Welcome into the Ilan Inquirer podcast. It is Jeremy Warner, joined by Jay Laman. We had to get Jay Lehman on after that season, a 10-win Illinois football season

capped with this 21-17 win over South Carolina in the Citrus Bowl. So far, we've already

learned that Xavier Scott is back. Luke Altmire is back. Jay C. Davis is back and we await

Gabacus. We'll talk about all of that. Jay, we were just talking before

we came out here. Things are going kind of good, kind of well for Illinois football right now.

Yeah, football and basketball too, right? You feel like momentum as a program, but from where they,

the way they're able to finish, remember coming into the season, we were thinking

five, six, seven wins, can you make a bowl game? Can you get to the more manageable part of the

schedule in November? And they surprise us throughout the whole year. I mean, other than Oregon,

they were in every football game they had with a chance to win in the fourth quarter.

And just got one thing that I have been waiting to see, you know, when you played Iowa or when

Wisconsin was Wisconsin, you even had under Northwestern with Pat Fitzgerald, the teams got

better as the year progressed.

And I thought this team got better, right?

It, you know, it struggled a little bit in the first half against Kansas, but found a way to win with that pick six and found enough pieces on the road in a hostile environment in

Nebraska that I think built confidence.

But what I saw was this team really improved throughout, whether it was Pat Bryant,

who was solid throughout, but really peaked late in his performance or that offensive

line or the defense that came through clutch in a lot of different ways.

So I love the improvement.

And obviously, the exclamation point was going to a bowl game at a neutral site

against a good South Carolina team who Lee Corso famously said is the best team not in the

...