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Illinois Basketball: 3 adjustments Illini need to make before facing Baylor

By Rees Woodcock

Nov 25, 2020; Champaign, Illinois, USA; Illinois Fighting Illini head coach Brad Underwood is seen during the first half against the North Carolina A&T Aggies at the State Farm Center. Mandatory Credit: Patrick Gorski-USA TODAY Sports
Nov 25, 2020; Champaign, Illinois, USA; Illinois Fighting Illini head coach Brad Underwood is seen during the first half against the North Carolina A&T Aggies at the State Farm Center. Mandatory Credit: Patrick Gorski-USA TODAY Sports /
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Illinois basketball
Nov 26, 2020; Champaign, Illinois, USA; Illinois Fighting Illini guard Andre Curbelo (5) goes up for a shot during the second half against the Chicago State Cougars at the State Farm Center. Mandatory Credit: Patrick Gorski-USA TODAY Sports /

A 3-0 record looks great, but the Illinois basketball team barely squeaked out a victory over Ohio this past Friday.

While a win is a win, there are some things I believe the Illini need to work on correcting over the next few days to be prepared for the No. 2 Baylor Bears.

Here are three adjustments Illini need to make before facing Baylor.

1. Take care of the ball

If nothing else, Brad Underwood likes to coach discipline into his teams. He wants a group of players who takes care of the ball and is efficient.

That isn’t the case through three games with the 2020-21 version of the Illinois basketball team, though. This group of players isn’t taking care of the ball and it almost bit them in the butt against the Ohio Bobcats.

Illinois couldn’t manage to pull away from Ohio in the final leg of the round-robin MTE held in Champaign. The Bobcats were able to keep up with the Illini, and one of the main reasons this happened was due to the turnover differential.

Ohio finished the game with only seven turnovers while Illinois was able to lap the Bobcats in this category and finish the game with 16 turnovers. Having 16 turnovers in a game is a lot and a team should feel extremely lucky to come away with a win while giving the ball up that many times.

This isn’t anything new to Illinois this season, though. The 16 turnovers against Ohio is actually slightly under Illinois’ season average of 16.3 turnovers per game. They rank No. 297 out of 357 teams in college basketball (127 teams haven’t played a game yet).

The 16.3 turnovers per game is higher than their total of 12 turnovers per game in 2019-20. There are a couple of reasons why the number is higher. The newcomer’s inexperience is one of the reasons. Not having to take care of the ball the first two games was another.

While there are probably more reasons why the turnover number is high, I know one thing is for certain. It has to stop. Illinois can’t turn the ball over and expect to be in the games against Baylor and Duke this week.

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