Coming off a big game against Alabama, the Illinois basketball team needs to avoid a slip-up against bad competition.
On Saturday, the Illini will take on Long Island. This game shouldn’t be close whatsoever, but with college kids, who knows what we will get on a Saturday afternoon?
Illinois has the talent to put Long Island away early, though. There are a few questions I have entering the contest.
Here are three key questions for the Illinois basketball team vs Long Island
1. Does Mihailo Petrovic get more playing time?
Illinois looked decent against Alabama, despite falling to the Crimson Tide by four points. We had a tough stretch in the second half, but this program can keep up with the best of the best.
During the game, Illini fans got to see the first glimpse of newcomer Mihailo Petrovic. He stepped foot on the court for his first action with the program, and on Saturday, I want to see if Brad Underwood eases him into more playing time.
Illinois is going to need Petrovic a lot this season. I think he could eventually see the starting job in the backcourt with Keaton Wagler heading to the bench as the No. 6 man.
Petrovic was solid against Alabama, too. He had three points, five assists, and one rebound in 12 minutes of action. Let’s see if Underwood gives him more minutes against Long Island, as he tries to get his legs underneath him.
2. Can Illinois get more from the paint?
There were some key issues that doomed Illinois in the Alabama game. One of them was obviously the free throws. We have to shoot better than 59% as a team from the charity stripe.
Another issue was what Illinois got from the paint. Our paint production was the worst it has been this season, and that has to change moving forward. I want to see if the Illini's paint production can improve against Long Island.
There are mainly three players I am looking at for paint production. David Mirkovic, Zvonimir Ivisic, and Tomislav Ivisic are the three big-time Illini paint players.
These three players combined for 6-of-20, 30%, from the field against Alabama. They only produced 16 points and 16 rebounds in the entire game, too.
If Illinois wants to win consistently the rest of the season, we are going to need more production out of the paint. It all starts with these three players.
3. Will the Illini keep up the incredibly efficient season?
Illinois is still off to a great start this season. We are 4-1 with a narrow loss over what is going to be a top 10 team again in Alabama.
A big part of why the Illini have started so well is how efficiently the program has been playing. So, I want to see if that efficiency can keep going against a bad Long Island team, or will Illinois get sloppy knowing this is a bad team?
This season, Illinois has a 1.44 assist-to-turnover ratio. That ranks No. 74 in the country. We would be much higher than that, but the only time Illinois has had more turnovers than assists in a game was against Texas Tech. This was a weird game where we had five assists to 13 turnovers, which skews the numbers a bit.
In every other game this season, Illinois had had more assists than turnovers. In the last two games alone, the Illini have registered a 1.7 assist-to-turnover ratio, which would be up in the top 40 in the country.
Illinois plays some efficient basketball. It will only get more efficient with the integration of Petrovic. Let’s see if we can keep that efficient play up on Saturday.