5 huge observations from the Illinois basketball win over Arkansas

3. Illinois shut down a talented Arkansas squad

I could go on and on about how good the Illinois offense was against Arkansas on Thanksgiving Day. We put up 90 points, which is incredibly impressive against a top-20 program.

Instead of going in the offensive direction, I am going to touch on the Illini defense. While we were lighting it up on the offensive end of the court, the Illini also locked down an extremely talented Arkansas team on defense.

Coming into the game, Arkansas was a high-scoring program. They were averaging 81.2 points per game, which ranked No. 69 in the country. Illinois’ defense was able to hold the Razorbacks to just 77 points, and this helped a lot in the victory.

Illinois’ perimeter defense was particularly suffocating. I was curious how a decent shooting Arkansas team was going to handle a bigger Illinois backcourt. The answer is, not well.

The Razorbacks, who normally shoot 35.5% from three-point range, only hit 5-of-17, 29.4%, from deep. They couldn’t get anything going, and that had a lot to do with the size of players like Tre White and Kasparas Jakucionis, who are 6-foot-7 and 6-foot-6, respectively.

That size was a nightmare for Arkansas. I love how an experienced guard like Johnell Davis couldn’t get going either. He only got up three shots in the game. And then Illinois held five-star guard Boogie Fland to just eight points on 2-of-12 shooting from the field.

Overall, it was a great defensive effort by the Illini. The offense will get all of the credit because of the flashiness of 90 points, but Illinois’ defense set the tone on Thursday.