Illinois Basketball: 4 keys for the Illini to beat Nebraska

2. The bench must be involved

Illinois is at their best when everyone is contributing. We can’t afford to have one or two players loaded up with shots. This tends to go in the favor of a loss.

The bench is what really needs to start contributing for the Illini. In the Michigan State game on Tuesday, only one bench player, Andre Curbelo, really contributed for the Illini. While he dropped 12 points, most of those were down the stretch when the game was already out of hand.

Illinois’ bench was even worse in the first game against Nebraska this season. They were 2-of-8 from the field for five points. That is a bad outing, so it doesn’t surprise me that the Cornhuskers took us to overtime.

What do we need to see, though? I think Giorgi Bezhanishvili needs to wake up a little bit. In the game on Sunday and the Nebraska game a couple of weeks ago, Giorgi was 0-of-3 from the field for zero points. That needs to change. We can’t have the backup to Kofi Cockburn contributing zero points.

If we can get the Andre Curbelo spark against Nebraska as we saw in the second half of the Michigan State game, that would be optimal. For what seemed like a six or seven-minute stretch, Curbelo was phenomenal for this program. Let’s get that on Thursday night.

I am not asking for much, but I would like to see the bench hit the 20-point mark. I think that is a feasible goal.