Illinois Basketball: 4 big statistics from the Illini win over Indiana, again

2. 21

Indiana played Illinois close for the entire game on Tuesday. In fact, the Illini were down by six points with 5:12 to go in the game.

On top of the Illini being in a hole, they also had their best player, Ayo Dosunmu, foul out late in the contest. It seemed like bad things kept flying the way of the Illini. Despite so many things happening against Illinois, they still fought back, took the game to overtime and came away with the big win.

One of the massive reasons this game was even able to get to overtime was due to the Illinois bench.

The Illini bench scored a total of 21 points against the Hoosiers.

21 points coming off the bench is an extremely impressive number. This isn’t usual for the Illini. In fact, there have only been two other times in Big Ten play this season where Illinois’ bench has scored more than 21 points.

The two times I am referring to included the 27-point win over Minnesota and the 17-point win over Penn State. In both of these games, the Illini went to their bench fairly early in the second half, which skews the numbers a little bit. Illinois didn’t actually need the bench in those two wins.

But against Indiana on Tuesday, the Illini needed every one of the 21 points from the bench. Andre Curbelo led the way for the reserves, dropping 12 points, 5 rebounds, 4 assists and 2 steals. He was magnificent with the ball.

Giorgi Bezhanishvili was also big for the Illini. He would provide relief to Kofi Cockburn and even contributed 5 points and 2 rebounds on the night. Da’Monte Williams added 4 points, 4 rebounds and 1 block to the mix too.

Illinois needs to continue getting good bench play the rest of the season. If we can get 21 points from the bench, then this team could end up winning the national title.