With just days until the Illinois basketball opens its 2025-2026 season at home vs. Jackson State, the Fighting Illini got some long-awaited news.
One of their prized offseason acquisitions is eligible to play this season.
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What we know
Serbian point guard Mihailo Petrovic has been cleared for the 2025-26 college basketball season, the school announced on Monday.
In a release, Illinois said Petrovic was cleared after the completion of a review with the NCAA Eligibility Center. This follows a similar timeline that fellow Illini player Tommy Ivisic had last season. Ivisic was cleared on Oct. 31, 2024, just days before the season began.
Petrovic is classified as a sophomore with three years of eligibility remaining. He committed to Illinois this offseason after spending the 2024-25 campaign with Mega Superbet, a European team of the Adriatic League First Division (ABA).
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While playing in Europe, Petrovic averaged 14.2 points, 7.3 assists and 2.8 rebounds last season. As a shooter, he hit 49 percent of his shots from the field and shot 33 percent on 3-point shots.
Petrovic will help fill the shoes Kasparas Jakucionis leaves open after the latter declared for the 2025 NBA Draft after one year in Champaign. The versatility he brings on the court should help Illinois deepen its roster, which has reshaped around incoming transfers and returning players.
What’s next
Petrovic committed to Illinois last April and arrived on campus in late August.
Now that he’s cleared, Underwood can finally answer some questions he had about how this team shapes up.
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“I like our size. I like our versatility,” Underwood said at Big Ten Media Days in Rosemont earlier in October. “I haven’t seen Andrej Stojaković with Mihailo and the two bigs together. There’s a lot of things I haven’t seen yet.”
Underwood can start to see it now.
Illinois added Zvonimir Ivisic, Tommy’s brother, from Arkansas and Stojaković from Cal-Berkley in the transfer portal. It was an effort to address some of the talent lost in the portal and NBA Draft, but it also addressed the Illini’s biggest need to add more experience.
Freshmen Will Riley and Jakucionis were NBA Draft picks, but their inexperience and youth showed at times. Specifically, it showed when the Illini played Kentucky in the 2025 NCAA Tournament.
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Adding players with college basketball experience helps remedy that. Adding Petrovic also helps because the Serbian point guard brings professional experience from Europe. The Illini are familiar with the Adriatic League, as it’s now helped the program add the Ivisic brothers, Petrovic and Illinois freshman forward David Mirkovic.
This experience should join players like Jake Davis, Ben Humrichous and Kylan Boswell, who return after helping the Illini to the Tournament.
