2. Kasparas Jakucionis picked a bad time for a bad game
Tomislav Ivisic, an All-Big Ten big man, was out for Illinois on Thursday night. I mentioned this fact in the last slide, and his absence hurt the Illini greatly.
With our big man out, Illinois’ best player, Kasparas Jakucionis, needed to step up. We needed a big game for Jakucionis so there was someone making up for the lost production from Ivisic. Sadly, Jakucionis had one of his worst games against a good team.
The box score doesn’t look horrible for Jakucionis, though. He finished the game with 21 points, seven rebounds, and seven assists. The fact I can sit here and say this wasn’t a good game by Jakucionis despite him putting up those numbers shows you how good he is on the court.
Jakucionis couldn’t get in any rhythm against Maryland. While he did have seven assists, he also coughed up seven turnovers on the night. That is tied with the most turnovers he has had in a game this season, even with the seven turnovers he had against No. 1 Tennessee.
Offensively, Jakucionis wasn’t able to give Illinois his usual spark too. The 21 points are good on paper, but he was just 5-of-14, 35.7%, from the field and missed all four of his three-point attempts. The reason he had a big scoring night was that he was 11-of-12 from the free throw line.
This was a bad night by most of the Illinois roster. We couldn’t afford to have nearly everyone lay an egg, especially our best player. Jakucionis had an off night at a bad time.