Illinois Basketball: 5 observations from the Illini loss to the Purdue Boilermakers

4. The youth carried the Illini

Toward the end of the last slide, I mentioned how the young guys on the Illinois basketball team are doing a lot of good things and the veterans aren’t carrying their weight.

Well, that is truly how I feel. I love what the freshmen and sophomores are doing for the Illini right now.

The first thing that stands out to me about the young guys is the hustle and heart. You literally don’t have to be a good basketball player to have hustle and heart. You just have to care. The young guys care, and from a fan’s perspective, it means the world to me.

Against Purdue, the freshmen and sophomores were flying around the court and hitting the floor. Sencire Harris, Ty Rodgers, Luke Goode, and RJ Melendez were everything for this program in the hustle and heart department. Without their hustle and heart, we lose that game by 30 points or more.

Statistically, the young guys were also better than some of our veterans. Off the bench, Harris, Rodgers, and Goode were a combined 22 points, 11 rebounds, three steals, two assists, and one block on 9-of-15 shooting from the field and 3-of-5 from three-point range. They only had three turnovers in the 59 combined minutes as well.

Let’s compare that to Terrence Shannon Jr., Matthew Mayer, and Coleman Hawkins. They combined for 94 minutes and would finish with 35 points, 11 rebounds, nine assists, three steals, and three blocks on 11-of-26 shooting from the field and 4-of-16 from three-point range. They also had nine turnovers in the game.

Those three veterans played 35 minutes more than our younger guys, and they only had two more buckets and one more three-pointer. That is a bad formula for winning. We can’t have that moving forward. Our youth is carrying Illinois right now. I am excited about the future, but in the present, we need our veterans to step up.