Akron coach John Groce has crushed it since Illinois fired him in 2017. Will this be his Cinderella moment?

Walking to practice earlier this week at Akron, men’s basketball coach John Groce found his office administrator staring at the brand-new 2026 MAC tournament championship trophy.

“Have you ever stopped to look at them?” she asked.

Four of them right there in a glass case, won over the last five seasons — including the last three in a row — all on the watch of Groce, 54, who is nine years on the job since being fired by Illinois in 2017.

“All of a sudden I just paused,” Groce said by phone as he was preparing to travel to Tampa, Florida, where the Zips, the Midwest Region’s No. 12 seed, will take a swing at No. 5 seed Texas Tech in an NCAA Tournament first-round game on Friday (11:40 a.m., truTV). “It made me feel blessed. It was humbling. The first ever to win three, back-to-back-to-back. At some point, I’m going to reflect a little more.”

Groce made it to only one Big Dance at Illinois, whiffing four straight years before being shown the door. His Big Ten and overall winning percentages there — .411 and .559, respectively — are the lowest since Lou Henson took the reins in 1975.

At his last Illinois news conference, Groce said, “I always told the staff and taught the players that you point the finger at yourself as a leader.”

The college basketball world is pointing at him these days because of Akron’s remarkable success. Its record in MAC play over the last seven seasons is a stellar 100-28. Over the last two seasons, it’s a magnificent 34-2. The Zips have won 31 straight at home and, counting tournament games, 43 of the last 45 against MAC foes.

As Groce’s Illinois successor, Brad Underwood, continues to make the school look good for hiring him in 2017, Groce has become a rumored candidate for higher-level jobs, including at Butler and Cincinnati.

“You can’t ever say never,” he said. “That’s just not how this deal works. I’m always open-minded.”

A seeming candidate — perhaps an even hotter one — for some of the same openings is Miami (Ohio) coach Travis Steele, whose team went 18-0 in the MAC and is 32-1 after beating SMU on Wednesday in a First Four game. Akron’s only league loss was a 76-73 white-knuckler at Miami, a tough one for Groce against Steele, who is — wait for it — his half-brother.

Maybe each of them will have a March to remember. Groce won three NCAA Tournament games — and reached a Sweet 16 — at Ohio, where upsets of third-seeded Georgetown and fourth-seeded Michigan put him on the map and paved the way to Champaign. He has yet to break the seal with a tournament win at Akron, where he has a high-octane team (88.4 points per game) capable of a run.

“It would be awesome, right?” he said.

Groce’s Illinois teams often struggled to score.

“We’ve changed so much stylistically, it’s like a 180,” he said. “Faster, more free flowing, modernized.”

He also has calmed a bit on the sideline, citing “EQ,” which stands for “emotional quotient” — emotional intelligence, in other words — as the reason.

“Through experience, you learn,” he said. “It doesn’t mean we don’t have energy. I’m still excited and love coaching our guys. I want them to feel that passion and drive. But I also have learned the importance of EQ. You tend to make better decisions when you have that balance, and players feed off that, too.”

The gig at Akron, where Groce has lost only one assistant coach in nine years, is a good one. As NIL goes, he has resources well above the mean in the MAC, and player retention has been unusually high. His son Conner is a walk-on, which has been especially nice after Groce lost his father, Larry, to cancer in 2024. And his best player? That’s La Grange Park (Lyons) native Tavari Johnson, the MAC tournament MVP and a point guard scoring 20.1 points and dishing out 5.0 assists per game.

“All four years, he decided to keep coming back,” Groce said of Johnson, whose high school coach, Tom Sloan, played at Illinois. “He could have left.”

If Groce could have one do-over from his time at Illinois, what would it be?

“I tried to teach the guys to be accountable for everything,” he said. “It could be game planning, or a life decision.”

Maybe he’s better at that stuff now.

“My father used to say, ‘Experience can be a great teacher if you allow it to be,’ ” Groce said.

When Larry was dying, it was spring and practice time was limited to eight hours a week by NCAA rule. Every Friday for a month, Groce drove 300 miles to Indianapolis to spend the weekend by his dad’s side.

“That’ll always be a blessing to me that I was able to do that,” he said. “I wouldn’t do that any other way. Go spend time with them. You’ll never regret it.”

The regrets about his time at Illinois have mostly washed away.

“You know, it’s hard. It’s not easy,” he said. “I’m not going to act like it’s easy. …

“But now, I’m so grateful, man, for the experience. The people we met there were awesome. I look upon that time favorably from that perspective, and it made me better. I’m extremely thankful for all that. I do think it made me a better person, husband, father.”

And coach, it’s clear.