How a $34 cowboy hat, David Mirkovic and a lot of fun took Illinois to the Final Four
INDIANAPOLIS — It was the finest $34 David Mirkovic ever spent on Amazon. Shortly after Illinois touched down in Houston final week for the NCAA Tournament‘s South Regional, teammate Keaton Wagler shared a social media put up with Mirkovic.
In it, a native tv anchor wrote that if the Illini’s Montenegrin sensation confirmed up to a half availability sporting a cowboy hat, the anchor would purchase his jersey and body it on his front room wall. It took Mirkovic about two seconds to determine and three clicks to order a cowboy hat to be delivered to the group lodge.
After Illinois punched a ticket to its first Final Four in 21 years, Mirkovic sat at his locker in Houston addressing the media whereas sporting the hat.
“Why not? We in Texas,” he mentioned with a Mirk smirk.
“Mirk is 19,” assistant coach Orlando Antigua mentioned, “but he’s really 8.”
A CELEBRATION WITH WATER GUNS AND NETS
In the moments earlier than that, Mirkovic had been perched atop his locker with a pump-action water gun educated on his head coach, who’d simply burst by means of the door along with his personal Super Soaker howling, “We’re going to the Final Four!”
Before that liquid shootout, Mirkovic had almost wrecked the longstanding custom of slicing down the nets after a regional remaining. When it was his flip, he took one step up the ladder, grabbed the backside of a nonetheless very hooked up internet, and tried to rip it down with each arms.
Teammate Kylan Boswell stepped in to cease him.
“Holy s—, bro! What the f— is wrong with you?” Boswell yelped.
Then Mirkovic grabbed the ladder and shook it playfully — whereas Boswell stood atop it with scissors.
“The first time I saw him,” teammate Tomislav Ivisic mentioned of Mirkovic, “he looked fat, he looked stupid. We started practicing and I saw he had great potential.
“He performs laborious each time. When I met him extra, I spotted he is really humorous. He’s nonetheless silly, (however) perhaps a little extra mature. Maybe.”
It’s always like this around these guys.
THE FUNNIEST TEAM IN INDIANAPOLIS
There is not a funnier or more fun-loving team at the 2026 Final Four. Their size, skill and shooting have carried the Illini here, via the most efficient offense in the modern era of college basketball and an emerging defensive intensity in this tournament, but so has their obvious chemistry and outsized personality. Thanks to this deep run, the entire country is getting a chance to fall in love with them now.
“Having fun alongside the approach is what that is all about,” coach Brad Underwood he mentioned. “You gotta get pleasure from the second. You gotta play basketball with the concept that it is fun, that it isn’t a grind, and this group could be very free that approach.”
THE BALKAN BLOC
Driven by Mirkovic and the rest of Underwood’s Balkan Bloc — there are six players of Eastern European descent on the roster — Illinois has become must-see TV after the games end.
They curse freely, in multiple languages, crack jokes about each other’s physiques and extol the virtues of finding a good Croatian woman to marry.
“More of the world will get a possibility to see how we’re — and it appears like they prefer it,” Ivisic mentioned.
