Illini wing Ty Rodgers injury update December 2025

Five months ago, Ty Rodgers underwent surgery to repair a significant patellar injury in his knee. After redshirting the 2024-2025 season, it has marked close to two years since Rodgers has seen the floor for official game action. Illini coach Brad Underwood offered an update on the Illini wing heading into their second Big Ten game of the season.

Underwood stated, “He’s getting closer to being able to gain enough strength in the leg. He had some atrophy and some other things that were just repercussions of the surgery. So they want to get it back to a certain level of strength in terms of the right, left, so it’s pretty close. Then he started doing some basketball-related stuff. He’s doing some light jogging. He’s got a basketball in his hands shooting and doing some of those things. But just the explosive stuff he hasn’t done yet, but he’s getting much closer to that. We feel really, really positive about where that’s at and where his progress is at to this point.”

What this means?

It sounds like Rodgers is making progress as expected however, I would be very weary of him returning to the floor this season. Theoretically, Rodgers provides a lot of attributes that could help this current team. He provides athleticism, toughness, and defensive versatility that would certainly elevate this current team. However, asking a player coming off a major knee injury with minimal practice time who also has not played in two years is a huge ask. In addition to the physical strain this may put on Ty Rodgers, this is a huge mental task to contribute to a team vying for a Big Ten title.

During the 2022-2023 season, Luke Goode attempted to return in the latter part of the season after a significant foot injury in the offseason. Goode made some shots, but it proved difficult to come back so suddenly. Rodgers’ game is also built on physicality, athleticism, and basketball feel. All of these take significant amounts of time to return.

Ty Rodgers is a warrior, but playing this season just does not seem likely at this point.

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