Illinois

What to know on April 22: This week in Illinois ag

Published

2 years ago

April 22, 2024

What to know on April 22: This week in Illinois ag

Last week saw heavy rains across parts of the state, just as many central and southern Illinois farmers had dropped the hammer and planted fast and furious. Here’s a quick look at what to know for the week ahead.

Who got rain

For Illinois farmers who’ve had the planter hooked up and sitting in the machine shed with the door open, the week of April 15 was the week they took off. Planters ran across much of central and southern Illinois. Southern Illinois is far ahead of the curve at this point, and agronomist Kelly Robertson reports corn in Jackson County that’s not only emerged but also has two and three leaves.

Illinois State Climatologist Trent Ford says soil temperatures across Illinois regularly hit the 60s and even low 70s during a week that felt like summer. Parts of the state saw a few days over 80 degrees F before temperatures dropped again later in the week. Ford says February, March and April have all been 2 to 5 degrees warmer than normal.

Rain was a good thing, too.

“Most of the state picked up at least a half-inch of rain last week, and some parts of southern Illinois caught nearly 2 inches,” Ford says. Only far southern Illinois remains drier than normal, while most of northern Illinois has been 1 to 4 inches wetter than normal.

Water tables have rebounded in a big way since the start of the year, and soils are wet to saturated in most places north of Interstate 74.

The tough part? That rain came with severe storms, producing wind and hail. Nearly 60 mile per hour wind gusts took the metal roof off a large building in Wayne County, Ill., and damaged trees across much of southern Illinois. Tornado activity on the evening of April 18 created damage in Latham, Ill., located in Logan County.

This week, Ford says temperatures will be closer to “normal,” with highs in the 60s and lows in the 40s. In the last week of April, look for above-normal temperatures — and an active storm track. May forecasts indicate better chances of above-normal temperatures and mixed signals on precipitation.

Government’s message to foreign landowners

The Illinois Farm Service Agency office issued a statement last week reminding foreign farmland investors to check in with the government. Turns out, they are to report land holding and transactions to USDA, per the Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act passed in 1978. Foreign investors are supposed to file AFIDA Report Form FSA-153 with the FSA county office in the county where the land is located within 90 days of the transaction.

Scott Halpin, head of Illinois FSA and a farmer from Gardner, Ill., adds that failure to file a report or filing something that’s late or inaccurate could result in a fine of “up to 25% of the fair market value of the agricultural land.”

This applies on all land holdings of 10 acres or more for agricultural use or timber production, and any leases for 10 years or more. Foreign investors are also supposed to report when a land use change occurs, like going from agricultural to nonagricultural.

Where does the information go? Straight into a report to Congress, which happens annually. You can check out all past reports online.

Good news for gas buyers, corn farmers

On April 18, U.S. EPA announced a temporary waiver for summertime E15 sales to increase fuel supplies, which is supposed to offset supply issues caused by the war in Ukraine and the conflict in the Middle East. A provision in the Clean Air Act allows the administration to temporarily waive certain fuel requirements to address shortages.

E15 sales are normally banned in summer months due to air pollution concerns. This waiver was granted at the request of Midwestern states and applies to Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, South Dakota and Wisconsin. That means fuel blends containing 15% ethanol and 85% gasoline will be available throughout the summer in those states.

Illinois farmers deliver more than 657 million bushels of corn to 13 ethanol plants in the state, which produce 1.84 billion gallons of ethanol.

The catch? It doesn’t take effect until April 2025. That means corn farmers won’t feel the effects of this win for a full year or more. Dave Rylander, IL Corn president and Victoria, Ill., farmer, is quick to point out this is a temporary solution.

“There is a permanent fix for this problem sitting in Congress right now called the Next Generation Fuels Act. The bill permanently fixes this E15 access issue, while also cleaning up our transportation sector by allowing the use of homegrown, renewable fuels,” Rylander explains. “The Next Generation Fuels Act will protect consumer choice to buy the cars you want to buy and have access to the fuels you need, without compromising our country’s greenhouse gas emissions goals.”

Consider running for office

No, not that office. Commodity board offices. The Illinois Soybean Association receives more than $16 million in checkoff funding, and its board is slated with spending that money responsibly. On the corn side, IL Corn collects more than $14 million in checkoff dollars, and its board does the same.

ISA has six seats up for election in 2024, and petitions have to be filed by May 14.

