UIC basketball is having its moment — and for a program that spent a decade wandering the wilderness, the timing feels like destiny. The Flames' 2025-26 season was the best in recent memory: 19-16 overall, 12-8 in the Missouri Valley Conference, a run to the MVC Tournament championship game for the first time since joining the league, and an at-large bid to the NIT — the program's first NIT appearance since 2003. For a school that plays its ball on Chicago's West Side, it was a season that announced the Flames are done being an afterthought.
The architect is Rob Ehsan, hired on April 1, 2024, and the fit has been perfect from day one. Ehsan came with a head-coaching résumé (four seasons at UAB, 76-57, with back-to-back 20-win campaigns) and a reputation as an elite recruiter from stops at Stanford, Maryland and Virginia Tech. What he found at UIC was a program stuck in neutral after the Luke Yaklich era — and what he built was immediate. Year one: 17-14 (10-10 MVC), the Flames' best record since 2017-18. Year two: the breakthrough. Ehsan's offensive-minded, up-tempo style was the jolt the program needed, and his players responded — fourth-year forward Filip Skobalj, 'Mr. UIC' himself, set career highs in points, threes and free throws in a farewell season that embodied the new culture.
The 2026-27 season is Ehsan's third year and the great test of whether the rise is sustainable. The roster has turned over hard: 16 players, 10 newcomers — five transfers, five freshmen — and just six returners. That's the modern mid-major bargain, and Ehsan attacked it with purpose. Senior guard Ahmad Henderson II is back after averaging 12 points a game, the steady hand in the backcourt. Senior guard/forward Mekhi Lowery returns as a starter. Sophomore Andy Johnson — an All-MVC Freshman Team pick — steps into a bigger role with real star potential, and sophomore guard Rashund Washington Jr. plus redshirt forward Jayce Nathaniel are ready for more.
The headline newcomer is Gabe Cupps, and his résumé turns heads in the Valley: the 6-foot-2 guard arrives with high-major experience from Indiana and Ohio State, giving UIC another battle-tested ball-handler and defender. In a league where guard play wins championships, the Flames' backcourt — Henderson, Cupps, Washington — might be the deepest Ehsan has had. The challenge is chemistry: ten new faces learning each other's games in real time, with a nonconference slate that won't wait.
The program's history gives this rise its weight. UIC's golden age came under Jimmy Collins (1996-2010): three NCAA tournament appearances in 1998, 2002 and 2004, Horizon League relevance, and a genuine footprint in Chicago's crowded sports landscape. The 2004 team — a 13-seed — gave Kansas everything it could handle. But the decade after Collins was a slow fade: coaching changes, losing seasons, and the 2022 move from the Horizon League to the Missouri Valley, a step up in competition that exposed how far the program had fallen.
Ehsan's rebuild is really about reclaiming the school's identity as Chicago's college team. The Credit Union 1 Arena — the former UIC Pavilion, reborn with a new court in 2022 — sits minutes from downtown, and the vision is a building that rocks the way it did in the Collins years. The 2025-26 NIT bid mattered beyond the trophy case: it put the Flames on national TV in March, it gave recruits a reason to pick up the phone, and it told the Valley that UIC is a problem now.
The Missouri Valley doesn't hand out anything. Drake, Bradley, Illinois State, Northern Iowa — the league's establishment has decades of institutional memory, and the 2026 MVC title game showed the Flames how thin the margin is at the top. But UIC's trajectory is the steepest in the conference: from 17-14 to 19-16 to a team that expects to contend, in 24 months. The Valley has a way of rewarding programs that build the right way, and Ehsan's recruiting — high schoolers and transfers alike — is aimed at exactly that.
What defines UIC right now is momentum meeting opportunity. The 2026 NIT run ended in the first round, but the season was the statement: tied for third in the Valley, a championship-game Sunday, and a roster core that believes. In a city with two Big Ten programs an hour away and a pro team for every night of the week, the Flames are carving out their own lane — fast, fearless, and finally winning.
The 2026-27 Flames won't sneak up on anyone, and that's the point. Ehsan has said he believes the program is positioned for sustained growth, and the pieces are there: veteran guards, a potential breakout sophomore, high-major transfers, and a coach who's won at every stop. In Chicago, the Flames are done rebuilding. The next step is the one that matters — a Valley title, and a return to the NCAA tournament for the first time since 2004.