New Illinois head coach Brad Underwood has hired former Kenticky assistant and recent South Florida head coach Orlando Antigua as an assistant coach. This is an odd choice.
Antigua was an up-and-coming coach with a reputation of being a great recruiter while on John Calipari's staff at Kentucky.
However, after just 2+ seasons at South Florida before he was suddenly fired 13 games into this past season. He destroyed the USF program in more ways than one. Besides his atrocious record of 23-55 in a little over 2 seasons and a revolving door of recruits and players coming and going, his program is now being investigated by the NCAA for a massive academic fraud scandal. And in an effort for damage-control, his brother Oliver Antigua (an assistant coach) was the fall-guy and got fired. But as the NCAA digs deeper into the scandal, and apparently last USF already knows there will be plenty of violations found and they expect major sanctions, they decided to take it a step further and fire Orlando as well in January.
But even before the results are known, and whether Orlando Antigua will receive any NCAA penalties himself, Illinois has hired him-
http://www.thechampaignroom.com/201...nois-fighting-illini-baketball-coaching-staff
Funny that most of the articles or announcements about Illinois hiring him don't even mention the academic fraud scandal and the disaster he left behind at South Florida. :roll: