There isn’t much time to celebrate the big win over Nebraska, as the Illinois basketball team welcomes Northwestern on Wednesday night.
The Illini are looking to continue the great vibes, as win No. 12 in a row will hopefully be on the horizon. Northwestern won’t back down, though.
The Wildcats are always a tough team. They aren’t going to roll over and just let Illinois steamroll them on Wednesday night. As a top-five program in the country, every team is going to give us their best shot.
Here are three keys for Illinois basketball to get a sweep of Northwestern
1. Get Tomislav Ivisic involved early and often
It seems that Illinois has a few players who are hot and cold. The gold standard for this type of player is Tomislav Ivisic.
You don’t know exactly what Tomi you are getting every game. On Sunday, he dropped 12 points, eight rebounds, three assists, and one block in a win over No. 5 Nebraska. But in the two games prior, he had a total of 14 points.
Ivisic had a huge game in the first contest against Northwestern. The Wildcats couldn’t handle the big man to the tune of 21 points on 8-of-15 shooting from the field and 4-of-10 from three-point range.
Illinois needs to get Ivisic engaged in the game early and often. Get him the ball and let him do some work. It doesn’t need to be the entire game focused around Ivisic, but getting him involved will enable him to put up big numbers in a victory.
2. Keep Nick Martinelli to below 22 points
Northwestern goes as Nick Martinelli goes. He is the heartbeat of that program, and when he doesn’t go off, the Wildcats struggle to win games.
This season, when Martinelli scores 22 or more points, Northwestern is 8-6. When he fails to score 22 or more points, the program is just 2-5.
Illinois held Martinelli to a middle-of-the-road game the first time around. He finished with 20 points in 37 minutes and shot 5-of-12 from the field. These aren’t bad numbers, but they aren’t the numbers Northwestern needs if they want to knock off a top team like Illinois.
I think the Illini have the length to give Martinelli problems on a consistent basis. We can throw someone who is at least 6-foot-6 at him constantly, and that will force him to shoot bad shots throughout the game.
Heading into the game on Wednesday, focusing on reducing Martinelli’s scoring should be a priority. See if the other players can beat us, and don’t let Martinelli go off.
3. Illinois needs to use the size advantage on the glass
This section goes hand-in-hand with the first section. I talked about how Illinois needs to get Ivisic going and engaged in the game. That applies to rebounding, too.
I was not impressed with Illinois’ rebounding in the first game against Northwestern. I think this was a huge reason the Wildcats stuck around throughout much of the contest.
Illinois only won the rebounding battle with Northwestern, 33-30. That is unacceptable against a much smaller team. There were plenty of rebounds out there, too. It was the offensive rebounds that really killed the Illini.
Northwestern managed to pull down 13 offensive rebounds in game one. This included five offensive rebounds from Arrinten Page.
I believe there was a section in the observations article from the win over Nebraska, but Illinois finally realized we are a bigger team than most other programs. We need to embrace that against Northwestern and make this a double-digit rebounding margin.