Jul. 7—CHAMPAIGN — Berry Wallace, Gretchen Dolan and Aaliyah Guyton all understand the possibilities that exist for what the Illinois women’s basketball team could accomplish this upcoming season.
It’s one of the many reasons that Illini trio is here for another year in Champaign.
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Their return as part of a successful offseason retention campaign by Illinois fifth-year coach Shauna Green — with the top-nine players in terms of minutes played all back from last season’s team that was responsible for 22 wins and reaching the second round of the NCAA tournament — has raised the floor and ceiling of what the Illini might achieve.
This is an Illini team, after all, that despite being the youngest in the field of 68 for the NCAA tournament, defeated Colorado in the first round as a No. 7 seed before a second-round exit against No. 2 seed and host Vanderbilt in Nashville, Tenn.
In addition to Wallace, Dolan and Guyton, Illinois is bringing back a pair of freshmen starters in guard Destiny Jackson and forward Cearah Parchment, along with key rotation players, like senior guard Jasmine Brown-Hagger, senior guard Maddie Webber and redshirt junior center Lety Vasconcelos, among others.
“It means everything to me, and I will never take that for granted,” Green said of the significance of having a bulk of the Illini core running it back during a media availability last month in the lobby at Ubben Basketball Complex. “I’m super grateful for this team and these people for believing and being loyal and for believing in each other, believing in the vision of the program, believing in the institution. I think all of those words are right, and again, I love this team.
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“I love the pieces of it, and I am just really, really excited. There’s not going to be a day that goes by when I walk into this building (at Ubben) that I forget how special and what these guys did to come back here.”
That feeling is mutual among Green’s players.
Even if, as Dolan put it, “all of us have had to make sacrifices to stay at Illinois.”
Wallace described keeping this Illinois team together as “not the normal thing to do nowadays.” Dolan, like Green, referred to it as “special.”
No matter the word or phrase of choice, expectations are as high as they have ever been during the Green era.
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“I think it’s obviously just our culture,” Wallace said. “Being in such a great space and having such great resources here. Playing into that and our relationship with each other and our relationship with the coaches. You can’t replace that anywhere. So, I think growing our relationships with each other is honestly what fueled (our decisions to stay). It’s pretty awesome to have such a great team.”
Wallace is coming off a breakout season, where the 6-foot-1 forward achieved All-Big Ten first-team status as a sophomore after finishing with a team-high 18.4 points per game while shooting 47.2 percent overall, 34.7 percent from beyond the three-point arc and 86.5 percent at the free-throw line and also pulling down 6.2 rebounds per game.
Dolan, on the other hand, had another season cut short due to injury, as this time a torn meniscus in her right knee ended her season and required the 5-11 guard to undergo surgery on Feb. 23. The Buffalo, N.Y. native has played in only 26 of a possible 66 games the last two seasons with a left-knee injury limiting the now redshirt junior during the 2024-25 season.
Still, the idea of leaving Illinois never crossed her mind.
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“It just goes to show how much we love playing together and how much we love this program that we are building something special and that a lot of us didn’t want to give that up,” Dolan said. “I think I realize this program is something that I have been a part of for four years, and each year, we continue to build. I love the coaches here, and I love my teammates. They have supported me through every step and every year that I’ve had (here) — through the ups and downs and injuries and all. I think leaving for me wasn’t in the cards because it didn’t make sense.”
Guyton, too, endured some injury-related adversity this past season with an undisclosed lower-leg injury resulting in her sitting out four games early on during her sophomore year. But the 5-7 guard from Peoria also admitted it felt like a “blessing” to play an important role on a successful team.
Especially in the second half of the 2025-26 season when Guyton started the final 13 games for the Illini in place of an injured Dolan.
Now, that Illinois is back together for the most part, the important summer work has begun with the Illini now in week four of an eight-week summer program.
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Of course, it must also be noted that Illinois has not had its full roster together for the entirety of this summer in the practice gym.
Forward Irene Noya Catoira is currently with Spain’s U20 team for the 2026 FIBA Women’s World Cup in Lithuania, while Parchment was called up to training camp roster for the Canada Basketball senior women’s national team last month and center Lana Brenjo was in the process of making the move from her native Bosnia to the United States. At the same time, some players — Dolan and forward Manuella Alves, in particular — are slowly being eased back from injury.
Still, the Illini already know they have a much stronger baseline to start with this summer. That fact is the result of only having a few newcomers on the Illini roster to get acclimated into the team, as opposed to last summer when more than half of the players were new to the program.
That could be significant toward Illinois’ goal of taking that next step as a program with the 2026-27 season now about four months away.
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And there’s also one major area the Illini expect the continuity of a roster that knows each other well and has played in some big-game situations — particularly during March — will show up with Illinois trying to avoid the same mistakes that cost the team in some close games last season.
“We can be connected but not have to vocalize it so much,” Guyton said. “I feel like sometimes we can read each other’s minds. It gets to a point that we get there. So, I think the more we work on it this summer, the better we’ll be in the season. We’ll be more comfortable in pressure situations because we know each other so well.”
