Ep. 1096 - Isaac Trotter on how Illini MBB stacks up in Big Ten; Illini WRs coach Justin Stepp on coaching journey, 2025 season
Illini Inquirer Podcast: An Illinois Fighting Illini athletics podcast
247Sports, Illinois, Illinois Football, Illinois Basketball, Illinois Athletics, College Football, C
4.9 • 575 Ratings
🗓️ 19 December 2025
⏱️ 72 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
CBS Sports' college basketball writer Isaac Trotter joins Illini Inquirer's Jeremy Werner to reassess Illinois basketball through a third of the season and break the Big Ten into tiers. Illinois wide receivers coach Justin Stepp then joins to chat about his coaching journey, his NFL pipeline, the 2025 season and the future of the Illini wide receiver room.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome into the Ohio Inquirer podcast. We got a loaded one for you today. We start off with some basketball chat. |
| 0:19.1 | Isaac Trotter, CBS Sports 24-7 Sports joins us to give us his thoughts a third of the way into the season on Illinois basketball. |
| 0:26.6 | What are the reasons to believe in this team? |
| 0:28.7 | What are the reasons to be concerned about this team? |
| 0:30.8 | And then we break down how Illinois stacks up in the rest of the Big Ten. |
| 0:34.5 | Isaac Trotter breaks down his Big Ten tiers. Break down the bottom of the Big Ten, |
| 0:39.5 | which is a little bit bigger of a group than it has been the last few years. We're talking about |
| 0:44.2 | the bubble teams, the tournament teams, the second weekend teams, and the national title contenders. |
| 0:50.2 | Fun chat with Isaac Trotter. Nice reset before the Bragging Rights game. Then we do some football chat. |
| 0:56.3 | Justin Stepp, Illinois wide receivers coach, joins me, talks about his career, his journey in football. |
| 1:03.0 | He's from a football family. We dive into that. We talk about developing the NFL talent he does, evaluating talent when he goes out on the road and recruits. |
| 1:13.0 | But we also talk about his room, Hank Beatty's big season, Colin Dixon's sneaky good season, |
| 1:18.0 | Hudson Clements, great back half of the season. And then we'll talk a little bit about the future |
| 1:23.0 | of his room and what else he has cooking in that wide receiver room heading into the Music |
| 1:27.9 | City Bowl. |
| 1:28.6 | So it was a fun chat with both Isaac Trotter and Justin Stepp. |
| 1:31.4 | We'll get to all that next. |
| 1:32.5 | Isaac Trotter joins us on the Alainquire podcast. |
| 1:36.8 | The holidays are a great time to reconnect with family, but they also can be stressful. |
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... |
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