Illinois has seen its football program progress over the years since Lovie Smith has taken over. In 2016, Smith led Illinois to a 3-9 record.

The followinng year the team was 2-10. But in 2018, Illinois got to 4-8, doubling its wins. Then came 2019, where Smith’s Fighting Illini went 6-6 in the regular season and made a bowl game for the first time since 2014.

RELATED: Florida DL flips from Maryland to Illinois

Smith has Illinois on the rise, and the four-game winning streak in the middle of this season was proof of that. So, what’s next? What will happen in the 2020s?

Smith believes Illinois is ready to beat every other team in the Big Ten West division now:

“We finished off one decade with the program trending in the right direction,” Smith said. “How do we see the next decade? There’s a different day here with Illinois football (…) we’ve caught them.

“Now, it’s about us competing. We’re not running from what our record was the last decade. Illinois had been down a long period of time. But as far as catching teams in our division that have traditionally been very good, we feel like we’re there now. We plan on beating everyone and eventually being the champion of this league.”

Is Illinois really ready to take that next step? We’ll have to see it on a more consistent basis, but again, that four game stretch of beating teams like Wisconsin and both Michigan State and Purdue on the road — as well as Rutgers — proved that the Fighting Illini can at least hang with the other teams in the B1G.

Now, again, it’s about consistency. Will Illinois break through and make a B1G Championship Game one of these years?

That’s certainly the goal.