Le Journal

You can be sure of this: Illinois men’s basketball coach Brad Underwood isn’t wasting any time these days lamenting past losses.Why would the man think like that when his team is right on the cusp of the top 10 in the national polls and aiming for the school’s first Final Four in over two decades?“I don’t live in those moments too much,” he said Thursday.On the other hand, when a nudnik reporter corners Underwood on the phone and asks what’s the one thing he wishes he could have back — the one thing that still sticks in his craw — a negative thought is bound to come to mind.“If I had one game I would want to have over, it would probably be the Loyola game,” he said. “Our first NCAA game. We didn’t know how [not] to lose, the urgency of losing.”Just a killer for an Illini fan. They were a No. 1 tournament seed in 2021 when they ran into the eighth-seeded Ramblers in Indianapolis. Ayo Dosunmu, Kofi Cockburn, Trent Frazier — how did that 71-58 second-round upset go so wrong?“I should’ve done a much better job with that team because that team was maybe one of the two best teams in the country that year,” Underwood said. “That was maybe my biggest disappointment, that I couldn’t grow that team better.” Related Loyola upsets No. 1 seed Illinois 71-58 in second round of NCAA Tournament Ah, well, things seem to be as bright as ever at Illinois, at least measured against the rest of Underwood’s outstanding nine-season run at the school.After blowing out Maryland 89-70 Wednesday in Champaign, the Illini (16-3) are on an eight-game winning streak for the first time since the aforementioned Loyola game. At 7-1 in a Big Ten that’s in rare form, with Michigan, Purdue, Michigan State and unbeaten Nebraska also soaring, the deep Illini — the tallest team in the country — are among the biggest boppers. And they have been for years, underscored by the fact no one has won more Big Ten games — 88 — since the start of the 2019-20 season. Purdue and Illinois share that impressive number, 88. Saturday in West Lafayette, Indiana, either the fourth-ranked Boilermakers (17-1) or the 11th-ranked Illini are going to make it 89.And if Underwood’s team wins, he’ll have his 100th Big Ten win — all at Illinois — joining Michigan State’s Tom Izzo, Purdue’s Matt Painter and Wisconsin’s Greg Gard in the triple-digit club among current coaches.That’s got to be reason enough to do a little reflecting, right?“I’m so simple, it’s always kind of the next-game mentality,” Underwood said. “But, you know, I do reflect a little more now than maybe I used to. I don’t know the true significance of 100 wins, but I’m fortunate.”How fortunate?“I’m in basketball heaven,” he said.Underwood, 62, makes well above $4 million a year and has a lengthy contract that, if certain performance benchmarks are met, could keep him on the Illini sideline through 2035. Is he certain he’d like to do this that long?“No, but I know what I want,” he said. “I want good health and I want the enjoyment that I still feel on the first day of practice. It’s so exhilarating for me, the first day of practice. …“I’ve got a great contract that allows me to keep moving forward and progressing. We’re on a pretty good upswing. I don’t know who’d want to step away.”At his introductory press conference in 2017, he delivered at least a couple of memorable lines.“Losing’s not an option,” was one.“I dream big and I dream bigger,” was another.Has it all lived up to his dreams so far?“Not yet,” he said. “We haven’t won a national championship, haven’t made a Final Four. I’ve always said this job is that. It should be that. The day that anybody expects us and this program to not do that, they can look for a new ball coach.”That’s keeping it 100, as the youngsters say.At Illinois, only two of Underwood’s predecessors made it to triple digits in the Big Ten. Harry Combes was 174-104 (.626) in conference games from 1947 to 1967. Lou Henson was 214-164 (.566) from 1975 to 1996. Underwood sits at 99-67 (.596) with a…

The federal government will be required to hand over documents and video footage relating to conditions inside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in suburban Broadview that has become the center of increasing scrutiny and protests, a federal magistrate judge ruled Thursday.At a hearing in federal court, U.S. Magistrate Judge Laura McNally granted several motions by the plaintiffs in the class action lawsuit demanding that the feds provide data on detainee arrests and detention, documents relating to compliance with a judge-issued temporary restraining order, details about how the facility retains documents, information on other immigration facilities in northern Illinois and video footage from inside the facility.The suit was filed late last year by the American Civil Liberties Union and the MacArthur Justice Center against several of the Trump administration’s top immigration officials, including Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem and top Border Patrol official Gregory Bovino. The complaint alleges detainees held at the Broadview facility were denied access to lawyers and medicine and forced to live in squalid conditions where they slept on cold, crowded floors and often went without a hot meal.McNally granted the plaintiffs’ motion to compel, meaning the defendants did not provide information when the plaintiffs made requests, and the plaintiffs asked a judge to intervene. Ifeanyi Mogbana, an attorney for the defendants, argued the information would have been revealed during depositions.McNally was at times visibly frustrated with Mogbana’s answers to her questions about information meant to be released during the discovery process of the case.“These kinds of answers are not helpful. You’ve had notice of this motion for weeks,” McNally told Mogbana.McNally did deny one request for more documents, saying the request was overly broad. An attorney for the plaintiffs, Alexa Van Brunt of the MacArthur Justice Center, accepted the decision, saying the plaintiffs' priority was to access video footage.The defendants have a deadline of Feb. 16 to release answers to most of the plaintiffs’ questions, including who makes decisions about operations at the Broadview facility and information about the future of the Broadview building if it’s met with another influx of detainees, McNally ordered.Van Brunt raised concerns about the defendants releasing all the relevant information when asked. She said some documents referred to other pertinent documents that weren’t given to the plaintiffs, saying the plaintiffs needed “some kind of affirmation that the government is looking for these documents.”“Right now, I don’t think they are, and we are missing a lot of evidence,” she said.The lawsuit was initially filed in October of last year, when ongoing protests were active outside the Broadview facility. A federal judge then granted a temporary restraining order against the facility, requiring better conditions for sleeping, eating, hygiene and access to medicine.The Broadview facility is meant to be a processing center, but the facility has been transformed into a de facto detention center. Harsh conditions at the facility included a toilet out in the open, a lack of toothpaste and soap, and people forced to sleep on the floor, according to a Chicago Sun-Times report and more than three hours of testimony in court last year.