Illinois Basketball: 5 takeaways from the Illini win over Austin Peay

4. Illinois big man situation is stressful

If you just look at the box score from the game Wednesday night, you would see Michael Finke with 17 points and 8 rebounds on 7-of-12 shooting from the field. These are actually really good numbers. But, what the stat line doesn’t show is defense.

I like Finke. I think he could be a really good player on a team that doesn’t need him to be the main big man. He has the ability to score with his size from anywhere on the basketball court and he can pull a rebound or two down as well. He has talent on the offensive end of the court. Heck, he had four offensive rebounds against Austin Peay and that is pretty good.

On the defensive end of the court is where many people jump off the Finke bandwagon. I thought the offseason training program would have helped more with Finke’s defense. I do think it has improved from last season but he is still a liability at times.

Finke is a little slow on his feet around the hoop. He tends to be late on help defense at times as well. I really like how he puts all his effort into things, though. Finke takes charges with the best of them. But, he still struggles underneath the hoop. Hopefully, he can continue improving his defense because we need him for the next few years.