The Illinois basketball team received some bad news before the tip off against Maryland on Thursday.
The Illini were going to be without starting big man Tomislav Ivisic. This was going to hurt the program, as he is a great center who can do everything on the basketball court. Mainly, he can pull out Maryland’s big men with his three-point shooting.
Without Ivisic, Maryland dominated the paint. Illinois didn’t have an answer for their big men, and it showed throughout the night. By halftime, the Illini managed to keep it to just a three-point deficit. Maryland took over in the second half, though. Within six minutes in the second half, Illinois was down by double-digit points and couldn’t recover. The Terrapins ended up beating the Illini, 91-70.
Here are five brutal observations from the Illinois basketball loss to the Maryland Terrapins
1. Illinois’ big man bullpen was shallow
Coming into the game on Thursday, everyone knew that the Illini were in some type of trouble due to health. It is hard to take out our best big man and expect everything to run fine.
Tomislav Ivisic missed the Maryland game with an illness, so the Illinois basketball team had to run with Morez Johnson Jr. starting at the No. 5 spot.
Johnson struggled at times, but he is just a freshman thrown into a starting role. He had his good moments, but for the most part, Johnson had a hard time with Maryland’s twin towers in Julian Reese and Derik Queen.
Taking on two guys who are 6-foot-9 and 6-foot-10 is a tough ask. And on top of Johnson not having a great game, Illinois didn’t have any size in the bullpen ready to go.
Ivisic is usually the starter at the No. 5 spot, and then you have Johnson as his backup. That is a great one-two punch, but when you are missing one of the two big men, Illinois becomes extremely shallow at the position. That is what happened against the Terrapins.
Brad Underwood tried a few options on the bench, but nothing was working. Without Ivisic, we had zero answers for Maryland’s size and athletic ability. There isn’t much you can do in this situation, though. It is not like you can go three deep at the No. 5 spot with another quality big man. This was just one of those cases where Illinois was outmatched in the paint, and we were in for the ride.
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.
3. Someone needs to wake up Ben Humrichous again
Illinois missing our starting big man is brutal. Tomislav Ivisic gives us so much. On top of that, Kasparas Jakucionis didn’t have a good game. Ivisic is allowed to miss games and Jakucionis will have bad nights. They are human.
Other Illinois players need to help out, though. We need an experienced roster to rally around these two, whether they are on the court or not, and pull this team through a tough time. That isn’t happening.
The main player I am looking at is Ben Humrichous. He isn’t a first-year player, as he spent his first four seasons playing with two other programs. Humrichous is a fifth-year player, and he needs to utilize that experience to help Illinois win big games like the one on Thursday.
Humrichous isn’t doing that, though. He is back to playing bad basketball, and it hinders Illinois greatly. Against the Terrapins, Humrichous finished with zero points, five rebounds, two blocks, and one assist. He also had three fouls and went 0-of-3 from the field, all of which were three-point attempts.
In 26 minutes, Illinois’ fifth-year starting wing gave the program zero points. He couldn’t convert one shot. And it is not like he is a defensive ace. Humrichous is too small to guard anyone in the post, and he is too slow to guard backcourt players.
I honestly believe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to bring Humrichous off the bench. It won’t happen, as Brad Underwood doesn’t change lineups, but having Humrichous as more of a spark plug rather than a player to be relied on would be a better option at this point.
4. Dra Gibbs-Lawhorn continues to show he is a starter
This slide kind of goes hand-in-hand with the previous slide. There were very few bright spots on Thursday night, and saying there were a few might be too generous.
Illinois played one of the worst games I have seen in years against Maryland, and the result was a 21-point blowout loss. The biggest bright spot I did see in the drubbing came off the bench.
Dra Gibbs-Lawhorn is someone who holds a special place in my heart as a fan. He is one of the two holdovers from the Elite 8 squad, the other being Ty Rodgers who decided to sit this season out.
Every other Illinois player departed the program after the Elite 8 run. Gibbs-Lawhorn on the other hand, stayed and gritted it out. He wasn’t guaranteed anything, and in fact, Brad Underwood was bringing in a completely new roster. This gave Gibbs-Lawhorn the green light to transfer.
Gibbs-Lawhorn stuck it out, though. He stayed with Illinois, and now he is having games where he is our best player. On Thursday night, Gibbs-Lawhorn came off the bench and dropped 15 points, four rebounds, one assist, and one steal. He was 5-of-8 from the field and 2-of-4 from three-point range.
Big games are starting to become a trend for Gibbs-Lawhorn too. He had seen fewer than 20 minutes for much of the season, but the talented guard caught Underwood's eye, and now he is a bigger part of this team.
For the season, Gibbs-Lawhorn is averaging 17.3 minutes and putting up 7.8 points and 1.8 rebounds per game. In just the last eight games alone, those numbers have increased. In that eight-game stretch, he is averaging 22 minutes each night and is putting up 11.1 points, 2.4 rebounds, and just 1.0 turnovers per game.
Illinois isn’t getting a lot out of players, but Gibbs-Lawhorn continues to impress. I mentioned that it might be a good idea for Underwood to bench Ben Humrichous and use him as a spark plug. A good option to replace Humrichous would be Gibbs-Lawhorn.
5. Maryland was just a better team
Illinois was competitive in the first half against Maryland. We went into the halftime locker room down just three points. This was a game at one point.
But the Terrapins came out in the second half and throttled the Orange and Blue. A 21-point loss at home is extremely rare for the Illini. You can look at stats and reasons for the loss, but at the end of the day, sometimes teams are just better.
In the case of Thursday night, I believe Maryland was just a better team. From top to bottom, they outperformed Illinois, and there wasn’t a point in the game that I felt the Illini had the better roster.
It all started in the paint with Derik Queen and Julian Reese. Those two big men dominated anything Illinois threw at them. That was the first glaring issue.
Illinois’ backcourt was also a level below what Maryland put out on the court. Ja’Kobi Gillespie was hard to stop. He diced up the Illini backcourt and was clearly the better guard from both programs.
The only possible area where Illinois had a leg up was the bench play. I think this makes what Maryland did even more impressive. The Terrapins don’t rely on their bench, as every starter played at least 31 minutes, and they still took Illinois to task.
Illinois’ bench had Dra Gibbs-Lawhorn play well. He had better numbers than the entire Maryland bench, but as I mentioned, the Terrapins don’t need bench play.
Maryland shot better from the field and three-point arc. They had more rebounds, assists, and steals. The Terrapins also had fewer fouls and turnovers in the game. At the end of the day, this was just a good old-fashioned beat down by Maryland.