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Welcome to “Good Morning, Illini Nation,” your daily dose of college basketball news from Illini beat writer and AP Top 25 voter Scott Richey. He’ll offer up insights every morning on Brad Underwood’s team and college basketball at large:

Brad Underwood doesn’t typically do much reflecting during the course of a season. Certainly not very often on a single-game basis.

But that’s where the Illinois coach found himself ahead of Wednesday night’s game against Alabama, looking up into the United Center crowd of 17,775 decked out almost exclusively in orange and blue. (Any Crimson Tide fans in attendance were wildly outnumbered).

It was a moment worth taking in given the crowd the last time Illinois played a regular season game at the United Center. Just 5,285 showed up to the “Madhouse on Madison” on Dec. 5, 2018, to see Ohio State beat the Illini 77-67.

Underwood leaned into Orlando Antigua during player introductions ahead of Wednesday night’s game to remind his associate head coach that he was there “when we were God awful and we played that game.”

“To this day, it’s the most (ticked) off I’ve ever been as the Illinois basketball coach,” Underwood continued. “I scheduled — that was me — I scheduled a Big Ten game in this building in front of nobody and we got beat. To me, that’s the one thing that upset me more than anything.

“To look up there (Wednesday) and see 18,000 in orange, I mean, my gosh. O in all of his humor he goes, ‘Coach, put a smile on your face. We need to enjoy this.’ I said, ‘You’re exactly right.’ I have tremendous appreciation for our fans, for our administration, for allowing us as coaches to get to this place. It’s the first time I’ve refelcted a long time, but that was pretty cool.”