David Mirkovic’s foot surgery on Tuesday jolted the college basketball world, but the first real timeline that surfaced offered Illinois something it can work with.
The school has not announced when Mirkovic will be back. Still, Jeff Goodman of The Field of 68 said Tuesday night that the expectation from his sources is a 6-8 week absence.
“According to my sources, he’ll be out 6-8 weeks,” Goodman said. Again, the school has not reported a timeline. But Goodman is a tenured voice in college basketball and a historically reliable source.
If that window holds, Illinois would be looking at a return in late September at the conservative end of the range. That would leave Mirkovic more than a month to get his legs under him, settle back in with his teammates and work himself back into game shape.
That doesn’t mean the lost time is nothing. Missing two months of offseason reps matters, especially for a player who, by all accounts, was in the middle of a spectacular offseason. Any interruption slows the momentum.
Even so, a late-September return would qualify as the best possible outcome for both Mirkovic and the Illini.
There’s also a practical basketball side to this. While Mirkovic is sidelined, Tomislav Ivisic and Zvonimir Ivisic should get more chances to play together in practice, and that could end up helping Illinois once the season begins.
Without Ben Humrichous, most Illinois lineups are expected to feature some combination of the Ivisic twins and Mirkovic, though Andrej Stojakovic could slide to the four at times. Since Mirkovic can only be on the floor for so long, Tomislav and Zvonimir will likely share the court often.
That matters because both big men have issues in ball-screen action. Big Z tends to drift toward the perimeter on offense, and Tomislav did the same at times in the 2025-26 season. Practicing together should force either the players or the coaching staff to find answers on defense, while also pushing Tomislav to stay anchored in the paint and be more demanding offensively.
If the two can figure out how to maximize their strengths while sharing the floor, Illinois could wind up with a frontcourt that protects the rim, controls the glass and spaces the floor in a way that few teams can match. And that would be the setup when Mirkovic, one of the nation’s top players, is off the court.
For Illinois, though, the main point is simple: if Mirkovic is truly back to 100 percent by late September, or even mid-October, he should be ready to roll. And with a healthy Mirkovic, the Illini enter 2026-27 as the Big Ten favorite.
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