It has only been two days since the Illinois basketball team knocked off Hawaii, but they are back at it again tonight.
The Illini take on The Citadel Bulldogs on Wednesday night. The game tips-off at 8:00 PM CT. This is a home game, so the Orange and Blue should come away with a victory without having to stress about the score. But there is more to this game than just the numbers in each team’s column. There is more I will be watching for tonight.
I am going to see if the Orange and Blue can keep up the good, fix the bad and at least improve on the ugly.
Good
There have obviously been a few good areas for the Illini this season. But the one that stands out to me the most is Kofi Cockburn.
Cockburn was highly touted coming into the program. He had all the accolades from high school and was supposed to be a talented player. But I wasn’t expecting him to be this good this soon.
I want to see if Cockburn can keep up the numbers he has posted so far this season. He is averaging 14.3 points, 11.5 rebounds and 1.5 blocks per game. This kid has been sensational, and Illinois is going to need him night in and night out.
Bad
I think it is fair to say the Illini schedule hasn’t been extremely tough. Yes, Arizona was a hard matchup, but the other three games were – or should have been – fairly easy. But Illinois doesn’t like to make things easy. They continue to give the ball up too many times, which enables their opponents to keep games close.
So far this season, the Illini are averaging 19.5 turnovers per game, which ranks No. 343 out of 353 teams in the nation. That is horrific. Their 19.5 TPG is an increase from 13.2 TPG from last season. You can’t expect to win when you give up the ball almost 20 times per game.
I am going to be looking for more concise, crisp, play from the Illini against The Citadel. The main culprit when it comes to turnovers is Ayo Dosunmu who leads the team with four turnovers per game. Let’s tighten that up. If that happens, we win by 20 or more points tonight.
Ugly
Ugly is something we can’t necessarily fix, but we can try to make it better throughout the season. The ugly I will be keeping an eye out for tonight is the bench play.
Illinois’ bench has been bad. Alan Griffin has been the best player so far off the bench. Kipper Nichols did break out of his funk against Hawaii putting up 9 points and 2 rebounds in the victory. Overall, we aren’t getting the production we need from the bench. We are lucky to get 10 total points from these players.
What I want to see tonight is more action from players like Griffin and Nichols. I really like what we saw against Hawaii. Those two received the most minutes and the other struggling bench players took a backseat. That is what should happen.
If Nichols can continue his solid play and Griffin can keep hitting three-point shots, then I think the Illini come away with a big victory.