Illinois Basketball: 4 observations from the Illini win over Iowa

3. In my eyes, this was the Jacob Grandison game

When Illinois received two transfers in the offseason a couple of years ago, I was excited to see what they could do. While we haven’t seen Austin Hutcherson just yet, Jacob Grandison is finally starting to come into his own.

Coming from a lower-level DI program like Holy Cross College, I wasn’t sure what Grandison would bring to the table. The Big Ten is a completely different animal than that of the Patriot League. Early on in his Illinois career, Grandison struggled and didn’t see too many minutes. But, as of late, the kid is becoming a huge asset to this program.

Grandison played nearly double the number of minutes he has played in a single game this season against Iowa. He hit the 30-minute mark, and Illinois needed every second of the time he was on the court.

I was impressed with so many things Grandison did for the Illini on Friday night. He ended the Iowa game with 11 points, 10 rebounds and 2 assists. This was an impressive stat sheet, but I don’t feel like it tells the entire story.

The hustle and leadership that Grandison provides are invaluable. Those things aren’t showing up on the stat sheet, but if you watched the game, you saw a veteran player out there getting dirty to help the Illini win a very important game.

I dub this the Grandison Game because we didn’t expect the production he provided to happen. We expect the others to do what they did, but we didn’t expect Grandison to go off for a double-double and even match Kofi Cockburn in rebounds. If we can get this type of production out of Grandison every night, we are winning a national title.