5 massive questions for the Illinois basketball team against Iowa

5. Is Illinois going to have a different mentality moving forward?

Illinois didn’t wake up until at least 10 minutes into the Penn State game. We played around five minutes of quality basketball the entire night, and this resulted in an ugly loss.

If you look at the recent Illini schedule, this has kind of been a trend. Illinois is lucky to have won as many games as we have in the past couple of weeks.

I am going to be watching the game against Iowa to see if there is a different vibe with the Illini. Will Illinois have a different mentality moving forward?

Illinois could easily be 1-4 in the last five games. We barely squeezed by Nebraska. That game ended up going to overtime. The Illini could have dropped the game to Maryland as well. It was close throughout.

With the bad loss to Penn State and very few quality wins to show for the entire season, I imagine Illinois is going to drop in the updated AP Top 25 on Monday. At this point, we also have to think about NCAA tournament seeding.

There are five games left in the 2023-24 season. Illinois needs to play with a one-game season mentality. The NCAA tournament, in our brains, needs to start on Saturday against Iowa. Every game is an elimination game. If we lose, we are out mentality.

If Illinois doesn’t start taking a mentality close to that, we could easily struggle down the stretch. The Illini still travel to Wisconsin and Iowa, and we have a game at home against No. 3 Purdue. Dropping multiple games in the final five will send us plummeting down the rankings.