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NCAA Final Four 2026: Illinois' Andrej Stojakovic showing his dad how to win two points at a time originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
INDIANAPOLIS – This is where Andrej Stojakovic wanted to be. This city? This building? Sure, if that’s where they were staging the Final Four, then yes he wanted to be in Indy at Lucas Oil Stadium on the first weekend of April. To get here, he not only worked like heck to make himself into an elite basketball player, he left his home state and two of the nation’s beautiful, revered academic institutions.
In his third season as a college player, Stojakovic wanted to be part of the NCAA Tournament. Though he loved Stanford and met people he’ll always value, the head coach was fired after his freshman season. California gave him a chance to start and a chance to score, to build his confidence as a collegian, but the distance to the NCAAs seemed as vast as the mileage between Berkeley and the majority of the ACC.
Illinois appeared to be building something.
Stojakovic took his shot through the transfer portal, and look where he is.
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“I wanted to come here to make it to March, to play in these big games,” Stojakovic told The Sporting News. “What they needed from me and the rest of the transfers was to help them get further. And I think both parties got what they wanted.”
It has been a challenging season on several fronts for Stojakovic. He missed three games with ankle issues and has been impaired in others. He is averaging 26 minutes a game, certainly a full-time player but a smidge less than what might have been possible. He’s hitting 24.4 percent on 3-pointers, not reflective of his own history and certainly not the family name.
For all of those challenges, Stojakovic could be regarded as the second-most important component of the Illini run to their first Final Four in 21 years. There is no doubting the value of freshman point guard Keaton Wagler, but the past three NCAA Tournament games, Stojakovic has averaged 17 points, 65.5 percent shooting from the field and 80 percent from the foul line. And he put up those numbers while playing exceptional defense against such opponents as Emanuel Sharp and Milos Uzan of Houston and Bennett Stirtz and Tavion Banks of Iowa.
Stojakovic is 6-7, 190, and thus fits into Underwood's emphasis on "positional size" for a wing player. And that size joins with his understanding of the game to enhance his effectiveness at both ends of the floor.
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“Andrej’s a great punch for us,” Illinois associate head coach Orlando Antigua told the Sporting News. “Where he’s been phenomenal for us is being able to get downhill, get to the free throw line and becoming a more rounded player defensively. He’s been phenomenal defensively.”
Andrej is the son of Peja Stojakovic, who played in the NBA from 1998 until 2011, appeared in three NBA All-Star Games and won a championship with the Dallas Mavericks in his final season. The Stojakovic name is almost synonymous with the 3-point shot. Peja shot .401 from long range for his career, a top-50 all-time percentage, and led the league with 240 threes in 2003-04.
Thus it feels somewhat incongruous for Andrej to be such a successful college player while struggling even to meet the standard he’s established in this department his first two seasons. He hit a combined 75 threes in his first two seasons at a .322 percentage, not elite but well above what he’s done this season.
“I think he's as healthy as he's been,” Illini coach Brad Underwood told SN. “I also think he's one of the great listeners, and I mean that in a positive way. We missed seven weeks with him. The first day of school he hurts his knee, misses seven weeks and misses all those times that I really wanted to coach him hard and demand him in practice and get him right and get his mentality right.
“But the one thing he's done is he's accepted defending. He's accepted rebounding. We all know his offense can come and that he's a very capable guy there.
“But now he has just adjusted. I couldn't have asked for anything more coming off the bench. He's done that in a way that has helped us grow and play our best basketball.”
Illinois would love for him to resume producing at (or above) that established level, but the Illini already have an abundance of exceptional shooters. They’re top-15 in 3-point usage, and five of their eight regulars have made at least 45 threes. The ability to put Andrej onto the lineup with so many deep threats has created space for him to do what he does better than most anyone in the college game: attacking the rim.
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“My teammates trust me to take any shot. They see how much work we put in as a team,” Stojakovic told SN. “No matter what kind of shot it is, they have faith in me making it. A lot of the time, it’s an advantage for me to get in the paint, and I take advantage of it.
“With how much I work on reading people’s feet and reading people’s body language on defense, I’m more so worried about the help defense. It’s something I’ve learned to get better at this year, especially when it comes to making the right decision and the right play.”
Andrej was born in Greece but attended high school at Jesuit in Carmichael, Calif., where he was a 5-star prospect ranked No. 25 in the nation. His father never pushed him into the sport, but Andrej said having so much free time toward the end of his high school freshman year, after the COVID-19 pandemic shut down in-person learning at his school, he turned all that into an opportunity to work on basketball at his backyard goal. That reignited his love for the sport.
And, of course, it helped to have his father to coach him.
“We only talk about basketball itself, not really the environment and experience I’m taking in. He’s experienced different things than I have,” Andrej said.
“When my dad retired and we moved back to Europe, no one really expected anything from me. I wasn’t even playing basketball. When we got back to Sacramento, it was a fresh page, something new for me to try to prove. Obviously, the few players in the country that are in my position – players in college, players in the NBA that deal with their fathers being ex-players – it’s always going to come with it. The good, the bad, and I’ve just got to be prepared to handle it.”
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