3. Decision-making from Will Riley is awful
I am not going to give up on Will Riley. This kid was a five-star recruit coming out of high school, and he has a ton of talent. I mean, he should be in high school right now but is competing against Big Ten competition.
There needs to be an adjustment with Riley, though. In the past, Illinois has had players who have been liabilities on the court offensively, but those players would have a special feature that could make up for it. An example was Da’Monte Williams. He wasn’t good offensively, but he played some great lockdown defense.
With Riley, there isn’t anything to combat his poor performances. He isn’t playing well on both ends of the court, and it is killing the Illini.
But it is more than just Riley playing poorly. Illinois could probably survive poor play, but his decision-making is what is really concerning. He isn’t playing smart basketball.
Too many times, Riley comes down the court, gets the ball, and the offense stops there. He jacks up shots from three-point range that are way above his ability. When Riley isn’t shooting misguided shots, he is trying to dribble, and that looks uncomfortable. He isn’t a great ball-handler on the court.
Riley will continue to develop and will be a good player down the road, but he isn’t a quality player right now. There isn’t an attribute about his game that you can point to and say that makes him dangerous. I would argue that Illinois might be better off starting Dra Gibbs-Lawhorn over Riley in the absence of Kasparas Jakucionis.