District 2: Cook, DuPage, Kane, Kankakee, Lake, McHenry, Will
District 10: Christian, DeWitt, Macon, Moultrie, Shelby
District 11: Champaign, Coles, Douglas, Edgar, Piatt
District 14: Clark, Crawford, Cumberland, Effingham, Jasper
District 16: Clay, Edwards, Lawrence, Richland, Wabash, Wayne, White
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District 17: Jackson, Jefferson, Perry, Randolph, Washington

Board terms are three years, and you can serve three terms. File a petition with the Illinois Department of Agriculture, which includes signatures from at least 250 farmers in the district. Email Dustin Scott at ISA for a petition or call 309-846-3673.

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Illinois

The Final Four is set with UConn stunning Duke to join Illinois, Arizona and Michigan

Published

11 hours ago

March 29, 2026

Press Room

The Final Four is set with UConn stunning Duke to join Illinois, Arizona and Michigan

UConn guard Braylon Mullins, right, celebrates his game winning basket with guard Malachi Smith (0) during the second half in the Elite Eight of the NCAA college basketball tournament against Duke, Sunday, March 29, 2026, in Washington.

Stephanie Scarbrough/AP

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Stephanie Scarbrough/AP

All that talent at Arizona and Michigan. All that momentum and good vibes at UConn. And somebody has to be play the part of the unheralded “little guy.” At the Final Four next weekend, that role belongs, improbably, to Illinois.

In a sign of the times, the Illinii — a Big Ten team with more wins in the conference over the last seven seasons than any other program — will pass for something resembling Cinderella when college basketball’s biggest party kicks off in Indianapolis on Saturday.

The first challenge for coach Brad Underwood’s team will be stopping a hard-charging UConn juggernaut that came from 19 points down and got a game-winner from the logo with 0.4 seconds left from an Indy native — Braylon Mullins — to make its third Final Four in the last four years.

The last two times the Huskies reached this point, they won the championship.

“It’s a UConn culture, a UConn heart,” coach Dan Hurley said. “We believe we’re supposed to win this time of year.”

All these teams do.

Arizona, led by Brayden Burries, and Michigan, with Yaxel Lendeborg, have up to nine NBA prospects between them.

The Wildcats opened as slight favorites — at plus-165 to win the championship, according to BetMGM Sportsbook. That was a shade ahead of the Wolverines, who are plus-180 after their 95-62 romp over Tennessee on Sunday.

But, in one of a few strange twists on the odds chart, the Wildcats are 1 1/2-point underdogs to Michigan in Saturday night’s second semifinal.

Illinois is a 2 1/2-point favorite over UConn and, in reality, it’s the Huskies, at plus-550, who are the biggest long shot in Indy.

Even so, the fact that Illinois — the flagship university in the nation’s sixth most populous state and a school with an enrollment of nearly 60,000 — feels most like this year’s out-of-nowhere underdog speaks more about the current state of college hoops than the Illini themselves.

They are a No. 3 seed — the highest number at the Final Four in two years. (UConn is a 2. Last season, all four No. 1s made it.)

This year’s meeting of 1 vs. 1 — Michigan vs. Arizona — is a heavyweight matchup of power teams from power conferences meeting with everything at stake.

It’s a far cry from a mere three years ago, when mid-majors Florida Atlantic (coached by Dusty May, who now leads the Wolverines) and San Diego State crashed college basketball’s biggest party.

Since then, NIL and the transfer portal have redefined the contours of player movement, another spasm of realignment has made the big conferences bigger (Arizona, now in the Big 12, was in the Pac-12 in 2023), and the high-achieving underdogs that used to make March Madness what it is have gone into a slump.

Double-digit seeds won a total of five games in this tournament (not counting the play-in round). Two years ago, they won 11 and sent one team (N.C. State) to the Final Four.

Not surprisingly, Underwood — the coach who landed on the Illinois radar a decade ago by coaching double-digit seed Stephen F. Austin to a pair of upset wins in the tournament — views his program’s trip to the Final Four more as destiny than a once-in-a-lifetime story.

It is, however, the first trip for Illinois since 2005, when it lost to North Carolina in the title game.

Illinois coach Brad Underwood celebrates after Illinois beat Iowa in an Elite Eight game in the NCAA college basketball tournament Saturday, March 28, 2026, in Houston.

Ashley Landis/AP

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“I don’t want to sound arrogant,” said Underwood, whose teams have won 96 Big Ten games since 2019-20, two more than Purdue. “I’ve never doubted us getting to a Final Four would happen. I have thought we have had other teams capable. But I also know how doggone hard it is to do it.”

The Big Ten knows all about this. Both Illinois and Michigan have a chance to deliver a title for the conference for the first time since Michigan State won it all in 2000.

