Twice this season, Illinois was held under 65 points. Both instances came against the UConn Huskies. One in a relatively meaningless non-conference loss in late November, and the other in a 71-62 loss at Lucas Oil Stadium on Saturday night in the Final Four.
Back in November, Illinois didn’t know who it was. Keaton Wagler played just 14 minutes and scored 3 points, while Mihailo Petrovic played 18 minutes, and Kylan Boswell was the offensive focal point with 25 points. At times on Saturday night, the Illini looked like they didn’t know who they were.
Illinois produced the No. 2 offense in KenPom this season because of its rare combination of size and shooting. That size, with seven-footers like the Ivisic twins and David Mirkovic, was Illinois’s biggest advantage over the Huskies, but Dan Hurley used it to turn the tables on Brad Underwood and shut down the high-powered Illini offense.
Illinois didn’t maximize its height edge against UConn
One of Illinois’s biggest problems was simply that shots weren’t falling. The Illini finished 19-56 from the field and 6-26 from three. They came in with a 99th percentile offensive rebound rate, but their 12 offensive rebounds didn’t yield much in terms of second-chance points. Some of that is the physicality that Reed and UConn’s bigs played with. Some of it is bad luck, like an Andrej Stojakovic first-half putback that sat on the rim for nearly two full seconds but refused to go down.
Illinois’s other offensive struggles, though, were a great defensive game plan by Hurley and self-inflicted wounds by Illinois.
Defensively, Hurley’s plan started 94 feet from the hoop. UConn constantly picked Keaton Wagler or Kylan Boswell up full-court, not to force turnovers or to trap, just to slow the pace. Illinois obliged and frequently got across half-court with 21-22 seconds on the shot-clock, and didn’t get into its offense until a few seconds later.
Much of Illinois’s offensive game plan appeared to be hunting switches with ball-screens to get post-ups for Mirkovic and Ivisic. However, that’s difficult to do with 20 seconds on the shot clock. When Illinois finally got those post touches, UConn could aggressively double on the dribble because Illinois was running out of time to kick the ball out and swing it around the perimeter.
At times, it seemed that the Illini was so hyper-fixated on maximizing its height advantage by seeking out those switches that it bogged down the offense. On the other end, UConn’s off-ball movement was a nightmare for Illinois’s bigs to chase. At times, they locked and trailed and were able to force UConn to drive into its size, but the Huskies, who were ice-cold from three for much of the tournament, caught fire, shooting 10-28.
Illinois had stretches where it put things together, but the Illini needed to dominate the boards, not lose the rebounding battle 43-38. Without controlling the boards and the paint, Illinois didn’t have enough to down Hurley’s Huskies.