3. A lot of careless mistakes with the ball
This squad has been one of the more efficient teams Illinois basketball has every put out on the court. I couldn’t tell you the last time we didn’t have turnover struggles.
In the game against Washington, on paper, the Illini didn’t have a ton of turnovers. We tallied 13 turnovers in the game, which isn’t a horrific number. But, for Illinois, that is one of the worst turnover games of the season.
The 13 turnovers by the Illini marks the third-highest turnover game for the program during the 2024-25 campaign. The only two games where we had a higher turnover number was against Missouri and Oakland when we had 17 and 18 turnovers, respectively.
I think the biggest issue I had with the turnovers was that they were somewhat careless. It is not like the turnovers were trying to fit the ball into a tight window and the defense made a great play. That wasn’t the case, though. Most of the turnovers were just sloppy play.
Illinois had numerous turnovers where the defender would just pop the ball out of our hands and then be on a fastbreak. We kept the ball out in the open and this enabled Washington to get easy points at the other end.
Overall, there was just a lack of awareness by the Illini. We can’t just let turnovers go and expect to win every time. Thankfully, our talent prevailed on Sunday.