The Illinois basketball team is guaranteed to get one team into the NCAA tournament, and it is not the men’s team.
On Sunday, the Illini women continued their trek to a postseason berth, which would be the second in the last three seasons. A tough Nebraska program was in our way, but that didn’t slow down this train from going full steam ahead.
Illinois came out of the gates a little slow, falling behind by three points at the end of the first quarter and one point at halftime. A second half surge started in the third quarter, though. The Illini came out of halftime and played lockdown defense and started doing work inside the three-point arc.
This was a true team effort by the entire Illini squad. They fought tough and held the Cornhuskers at arm’s length after a 22-13 third quarter. This big 10 minutes led to a huge 77-68 win over Nebraska.
Here are five huge observations from the Illinois basketball win over the Nebraska Cornhuskers
1. Illinois continues to survive depth issues
When one team has more players they can put on the court, that usually earns them an advantage. That team has fresh legs, and they can run the court better than the other team that has less depth.
For Illinois, throw whatever you know about depth out of the window. With this program, depth has been crushed but we are still surviving each game and playing some incredible basketball.
To start the season, Illinois had some impressive depth. We could legitimately go eight or nine deep on the roster and not miss a beat. As time went on, that depth got shallower and shallower.
Makira Cook went down with an injury and is out for the season. Gretchen Dolan followed suit and will miss the rest of this year. Those two hits alone really hampered the Illini. For much of the last couple of months, Illinois has been going just six deep with those two big injuries and others.
Against Nebraska on Sunday, depth took another hit. Jasmine Brown-Hagger came up limping around midcourt early in the game. She only logged seven minutes in the contest, so Illinois had to go even deeper on the bench to seldom-used Cori Allen.
Did this stop the Illini against the Cornhuskers? No, the answer is no. In fact, this Illinois squad is the embodiment of the next-up mentality.
Illinois had three players play at least 38 minutes in the contest. Only five players played more than eight minutes in the contest too. Despite Nebraska playing 10 players in the game, Illinois still took control in the second half, a time when we should wear down, and ended up winning the game. This program has so much grit, and that showed against the Cornhuskers.