98/99 Season
Non Conference
Opponents
Preseason Polls
Pregame Ranking
1998 Preseason Polls
Every preseason a handful of publications offer up their guestimations for how the college basketball season will unfold. The first, and usually worst, come out in late September, with the remaining magazines coming out by mid-October. The earlier entries are usually laced with mis-information and poor predictions with a desire to hit the stands first their only apparent goal. In the years that I've been purchasing, and pouring over them I've found The Sporting News to be the most accurate and informative year in and year out with Street and Smith running a close second. And, without fail, the first out and the worst out has been Athlon Sports. They are always the most mis-informed with little or no information on activity during the off season and, for the mid-major on down leagues, very sparce information. This years edition offers up an entire1/2 of a page on the MVC while The Sporting News has 5 full pages of MVC coverage. For the Illinois Wesleyan fan in all of us they also cover Division 3, as well as D2 and Womens, hoops. Athlon mentioned nothing of Rico Hill's departure, but The Sporting News even talked about LeRoy Watkins regaining his year of eligability.Basketball News makes its debute in pre-season guesswork this year. Unlike every other magazine they gave all conferences equal coverage regardless of relative power.
Preview Sports made a strong bid to overtake Athlon as worst this season. I suggest that Preview Sports spend more time looking for typo's next year. Continued on's that led to the wrong page and conferences that should have been continued on that weren't although more teams remained made it hard to figure when building the tables below.Also, under ISU's Newcomer paragraph they said " Riley and Murdock were going to get time last year, but Stallings wisely figured a year in the weight room and time to fix their academic situation would help more this season.He was right." Strange since both were ineligable under NCAA rules last year after D1 to D1 transfers,which they did mention earlier, and both already have excellent academic standards already.Riley is pre-med with a 3.78 GPA in Biology.
This table shows the predicted orders of finish in the MVC.The predictions were made by the MVC media and the major college basketball magazines.Under the MVC media predictions(17)denotes the number of first place votes recieved by that team.
| Team | MVC Media | Dick Vitale | Basketball News | Street & Smith | Sporting News | Athlon | Preview Sports |
| ILLINOIS STATE | 3rd(3) | 4th | 3rd | 3rd | 3rd | 2nd | 3rd |
| SW Missouri St | 2nd(9) | 1st | 2nd | 2nd | 2nd | 3rd | 2nd |
| Evansville | 6th | 5th | 5th | 6th | 6th | 6th | 6th |
| Bradley | 5th | 7th | 4th | 5th | 5th | 5th | 4th |
| Creighton | 1st(17) | 2nd | 1st | 1st | 1st | 1st | 1st |
| Southern Il | 8th | 6th | 8th | 9th | 8th | 8th | 9th |
| Wichita St. | 4th(1) | 3rd | 6th | 4th | 4th | 4th | 7th |
| No. Iowa | 9th | 9th | 9th | 8th | 10th | 9th | 8th |
| Indiana St. | 7th | 8th | 7th | 7th | 7th | 7th | 5th |
| Drake | 10th | 10th | 10th | 10th | 9th | 10th | 10th |
Preseason MVC Media All-Conference Team
Rodney Buford - Creighton
Danny Moore - SMSU
Marcus Wilson - Evansville
Kevin Ault - SMSU
Chris Thunell - SIU
Preseason Player of the Year
Rodney Buford
This table shows the rankings of the non-conference opponents of the Illinois State Redbirds according to the major college basketball annuals.Example-4/10 means the magazine predicts that team to finish 4th out of 10 teams in its conference, or conference division if one is indicated.
| Team | Conference (Division) | Dick Vitale | Basketball News | Street& Smiths | Sporting News | Athlon | Preview Sports |
| Oakland | Mid-Continent | 9/9 | N.A. | 9/9 | 9/9 | 9/9 | 9/9 |
| Wisc.Green Bay | Midwestern Collegiate | 6/8 | 3/8 | 4/8 | 3/8 | 5/8 | 5/6 % |
| Akron | Mid-American(East) | 2/7 | 2/7 | 2/7 | 2/7 | 1/6 ! | 1/7 |
| U. of Missouri - Kansas City # | Mid-Continent | 6/9 | 5/9 | 5/9 | 5/9 | 6/9 | 6/9 | S. Mississippi # | Conference USA (National) | 4/6 | 4/6 | 3/6 | 4/6 | 4/6 | 3/6 |
| Hofstra # | American East | 5/10 | 4/10 | 3/10 | 4/10 | 4/10 | 4/10 |
| Baylor # | Big 12 | 12/12 | 11/12 | 12/12 | 12/12 | 10/12 | 6/6 |
| Iona # | Metro Atlantic | 1/10 | 1/10 | 2/10 | 1/10 | 1/10 | 2/10 |
| Hawaii-Pacific # | Division 2 | N.A. | N.A. | N.A. | N.A. | N.A. | |
| VCU # | Colonial Athletic | 7/9 | 8/9 | 7/9 | 9/9 | 8/9 | 9/9 |
| Alcorn St. # | Southwest Athletic | 6/9 | 7/9 | 5/9 | 6/9 | 6/9 | 6/8 % |
| Wisconsin | Big 10 | 11/11 | 10/11 | 8/11 | 7/11 | 10/11 | 9/11 |
| Purdue | Big 10 | 2/11 | 2/11 | 3/11 | 2/11 | 2/11 | 3/11 |
| Illinois Chicago | Midwestern Collegiate | 5/8 | 2/8 | 2/8 | 2/8 | 4/8 | 6/6 % |
| E. Illinois | Ohio Valley | 8/10 | 7/10 | 7/10 | 7/10 | 7/10 | 8/10 |
! = The difference in Athlon's numbers and the other magazines was because they omitted a team from the league's prediction.
% = The difference in Preview Sports numbers and the other magazines was because they omitted a team, or teams, from the league's prediction.