Illinois Basketball: Grades from the Illini win over Missouri

Illinois traveled to the Enterprise Center in St. Louis, Missouri to take on the Missouri Tigers in this year’s Braggin’ Rights game.

Heading into this matchup with the Tigers, the Illini had lost three straight to Missouri in this matchup. Illinois came out fired up and took care of business, blowing Missouri out 88-63 and improving to 9-3 on the season.

Here are some grades from the Illinois Basketball win over Missouri.

Offense Grade: A

The Illini offense was outstanding once again on Wednesday night led by preseason All-American, Kofi Cockburn.

Kofi scored 25 points on an efficient 9-of-15 from the field, but what was even more impressive was him going 7-of-10 from the free-throw line. He continues to knock down his free throws, and that’s huge for this team. Kofi also added 14 rebounds, three of which were offensive rebounds.

The rest of the supporting cast for the Illini were awesome as well. Alfonso Plummer stayed hot scoring 22 points on 8-of-12 shooting and going 3-of-5 on three-pointers. He is shooting 41% on the season from deep. Fifth-year senior Trent Friazer also added 15 points and hit three three-pointers, one of which was from Steph Curry’s range.

The Illini hit 12 three-pointers as a team on 25 attempts as they continue to shoot lights out from deep. This offense is firing on all cylinders right now, as they rank No. 10 in the country at just under 40% from the three-point arc.

Defense Grade: A-

This was a tough one to grade, just because it was hard to tell if the Illini defense was playing really well, or if the Missouri offense is just very bad. The Illini forced 12 turnovers and held Missouri to 36% from the field.

The Tigers’ offense just seemed to look out of sorts all night long. Illinois also dominated on the defensive glass 29-17 as Kofi was the primary rebounder.

Overall Grade: A

Man, it was great to finally see the Illini dominate Missouri. Illinois’ offense is averaging 81 points per game, which ranks No. 26 in the nation. They unleashed that scoring ability against Missouri. The ball is moving so well in the flow of the offense. The Illini had 20 assists and had four players with three or more assists.

It is also encouraging to see the freshmen continue to help this team out as well. Brandin Podziemski led the way with seven points and three rebounds in only eight minutes of action. It is now back-to-back games that Podziemski has led the freshmen in minutes.

Illinois has one more non-conference game against Florida A&M on Wednesday, December 29 at 8 p.m. CT. After that, the Illini start conference play back up in Minnesota to take on the Gophers in a tough matchup on January 2.