4. Will the Illini bench wear Alabama down?
I am going to be fascinated by the game on Wednesday night for multiple reasons. Illinois matches up well with Alabama in numerous areas, and there is so much talent on the court.
One of the areas that is a great matchup is bench play. Both programs have great depth and can use various lineups throughout a game. I have one of the big questions for the game being, can Illinois’ bench wear the Crimson Tide down?
In the last game against Oakland, we got to see more of a real in-game experience. The first two contests of the season were blowouts, so you couldn’t tell how Brad Underwood was going to use his bench. But in a more serious game, Underwood did shorten the bench a bit.
Illinois still used Will Riley and Dra Gibbs-Lawhorn double-digit minutes against the Golden Grizzlies. Carey Booth and Morez Johnson Jr. then combined for 12 minutes.
My thing with the Illinois bench is that we have depth at every position. It is not like we are only bringing in big men and our backcourt suffers. Illinois has nearly an entire second rotation coming into the game.
Alabama is very similar. They have a ton of bench talent, and they use that talent. In the Purdue loss, Alabama used five players off the bench, three getting double-digit minutes. Their bench also combined for 33 points.
I want to see if Illinois’ bench can win out against Alabama’s bench. We have the horses to run all night long, so let’s see which bench can produce more.