Illinois basketball is starting to rack up disappointing losses this season, as Rutgers was too much to handle on Wednesday night.
The Illini were going up against a Scarlet Knights team that has two top 10 picks in the 2025 NBA Draft. With that being said, Rutgers was only 11-11 entering the game. They were a very beatable team, but Illinois just didn’t have the juice.
Bad shooting and shot selection got Illinois into a double-digit hole within the first 10 minutes of the game. Rutgers’ lead would balloon to 17 points at one time, but the Illini had a little fight to end the first half and made it an eight-point deficit.
Rutgers continued to play well, though. While Illinois took the lead multiple times in the second half, the Scarlet Knights had too much firepower. Led by phenom Dylan Harper, Rutgers would suffocate the Illini with big shot after big shot until the final score read 82-73 in favor of the Scarlet Knights.
Here are five sad observations from the Illinois basketball loss to the Rutgers Scarlet Knights
1. Three-point shooting buried Illinois
Losses always hurt, and with losses come analyzing why Illinois didn’t come out on top. The Illini looked below average on Wednesday night, and I believe a lot of it had to do with three-point shooting.
Illinois could have beaten Rutgers if it wasn’t for the dreaded start. For the game, the Illini shot 6-of-28, 21.4%, from three-point range. That is a horrible number, but the second half actually improved that number greatly.
In the first half, Illinois was just chucking up three-point attempts. The team was just 2-of-17, 11.8%, from three-point range. This is why we got into such a deep hole, as high as 17 points, early on in the game.
I know I have harped on this before, but Illinois isn’t a good three-point shooting team. We have our moments, but overall, I don’t know if I have seen a worse Illini three-point shooting squad. The hardest part of this poor shooting is that most of the Illini players think they’re Steph Curry-level when they aren’t even Seth Curry.
Illinois is now shooting 30.7% from three-point range this season, which ranks No. 314 out of 364 teams in DI basketball. The last time an Illini team shot worse than 30.7% in a season was in 2011-12. That was the season we got off to a hot start and lost 12 out of the final 14 games and Bruce Weber got fired.