iowa went to a Sweet 16 and an Elite Eight during that span; Illinois reached a Final Four. The programs waged a fierce recruiting battle for Chicago Simeon forward Deon Thomas. Pearl, then an assistant under Tom Davis, was Iowa’s lead recruiter for Thomas, while Jimmy Collins directed Illinois’ efforts. Thomas was committed to Iowa but flipped to Illinois. That’s where the story gets explosive.
In April 1989, Pearl taped — without permission — a conversation with Thomas in which the basketball star ambiguously admitted Collins offered him cash, a vehicle and perks. Pearl sent the tape to the NCAA and wrote out an 11-page internal memo titled “Confidential” that included every allegation involving Illinois and Thomas with its date over a five-month period.
Pearl documented that on Dec. 8, 1988, Thomas told him Illinois would help him and his grandmother find a nice apartment or fix up their current residence. Pearl wrote that Thomas “didn’t want to have a reputation like (Illini player) Marcus Liberty. I asked what that meant and he answered $75,000 and a car.”
On Feb. 1, 1989, Pearl wrote, “Deon told me over the phone that a member of the University of Illinois coaching staff offered him $80,000 and a brand new Blazer” during a weekend visit. Over the memo’s final two pages, Pearl outlined a “Strategy,” which included notifying the NCAA as soon as Thomas enrolled at Illinois but finding a way for Iowa to stay nameless so perhaps Thomas would still want to attend Iowa. University of Iowa officials met to discuss the memo but did not act on it.
If Pearl wanted to stay anonymous, that backfired. His memo became public record, and Pearl was persona non grata east of the Quad Cities. When the teams played in Champaign on March 4, 1990, Iowa chose to stay about 90 miles away in Peoria, Ill. Pearl did not make the trip, and police officers accompanied the visitors everywhere. The Illini scorched the Hawkeyes 118-85 at Assembly Hall.
The NCAA thoroughly investigated Illinois’ recruitment of Thomas and LaPhonso Ellis (who went to Notre Dame) and ultimately determined the evidence was inconclusive. But Illinois was found guilty of other minor violations such as complimentary tickets for former players and high school coaches and improper recruiting tactics by Collins. The NCAA handed the Illini a one-year NCAA Tournament ban for the 1990-91 season.
“There was bitterness,” said Andy Kaufmann, who played for Illinois from 1988 to 1993. “I lost out on playing in the NCAA Tournament because of that situation my junior year. They deemed that we didn’t do anything wrong but they still reprimanded us.”
“That’s why there’s so much bad blood between the teams,” said Jess Settles, who played at Iowa from 1993 to 1999. “That thing was so heated. Can you imagine that whole deal on social media?”
Thomas remains the Illini’s all-time leading scorer and currently works as the team’s color analyst on radio broadcasts. But he was taunted mercilessly at Carver-Hawkeye Arena. When he shot free throws, Iowa students jingled their keys and chanted, “Bla-zer, Bla-zer.”
Settles, who works as an analyst on multiple networks, now considers Thomas a friend and said the situation “damaged both programs.”
“(Thomas is) one of the greatest guys you’ll ever know,” Settles said. “I always thought he was like this warrior — which he was on the court — but he’s a gentle giant. It was just one of those things that sort of spiraled out of control and then almost cost Bruce his career.”
The rivalry has plenty of flashpoint moments beyond the Pearl-Thomas affair. In 1930, the Big Ten briefly kicked Iowa out of the conference for forming a collective and providing stipends to athletes. Illinois and Minnesota were among the schools that passed judgment on Iowa’s athletics department, which believed it was being made a scapegoat.
During a 1952 football game in Iowa City, fans threw apples at the officials and Illinois players after a series of calls went against the Hawkeyes. Fans rushed the field, and one grabbed an Illinois player. The schools decided to stop playing one another on the gridiron until 1967 because the series became too heated.
At the 1987 Maui Invitational, Iowa and Illinois appeared in opposite brackets. According to the late Roy Marble, who was Iowa’s leading scorer for 32 years, players on both teams met in a hotel room to play cards and dominoes. Then a massive fight broke out, leaving the hotel room in shambles.
Illinois’ infamous Orange Krush student section purchased tickets for a basketball game in Iowa City through an Iowa booster in 2010, and more than 300 visiting fans unveiled their brightly colored T-shirts behind an Iowa basket. That eyesore (coupled with the empty seats around them) indirectly spurred the Iowa athletic department to dismiss then-coach Todd Lickliter.
In 2023, the Orange Krush posed as a Boys and Girls Club to receive reduced-price tickets for a game at Carver-Hawkeye Arena. This time, Iowa athletics intercepted the plot, the tickets were rescinded and the group had to apologize.
In a 2019 handshake line after a Hawkeyes victory, then-Illinois assistant coach Chin Coleman exchanged words with then-Iowa head coach Fran McCaffery over a late basket. The teams were separated before a fight could break out.
The series has not lacked for on-court drama, either. In 1987, No. 2 Iowa trailed No. 9 Illinois by 20 points at Assembly Hall, only to rally for a 91-88 overtime win that propelled them to No. 1.
The most notorious single play in the rivalry’s history took place on Feb. 4, 1993 at Assembly Hall. Illinois trailed by two points with 1.5 seconds left and the ball under its basket. Guard T.J. Wheeler unleashed a long pass to the right sideline to Kaufmann. Before the buzzer sounded, Kaufmann lunged forward and drilled a 3-pointer that sent Champaign into a frenzy and led to a dogpile at the opposite free-throw line.
“I’ve never shot a shot like that in my life, not that flush,” Kaufmann said. “Then it went in, and immediately, I thought, well, the refs are going to call it off. So, I was worried about that. But obviously they didn’t call it off.
“I got my arm pinned, and I couldn’t move. I was stuck under there. I saw later that people were pulling people off me.”
Those moments ensure that Illinois-Iowa remains an indelible college basketball rivalry, but this chapter is different. It offers a chance to advance to the sport’s biggest stage and forever hold a signature moment over a rival.
“Isn’t that great for basketball?” Illinois coach Brad Underwood said Friday. “What makes basketball great is these unbelievable rivalries, and I say rivalries, but games where there’s so much history dating so far back. You’ve got two historic programs that have all found success at different levels. This just gets to be another one of those games.”
