Richey | Advantage, Illini ... for now

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The Braggin’ Rights balance of power in men’s basketball has shifted violently in the last three years.

Illinois still holds the all-time series lead with 34 wins to Missouri’s 20. The Illini are also the more accomplished basketball program, historically, with more than three times as many consensus First Team All-Americans and five Final Four appearances to the Tigers’ zero.

But all that means little for one night in late December every year. One team’s Christmas is merry. The other winds up with the basketball equivalent of a stocking full of coal.

Braggin’ Rights is a series that’s regularly seen one team rack up win after win in multi-year streaks. Missouri took its turn with three straight wins from 2018-20 after five in a row by Illinois from 2013-17.

Then the Illini took the Tigers to the woodshed in 2021 when the game returned to St. Louis after a brief, pandemic-related shift to Columbia, Mo., a year prior. A 25-point victory behind a dominant performance by Kofi Cockburn.

Missouri turned the tables in 2022 with a 22-point victory that never felt even that close. So, of course, Illinois answered last December with a 24-point thrashing with Terrence Shannon Jr. dropping 30 points on the Tigers.

Three years.

Three blowouts.

A changing tide in a long-held rivalry that’s started to match the volatility — particularly from a roster standpoint — of college basketball as a whole. A space where Illinois still has the upper hand heading into the 2024-25 season.

The Illini followed up their Braggin’ Rights victory last December by finishing second in the Big Ten, winning a Big Ten tournament title and making a run to the Elite Eight. One of the best seasons in program history. Certainly the best of the Brad Underwood era.

Missouri went the other direction. Fast.

The Tigers rebounded from their Braggin’ Rights curb stomping by beating Central Arkansas. Then they didn’t win again, racking up 19 consecutive losses against SEC opponents. An 8-24, Kim Anderson-esque season for Dennis Gates in his second year with the program. Not the former Missouri coach you’d want to aspire to be.

Those divergent paths after the new year hit means Illinois has held on to Braggin’ Rights high ground in advance of this year’s matchup.

Both teams had to hit the roster reset button this offseason. The Illini did so with the momentum of being one of the best programs in the country. There’s a sense of optimistic expectation even with an almost entirely new roster. Hype that comes after adding three players — Kylan Boswell, Will Riley and Kasparas Jakucionis — currently projecting as potential first-round picks a year out from the 2025 NBA draft.

No one knows if the moves Underwood made will, in fact, work, but there’s belief in his recent hit rate in talent acquisition and in the trajectory of the program since his arrival in Champaign.

Missouri has to hope Gates got it right. The Tigers brought in a veteran point guard in Iowa transfer Tony Perkins. Mark Mitchell arrives from Duke with at least a five-star pedigree. And Marques Warrick (Northern Kentucky) and Jacob Crews (UT Martin/North Florida) seem like the type of mid-major players Gates has gotten the best from previously.

But a new group immediately flipping an eight-win team feels like a bigger ask than a new group trying to maintain the success of a 29-win NCAA tournament quarterfinalist. Illinois isn’t a sure thing in the 2024-25 season, but is clearly starting further down that path than Missouri.

Just how far (or not) down that path we’ll all find out on Dec. 22 in St. Louis for the 44th annual iteration of Braggin’ Rights.

Maybe this one will be competitive. The last three definitely weren’t. A departure in a series where the majority of games have been decided by single digits and the last game with that wide of a margin of victory came with Dee Brown leading Illinois to a 32-point win in 2005.

Four months out, it still feels like advantage, Illinois. For now. Recent history suggests literally anything is possible.

It is Braggin’ Rights, after all.