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:

Brad Underwood made an appearance on Andy Katz’s March Madness 365 podcast this week after Katz released his first bracket update ahead of the 2020-21 season and had Illinois as No. 1 overall seed. Here’s more of what Underwood discussed:

Workouts right now

We’ve been able to move to eight hours. Last week was the first week we’ve done it with the team. We’ve got four guys out. They just all happen to be frontline guys. We’v got mismatches all over the place in terms of what we’re teaching. I love that part of our team. We ended the year playing Da’Monte Williams a lot at the 4 spot and playing a little bit smaller. Yet we can play big playing Giorgi (Bezhanishvili) there. I’m excited about that for our team. I truly enjoy position-less basketball, and this group has some of those tendencies.

The roster

I love our depth. I love the fact we’re now old. We’ve got veterans, and they’re leading our young guys. Our young guys have been excellent to this point. I’m excited about what this team’s upside could be. Really early, we’ve got to find that point where we ended the season last year — because we were playing so well — and try to carry that forward.

Playing in a pandemic

Every Saturday I look at a football lineup of games, and you see postponements. You’re going to have to have some depth. You’re going to have to have a little luck. But you’re going to have to have guys that can step into a role that maybe is new to them because you’v got guys out with COVID.

You’re going to have to withstand maybe a little more than usual. Maybe empty crowds, empty venues. They’ll be more like scrimmages. You won’t have that adrenaline from a home crowd. Learning to play and learning to be tough is going to be a big part of this.