CHAMPAIGN -- Kofi Cockburn expressed a little nervousness Tuesday night before Illinois faced UCLA. The former Illini center's main concern? That he was going to cry as his No. 21 jersey was officially raised to the State Farm Center rafters.
"I hope I don't cry on TV," Cockburn said before the game. "This is a really special moment to me. I try not to show my emotions all the time, but I feel like today will be the day."
Cockburn was able to fend off any tears. But that didn't change how much seeing his jersey raised to the rafters -- hearing the cheers of the Illinois fans one more time -- meant to the 7-foot center.
It's a moment Cockburn said he didn't think was possible when he arrived in Champaign ahead of the 2019-20 season.
"I never had these high hopes," he said. "This came from the success that we had as a team, the relationship with the coaches and them being able to push me and just care for me. ... It means everything in the world to me. This is what I came here for -- the family, the environment and the love of the fans. I feel really grateful to be able to do that and accomplish something this big."
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Cockburn was part of Illinois' shift from rebuilding program to consistent winner. Landing the Kingston, Jamaica, native -- a consensus four-star, top 50 recruit -- was a major step in that process.
"Probably as significant as he is large," Illinois coach Brad Underwood said of Cockburn's impact on the program. "Huge. He was just different. Kofi was just different. You hate to pinpoint one person or one thing. I'll never forget that day. We lose to Florida Atlantic, and he commits. It was fun to coach him. It was fun to help mold him. It was fun to challenge him. It was fun to watch him compete."
Cockburn spent his first season as a professional in Japan. He's played in South Korea the past two seasons. Where he'd wind up after his time at Illinois was something he couldn't anticipate, but he's embraced his opportunities the last three years.
"Ever since I started playing basketball, it was about having fun and trying to make more opportunities for myself and my family," Cockburn said. "It's been fun. It's different. I'm a guy of change. I came from Jamaica and played soccer first. Everything I've done in my life has been change."
A big change derived from his professional career was being in position to buy his mom, Dorothy Wray, a house in the Dallas area. It's a goal Cockburn said he's had since he was little, and it was something Underwood said Cockburn shared as soon as he arrived on campus.
"My mom has been through a lot," Cockburn said. "She's my No. 1 role model. Her work ethic has been instilled in me. I'm so happy I could make her this proud."
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Underwood has followed from afar as Cockburn has made the first steps in his professional career. His role now is to support his former star in whatever way possible.
"What the next steps are for him are to be determined, but Kofi is going to play basketball as long as he's healthy and as long as he wants to," Underwood said. "That's truly a gift. He'll always be one of the more special talents, but also human beings, that I've been around. There's nobody that didn't fall in love with Kofi.
"As long as Kofi is happy, I'm happy. I think it's really simple. All you want and all we can ask for a coach is they find success that makes them happy and it's a passion and they get to live their best life, so to speak. Kofi seems to be doing that."
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Illinois had its first clean availability report since the Jan. 19 game at Michigan State. Tomislav Ivisic, of course, played through strep throat in that game -- the precursor to the mononucleosis diagnosis that wound up costing him multiple games.
Underwood spent the last month hoping to get "whole again." Tuesday night was the first time he could claim that in nearly a month.
"I hope the flu bug has run through us," Underwood said. "I hope we don't get injured anymore. It's all part of it, I guess, and it's part of the plan for this team. We'll just keep getting better, keep fighting, and I still think, not even close, that our best basketball is still in front of us.
"I've said it since day one that I love this team's ceiling. I love where we could go and what we could be. There's growth. There's been hardship. There's been hard times. That's OK."
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Illinois might have had a clean availability report, but Ivisic has not quite recovered fully from the ankle injury he suffered last week at Rutgers. The 7-foot-1 center went through a light practice Monday before playing Tuesday against UCLA. It was another case of toughing it out from the Croatian big man.
"I've played a lot of times throughout injury -- especially the ankle injuries where doctors said everything is all right," Ivisic said. "Bones are all right. Joints are all right. There's no possibility of worse injury. It's just whether you can take it or not. ... I've always had great pain tolerance on everything. I don't know. I have a feeling when I can do something, and when I don't, it's really bad."
Underwood praised Ivisic's maturity. Not just for playing through some pain, but for putting his teammates first.
"I think that you don't know truly people until they go through adversity -- until they're facing it," the Illinois coach said. "It's very easy to quit. It's very easy to walk away. It's very easy to just shelf it. It's very hard to think about others when you're going through it, and Tomi's done that. The ankle is ugly. It hurts. If you've sprained your ankle, you know what that pain feels like. To think about others and his teammates and how important that is, man, that's pretty special. There's a lot of maturity with those decisions."
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Skyy Clark's return to State Farm Center with UCLA marked the second game this season Illinois played against one of its former players following last month's game at Indiana featuring former Illini Luke Goode.
The odds of seeing a former player are certainly higher these days than they used to be. Fourteen former Illini are still on Division I rosters.
That includes what used to be the backcourt of the future Adam Miller and Andre Curbelo -- high-profile recruiting wins in the Class of 2020 -- at Arizona State and Southern Miss, respectively. Both are second stops, post-Champaign, for the former Illinois guards.
Two former Illini are on ranked teams. Dain Dainja has moved into the starting lineup for No. 14 Memphis. RJ Melendez, after a one-year stop at Georgia, has started18 of 23 games for No. 22 Mississippi State.
Coleman Hawkins was one of the highest profile transfers on the market in the offseason and is still trying to help Kansas State turn its season around after a slow start. Then there's Jayden Epps at Georgetown, Benjamin Bosmans-Verdonk working on his law degree at South Carolina, Sencire Harris and Amani Hansberry at West Virginia after following former Illinois guard/assistant coach Chester Frazier to Morgantown, W.Va., Nico Moretti at Florida Atlantic, Connor Serven at Virginia Tech and Brandon Lieb at Illinois State.
"I've 100 percent accepted the fact that that's our world, and it's going to be more and more frequent," Underwood said about the number of former players on other rosters. "When you're a part of our family, you don't go away. I love them to death. They impacted us in a way that we knew what we were doing recruiting them.
"I've never lost perspective on what our job is as coaches -- help young boys become men. Sometimes, decisions get made that we don't necessarily like, but it's not venom and hate and you (expletive)-can them because they're not wearing your jersey. No, they're part of our family, and you want them to go see and be successful. ... I look at it completely different than most. I know I'm weird -- my wife tells me that every day -- but that's how I look at it.
"They were part of our family. They're still part of the extended family. I just don't get to coach them every day. When the game comes around and you've got to play against one, then the competitive side comes in. They're trying to kick my butt, and I'm trying to kick theirs. That's just natural."
Scott Richey