Illinois Basketball: Maryland loss drops Illini in latest AP Top 25 poll
Despite the Illinois basketball team dropping their game on Sunday night to Maryland, the program didn’t fall too much in the latest AP Top 25 poll.
Coming into the week, the Illini held the No. 12 spot after a three-game winning streak that put the program at 8-3 overall. After splitting their two games this past week, Illinois finds themselves dropping just two spots to No. 14 in the nation.
The resilience Illinois showed in the Northwestern game on Thursday was impressive. Down 15 points at halftime, the Illini managed to storm back and win the game with a dominant second half. Illinois pulled away from the Wildcats with a 53-13 run in the final 20 minutes to win the game, 81-56.
A letdown game was to follow, though.
On Sunday, the Orange and Blue followed that great comeback victory with a massively disappointing loss to Maryland at the State Farm Center.
Illinois was in the game the entire way but couldn’t manage to pull away from the Terrapins. We would get the lead by a couple of points but didn’t extend those leads. This enabled Maryland to get hot and start hitting shots. The Terrapins beat the Illini in the second half by five points, which led to them beating Illinois, 66-63.
Where does Illinois go from here?
Honestly, that was not as big of a drop as I was expecting. After the loss to Maryland, I was thinking the Illini were going to be somewhere around No. 20.
There is plenty of games to help boost the Orange and Blue back up and into the top 10. Six out of the final 13 games for Illinois are against ranked programs. That doesn’t even include two games against a tough Ohio State team.
dark. Next. 4 observations from the Illini loss to Maryland
So, while the loss on Sunday hurt, we didn’t drop too much in the ranks. I believe we are on track to still secure a top-four seed in the NCAA tournament as well. The season is still young.