Illinois Basketball: 5 observations from the Illini win over Kansas City

It wasn’t the best start in the world for the Illinois basketball team, but we managed to knock off Kansas City on Friday night.

The Illini didn’t look great early on. Shots just weren’t falling for the Orange and Blue. But things quickly changed, and Illinois went into the half up 39-23.

Illinois would keep the foot on the gas pedal in the second half as well. That 16-point lead turned into a 38-point drubbing, as the Illini would take down the Roos, 86-48.

Here are five observations from the Illinois basketball win over Kansas City.

1. Illinois was playing a pickup game early

While Illinois would end up cruising to an easy win on Friday night, the Illini looked less than stellar to start the game.

In the first 10 minutes, I was slightly worried about what I was seeing. We were just running the court and chucking up three-point shots like this was a pickup game of basketball. There was no purpose to anything Illinois was doing on the offensive end of the court.

Just in the first 10 minutes alone, Illinois was 3-of-21 from the field, which comes out to 14.3%. Out of the 21 shots that were taken, Illinois was just 1-of-13 from three-point range, which comes out to 7.7% from beyond the arc.

To say the start was slow might be an understatement. There was no cohesion to what was going on with the Illini. It seemed like every time down the court would be a one-pass-and-shoot situation. Everyone was just trying to get their own for the first 25% of the game.

This style of play resulted in Kansas City being able to keep up with the Illini. The score was tied 11-11 after 10 minutes. If it wasn’t for our defense, the Illini would have been trailing the Roos. Thankfully, we broke out of the selfish ball and played a much better team style for the final 75% of the contest.