1943–44 Illinois Fighting Illini men's basketball team one player from the 1942-43 season, Gordon Horton, who wasn't even a starter, which meant the entire lineup was made up of rookie/unproven players. The starting lineup consisted of Walton Kirk, Howard Judson, Ray DeMoulin, Bob Morton, Don Delaney and Gordon Gillespie. !colspan=12 style="background:#DF4E38; color:white;"| Non-Conference regular season !colspan=9 style="background:#DF4E38; color:#FFFFFF;"|Big Ten regular season 1943–44 Illinois Fighting Illini men's basketball team The 1943–44 Illinois Fighting Illini men's basketball team represented the University of Illinois. March 1, 1943, changed the future of Fighting Illini men's basketball when the team was broken up due to all five starters from back-to-back Big Ten
Nigeria national basketball team deemed “father of Nigerian basketball’’. Also worthy of note is that Zabadne was later made the president of the Nigerian basketball federation. Nigeria's national basketball team joined FIBA in 1964. Recently, the team has enjoyed success, due to an increasing amount of talents from Nigeria as well as an orchestrated recruitment of American college and professional players of Nigerian descent. A team dominated by Nigerian-Americans qualified for the 2006 FIBA World Championship, marking only the second time in the country's history that they qualified to the FIBA World Cup. Eight players on the team that represented Nigeria at the 2009