Illinois’ Brad Underwood coached for 26 years before landing his first Division I head coaching job.

Now in Year 39, the well-traveled 62-year-old is finally heading to the Final Four, where the Fighting Illini meet UConn on Saturday.

He’s doing it in what he’s long referred to as his dream job. In 2013 while in that first DI head coaching job at Stephen F. Austin, he told his administrative assistant about his ambition to coach the Fighting Illini one day. And she wrote it down.

When he was named Illinois coach in 2017, she presented him with that meaningful piece of paper containing his intention to lead this team.

In the place he always wanted to be, Underwood has the Fighting Illini in the Final Four for the first time since 2005, trying to bring home a first national title.

“I’ve been fortunate to be around great mentors, great coaches,” he said. “I just bided my time, found a group that’s magical. We’re living the dream.”

Though he’s living the dream now, it came only after decades of toiling in relative obscurity.

There were four years at Dodge City Community College starting in 1988 where he was not only the coach but the team’s bus driver for road games. Then came 10 years as an assistant for Jim Kerwin at Western Illinois, where he was “not making very much money and raising three kids and literally being gone five days a week.”

The next stop was Daytona Beach Community College from 2003-06, which also was not the most glamorous job but had a nice perk.

“It was an incredible place to help raise our kids, going to the beach every weekend," he said. "And I loved coaching ball in junior college.”

After that he worked as an assistant, first for Bob Huggins followed by Frank Martin, at Kansas State from 2006-12. He followed Martin to South Carolina, where he spent one season before landing at Stephen F. Austin.

“I’ve been blessed along the way because I’ve worked for nothing but winners for head coaches and people who allowed me to grow,” Underwood said.

At Stephen F. Austin he was named Southland Conference coach of the year in each of his three seasons. The Lumberjacks won the league tournament to advance to the NCAA Tournament every year under him.

He spent one season at Oklahoma State, where he went 20-13 and led the Cowboys to March Madness before landing his coveted job in 2017.

After three seasons building the team, he turned the Fighting Illini into perennial NCAA Tournament contenders. This is their sixth straight season in the tournament and the second time in three years that they have advanced to the Sweet 16.

“It’s been maybe a different path than most, but one that I sure wouldn’t — there’s not one step of it that I would give up,” he said. “Because I’ve been beyond blessed to work for great people who helped prepare me to get to these moments.”

His success this season comes after he began prioritizing recruiting in Eastern Europe. The Illini have a roster that includes four players from Eastern Europe and Andrej Stojakovic, who was born in Greece but whose father is Serbian three-time NBA All-Star Peja Stojakovic.

The squad is led by consensus second-team All-American point guard Keaton Wagler. The freshman scored 25 points in a win over Iowa to earn South Region tournament MVP and punch the Fighting Illini’s ticket to the Final Four.

Wagler said he knew soon after meeting Underwood that Illinois was the school for him.

“He’s super competitive and that’s what I like about him,” Wagler said. “He hates to lose. I hate to lose. So, it just combined really well. Just talking to him just throughout the whole recruiting process, I knew that this was the place I wanted to be.”

Underwood got emotional as he was cutting down the net after the victory over the Hawkeyes. So many years and all those stops brought him right where he was supposed to be.

Now he’s just two wins away from bringing Illinois to heights never seen before.

“You believe in something so much that it drives me every single day to want to make it happen,” he said.

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AP March Madness bracket: https://apnews.com/hub/ncaa-mens-bracket and coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/march-madness

HOUSTON (AP) — Two years ago, Iowa coach Ben McCollum was at Division II Northwest Missouri State and right there with him was current Hawkeyes star Bennett Stirtz.

It’s been a whirlwind journey for the pair since then. And on Saturday night, they’ll have a chance to carry Iowa to its first Final Four since 1980 when the Hawkeyes meet No. 3 seed Illinois in the South Region final.

“I don’t think either of us would be here without the other,” McCollum said Friday. “So now we’re in the Elite Eight and he’s gone further than he ever has, even at Division II, and hopefully he can keep going further.”

McCollum, who is in his first season at Iowa after one year at Drake, won four Division II national titles at Northwest Missouri State. Those came before Stirtz joined the team.

Stirtz recalled meeting McCollum for the first time when the coach came to one of his practices when he was a junior in high school.

