Mid-major ceiling led Bollant to Illinois

First, Matt Bollant beat them, and that gave him some satisfaction.

Now, Bollant is joining them, with the hope of gaining some respect.

Bollant is the new head women’s basketball coach at the University of Illinois, which hired him last week to replace Jolette Law, who went 69-93 over the last five years.

Bollant comes from overachieving and underrated Wisconsin-Green Bay, and the underrated part is precisely one of the main reasons he jumped at the chance to move up to a major Division I BCS program.

Bollant guided the Phoenix to a 7-0 record against Big Ten schools in the last two years. He rolled up a total of 65 wins over that same span and helped Green Bay reach as high as No. 9 in the national polls each of the past two seasons.

Yet, despite the top 10 national ranking, wins over high majors and Top 25 teams as well as a 31-2 record this season, Green Bay was saddled with a run-of-the-mill No. 7 seed in the NCAA tournament and wound up losing a 3-point game to No. 2 Kentucky in the regional semifinals.

Male or female, this is the glass ceiling mid-major coaches everywhere face.

It’s the “you’re good, but you’re a mid-major so you can’t be that good” mentality. NCAA selection committee members fall prey to it, and national poll voters do, too. As a result, recruits tend to look right past the mid-majors.

Bollant turned down the Wisconsin job last year to stay loyal to Green Bay, but after this most recent slap in the face, he was ready to go and go big.

“It got to the point where you felt like we couldn’t have done any more at Green Bay,” Bollant said. “We were doing really good things there, we were beating Big Ten teams and nationally ranked teams, we were 30-1 at the end of the regular season this year and one of the top-ranked teams in the nation. To then get that No. 7 seed was frustrating.

“That’s probably one of the things that helped me make my decision (to leave).”

Another thing was potential. At Illinois.

Bollant, who had three Division I schools courting him as soon as his season ended, believes Illinois is a sleeping giant, and he’s ready to shake it out of its slumber.

“The state of Illinois is one of the best for girls basketball,” Bollant said. “There’s so much talent here and if you get to be a top 10 team at Illinois like we were at Green Bay, you can go after any kid in Midwest, in the country. We still never got that level at Green Bay where we could get kids like that.

“When you think about the kids you can get here, and then you look at the school and the facilities and upgrades here, this is one of the premium jobs in the country.”

Speaking of jobs, Bollant, along with his staff, is already hard at work. The Illini have had three no-nonsense practices with him.

“I was ready for the kids to be guarded because it takes a while to build up a trust,” Bollant said. “But they were all really open and excited. I told them that the faster they allow themselves to trust, the faster we are going to make things happen here.”

Bollant wants to turn Illinois into the same kind of well-rounded and sound team he had in Green Bay. This past season, the Phoenix led the nation in turnover margin and was ranked in the top 10 in field-goal percentage and top 20 in scoring.

“We have to put a good product on the floor,” Bollant said. “Our kids will play extremely hard, they’ll play unselfish basketball and they’ll trust their teammates and their coaches. If we do that, we’ll have this program moving in the right direction.”

pbabcock@dailyherald.com