After being embarrassed by Michigan State, the Illinois basketball team bounced back in the biggest way beating Purdue senseless in Champaign by playing a complete game.
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But everyone is asking, “can they keep it up?”
That question will be answered today when they play Nebraska at home at 1:30PM CT. There is no question that this is a critical game.
Because of Illinois’ marginal performance in non-conference play and slow as molasses start in B1G play, they have no room for error. In fact, they need to over perform the rest of the way.
Illinois has already shown that they can over perform in spectacular fashion. They pummeled an excellent Purdue team last Sunday, somehow dominating the best defense in the country, and shutting down a team of giants.
If there was one weak spot for the Illini to work on it was inbounding against the press. It was horrible. Purdue’s press defense was able to drive the “open” Illini player to the corner repeatedly where, inevitably, that player became trapped.
Other than that, Illinois played its most complete game of the season, executing the game plan on defense superbly, and shooting at better than 50% for the game.
But make no mistake, Nebraska presents a challenge for Illinois. In many ways they are a similar teams.
Nebraska shoots 36% for the season from behind the arc, and 50% from everywhere else. Illinois shoots 37% from the three, and 49% within the arc. Illinois shoots more 3s, but Nebraska defends against the 3 much better – as do most teams. Nebraska plays good defense in general. The Illini are improving in this category.
Illinois edges Nebraska from the line – another place where the Illini continues to improve but they need to get to the line more. In other words, this appears in many ways to be a game that will be a close, back and forth affair, between similar teams.
But I give the Illini a solid edge for three reasons.
First, the students are back. The State Farm Center will be rocking.
Second, Nebraska turns the ball over, ranking 245th in D1 compared to Illinois which ranks 4th in that category.
Finally, and most importantly, the Illini have the dynamic duo of Kendrick Nunn and Malcolm Hill, the first and third top scorers in the B1G respectively, and the third highest scoring tandem in the six major conferences. Powered by these two, I expect the Illini will get in rhythm quickly and try to bury the Cornhuskers early.
If Illinois takes care of the ball, which shouldn’t be a problem, and plays solid defense like they did against Purdue, this should be a double digit win.
A win by any measure, and Illinois keeps its dancing hopes alive. A loss and we are again scratching our heads about this team, wondering if we’ll get Jeckyl or Hyde every time they play.
Assuming Illinois wins, they have a chance to go 3-1 through the rest of January, emerging 13 and 9 as February hits. Illinois has four more games after Nebraska and will need wins against Minnesota, Ohio State, and Wisconsin in that stretch.
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Again, assuming the Illini team we saw against Purdue is the norm going forward, this is very doable. Minnesota shouldn’t be a problem and the Illini play the Buckeyes and Badgers in Champaign.
Don’t forget Illinois only lost to OSU by 2 in Columbus on January 3. Wisconsin is a mere shell of last year’s team, and I give the edge to Illinois considering the game is at home.
The only game I can’t give to Illinois out of the next four is the one against Indiana – in Bloomington – this Tuesday. But if Illinois can steal that one, it would of course be huge.
That leaves 9 games left in the season before the B1G tournament. I’ll look at some of those in more detail as we get closer, but suffice to say that three of them will be sizable challenges.
The Illini play Iowa in Champaign, which helps, but probably won’t be enough. As I write this I am watching Iowa make a mockery of the Spartans… at the Breslin Center. Illinois also plays Indiana in Champaign and Maryland on the road. Wins in either of those games would clearly be upsets.
So this is what I mean by no margin for error. Barring a huge upset or two, and assuming they enter February at 13 and 9, Illinois will need to win all the games it “should” win (which includes a few kenpom.com has them losing) to get to 19 and 12 heading into the conference tournament.
In other words, its another one of those years. Are we having fun yet?
*All stats are from kenpom.com unless otherwise indicated.