“He won three straight (national titles) before I got to meet him, so it was obviously pretty cool and I had no other offers,” he said. “So definitely in shock when I first saw him and, yeah, it’s been a crazy journey so far and hopefully keep it rolling.”

McCollum remembered Stirtz being homesick early in his career at Northwest Missouri State even though it was only a little over an hour from his hometown of Liberty, Missouri. So, when he started getting interest from other schools, McCollum wanted Stirtz to follow him but was worried he’d say no because he wouldn’t want to stray far from home.

“What happens if I go somewhere? What would you want to do? And he is like, ‘I’ll go.’” McCollum said. “And I’m like, OK ... what if it’s Florida or somewhere random? Because he’s kind of a homebody naturally. He said, ‘I’ll go.’”

Though he was confident about any move when he spoke with his coach, Stirtz told his dad that he was a bit nervous about where McCollum would end up. Despite that trepidation, he followed the coach to Drake before packing up again just one year later to accompany him to Iowa.

“I knew that it was going to be a challenge to go with him, but I thought I would regret it if I didn’t go,” Stirtz said.

After McCollum was hired at Iowa this offseason, Stirtz, who had no Division I offers out of high school, had all sorts of teams angling for him.

“The way this portal works and the way all this NIL stuff works, some people were illegally recruiting him, offering him a lot more money, and he still chose to come to the University of Iowa,” McCollum said. “I think that’s probably as special as it gets, that he believes in you, and you believe in him.”

Stirtz leads the Hawkeyes by averaging 19.7 points a game. He had 20 points in Iowa’s 77-71 win over Nebraska Thursday night.

He credits his growth and a player — and a person — to his longtime coach and the guidance he’s provided.

“He just pushes you past your limit,” Stirtz said. “He shoots you straight and never lies to you. Sometimes it sucks because the discipline and everything sucks in the moment, but it makes you stronger mentally, physically, emotionally. It just makes you a stronger person and it makes you think that you can just accomplish anything.”

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AP March Madness bracket: https://apnews.com/hub/ncaa-mens-bracket and coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/march-madness

HOUSTON (AP) — Playing in the NCAA Tournament just two miles from campus, the stage was set for the Houston Cougars to have an advantage over Illinois on Thursday night.

Problem was, they couldn’t get their shots to fall.

Houston was limited to its lowest point total of the season in a 65-55 loss to Illinois in the South Region semifinals, a gut-wrenching ending for last year’s national runner-up.

“We gave it our all, we played hard, it was just one of those days, nothing was going in the rim,” Houston’s Chris Cenac Jr. said.

Players openly wept in the locker room and at the podium as they discussed the abrupt end to a season that saw the Cougars reach the Sweet 16 for a seventh consecutive time.

“Sometimes it’s not your night on the offensive end,” star freshman Kingston Flemings said. “We were getting good shots, shots that we expect to make… we were getting the shots that we wanted, noncontested, but sometimes it doesn’t swing that way.”

A 3-pointer by Flemings, who is expected to be an NBA lottery pick this summer, got Houston within 2 points at halftime. But things went wrong quickly early in the second half.

The Illini were up by one early in the half when they broke it open with a 17-0 run for a 44-26 lead with about 12 minutes left. Jake Davis scored five points during the burst, including a 3-pointer, and David Mirkovic and Ben Humrichous capped it with consecutive 3s.

The Cougars missed seven consecutive shots as Illinois built its lead. When Milos Uzan finally ended Houston’s drought with a 3-pointer with 11:20 left, it had been almost seven minutes since the team had scored.

While the offensive struggles were Houston's biggest problem, senior Emanuel Sharp was disappointed in the defensive execution, too.

“Our whole defense is based on a good pick-and-roll coverage, so when we don’t get our coverage calls right, our defense kind of breaks down,” he said. “So I think we had a couple of those and they capitalized on each one. I think that really hurt us to start the second half.”

Flemings had 11 points on 4-of-10 shooting and Uzan made just 2 of 11 shots. But they were far from the only Cougars who struggled offensively as the team shot just 34%.

Flemings expected Houston to fare better in the friendly environment. But noted that a great crowd can’t do much if the team isn't having a good night.

“Yeah, it’s in Houston, but at the end of the day it’s hardwood, 94 feet,” he said. “That’s a great team out there. Kudos to them… hopefully they can go win it all, but they were better than us tonight, and that’s all it takes in March Madness.”

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AP March Madness bracket: https://apnews.com/hub/ncaa-mens-bracket and coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/march-madness