Illinois Basketball: Can the Illini finish the season strong?

This entire season has been a mixed bag for the Illinois basketball team.

Illinois started off extremely slow going 5-14 through their first 19 games. They then rattled off five wins in a six-game stretch. This got their record back to 10-15 on the season. But, the Illini have now dropped two games in a row and there are some bad feelings among some of the Illini fanbase.

Derek Piper of 247Sports posted an interview with Trent Frazier yesterday. This interview mainly talked about the Purdue game that is going to be played on Wednesday, but there was also a section of this interview where Frazier talked about the team.

In the interview, Frazier explains what practice has been like lately.

"“We’ve been trying to find our team spirit again,” said Frazier, “we haven’t had a lot of energy at practice lately…”"

Heading into the game on Wednesday against No. 14 Purdue, this scares me a little bit. The Boilermakers have a good program and the fact that there hasn’t been the energy and spirit within the team is a little disheartening. It also could mean bad things for the game on Wednesday as well.  Frazier continued on in the interview to talk about the changes recently.

"“When we won four in a row, everybody came to practice every day ready to go. Everyone had a lot of team energy, and we were getting after it. That is our main focus right now. It is going to be tough on the road against Purdue. We have to stick together and execute more,” said Frazier."

I might be reading a little bit too much into this, but this statement also makes me a little uneasy. What I took out of the interview is that some players are, potentially, not putting in the effort toward the end of the season. That, maybe, since the team is out of postseason contention during the regular season, there is no point to give it full effort the final few games.

If this is the case, that makes me really sad. I love this team and I hope I am reading too much into this. But, if some players aren’t putting in the full effort in practice then, hopefully, those players aren’t going to see the floor as much as the players who are putting in the time and effort.

The final stretch is going to tell me what this team has. Beating Purdue would be a huge win for the Illini. I think they have the talent to pull off the upset, but I am just waiting to see what we have tonight.