Illinois vs. UConn

The Illini, led by the so-called “Balkan Bloc” — a cohort of players with roots in Eastern Europe — have a potential NBA lottery pick of their own in guard Keaton Wagler.

Even so, the best-known name on the Illini roster might be Andrej Stojakovic, whose father, Peja, was a three-time NBA All-Star. Illinois is the third school in three years for the younger Stojakovic, who spent one season at Stanford and another at Cal before joining Underwood’s crew.

The task for Illinois: Figuring out who to key on across a roster that has five players who average double figures, led by Tarris Reed Jr.

Michigan vs. Arizona

Michigan’s Yaxel Lendeborg (23) celebrates after defeating Tennessee in the Elite Eight of the NCAA college basketball tournament, Sunday, March 29, 2026, in Chicago.

Erin Hooley/AP

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The Wildcats-Wolverines game is a high-powered matchup of programs that have shown there’s more than one way to amass talent in the era of the unlimited transfer portal and big-money name, image and likeness deals.

Four of the five starters for Tommy Lloyd’s Wildcats began their careers in Tucson; the fifth, Big 12 player of the year Jaden Bradley, moved over from Alabama and has been with the Wildcats for three years.

This illustration shows twin sisters Marija and Marta Galic in their basketball uniforms, with their backs to the viewer. They are linking arms.

Meanwhile, the top four players in minutes played at Michigan — Lendeborg, Morez Johnson Jr., Aday Mara and Elliot Cadeau — all arrived from the transfer portal.

In a twist that makes perfect sense these days, both coaches parlayed roots in the mid-majors to a spot on the sport’s biggest stage. Lloyd spent decades as a top assistant for Mark Few at Gonzaga before heading to Arizona to rebuild the program after the ouster of Sean Miller in 2021.

May led FAU to the Final Four before heading to the Michigan program that had thrived, then collapsed, under former Fab Five star Juwan Howard.

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Illinois

Decorated Illinois guard Josh Gesky met with Saints ahead of draft

Published

24 hours ago

March 29, 2026

Press Room

Decorated Illinois guard Josh Gesky met with Saints ahead of draft

Once again, the NFL pre-draft circuit is in full effect, as teams spread out their staff all over the country to try and ensure they view as many pro days as physically possible. With some of the most substantial schools being next up on the schedule, it is going to draw national attention from the media, especially with results from the top prospects and potentially some passing drills from the quarterbacks.

Among the plentiful news coming out of these events is some intriguing meetings from the New Orleans Saints, with one of the most recent being Illinois guard Josh Gesky, who they met with at the school.

Gesky had an extremely impressive 2025 season when it comes to the metrics, allowing only 1 sack and 12 pressures, while only having 1 penalty tied to his name. While his run blocking left a bit to be desired, he has shown promise there in previous years, and it is something he has been solid at in various years.

At 6-foot-5 and 335 pounds, he has great size and has quite a few distinctions during his time at Illinois. He was listed as a Big Ten Distinguished Scholar in 2023, an Academic All-Big Ten from 2022 to 2025, and was an All-Big Ten Honorable Mention from 2023 to 2025. These types of things certainly factor into potential draft selections, and with the Saints needing another guard, Gesky could be an option for them in 2026.

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Illinois

How to buy Illinois Final Four gear, hats, shirts, hoodies, more

Published

1 day ago

March 28, 2026

Press Room

How to buy Illinois Final Four gear, hats, shirts, hoodies, more

No. 3 Illinois knocked off No. 9 Iowa on Saturday night in Houston, now they’re advancing to the Final Four in the men’s NCAA Tournament.

The Fighting Illini pulled away late and ended their the Hawkeye’s Cinderella run in the Elite Eight with a 71-59 victory.

SHOP: Illinois Final Four tickets

Illinois fans know this is special, it’s the team’s first Final Four appearance since 2005, so now it’s time to celebrate.

Get the gear the players wore on the court, including Illinois Final Four hats, Illinois Final Four shirts, and more.

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Illinois Final Four hat

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Illinois Final Four game location

Illinois will play its Final Four game at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis. Get your Illinois Final Four NCAA Tournament tickets now.

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Illinois Final Four appearances

The last time the Illinois Fighting Illini men’s basketball team made the Final Four was in 2005. They also made it in 1989, 1952, 1951 and 1949.

When is the Final Four?

The 2026 NCAA Tournament concludes with the Final Four on Saturday, April 4 and the National Championship game on Monday, April 6. Saturday’s games are scheduled for 6 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. ET respectively, while the National Championship game is set to tip at 8:30 p.m. ET on Monday, April 6.