Illinois Basketball: 4 observations from the Illini victory over Ohio State

Illinois basketball, once again, proved they are the best team in the Big Ten with a conference championship.

The Illini went toe-to-toe with Ohio State on Sunday, and regulation wasn’t enough to determine the winner. The game went into overtime with Illinois coming out ahead, 91-88.

Here are four observations from the Illini victory over Ohio State.

1. We took care of the ball

In the keys to beating Ohio State that I wrote on Sunday morning, I wanted Illinois to continue taking care of the ball. This was going to be one of the ways we could take down the Buckeyes.

I wasn’t expecting the Illini to win the turnover battle, as that doesn’t happen too often. But I wanted to see Illinois be in the same ballpark as Ohio State in turnovers.  If we were going to lose the turnover battle, let’s keep it to a small margin.

Illinois managed to do that on Sunday. Ohio State had an impressive eight turnovers, but Illinois kept up with the Buckeyes and only had 10 turnovers for the game. This was well under the 13.5 turnovers per game the Illini were averaging this season.

The two main culprits for the Illini were the two main ball handlers. Ayo Dosunmu had five turnovers and Andre Curbelo had three turnovers. This is what is supposed to happen. These two are the quarterbacks of the Illinois basketball program.

But the Illini turnovers weren’t coming in droves, and the Illinois defense was able to get back in time to stop the ball. These are two huge reasons why the 10 turnovers didn’t kill the Illini.