5 painful observations from the Illinois basketball loss to Penn State

3. Double-digit turnovers in the second half is unacceptable

This slide kind of piggybacks off the previous slide. Illinois played a sloppy game for much of the night, but in the second half, we hit a new level of not caring about the basketball.

Coming into the game, Illinois was one of the top 100 teams in the country in turnovers. We averaged 10.9 turnovers per game, which ranked No. 97 in the nation. Illinois looked to be on that pace, as we only had five turnovers in the first half.

But, again, I felt like Illinois just played sloppy basketball in the second half and thought Penn State was just going to fold. Instead, the Nittany Lions came out and continued to punch until the score favored the home team.

In that second half, Illinois had a total of 13 turnovers. That isn’t a typo. In the final 20 minutes of action, the Illini had more turnovers than our season average per game.

It was like The Monstars sucked the basketball skill out of the Illini, like in Space Jam. On multiple occasions, Marcus Domask would get himself in trouble in the backcourt and the ball would be turned over. He also made some weird decisions by leaving his feet when he didn’t have to, and the result was a turnover.

And as good of a night as Terrence Shannon Jr. had scoring the basketball, he had three turnovers in the final 10 minutes of the game. The final one came in the waning moments, and it led to a Penn State bucket to narrow Illinois’ lead to two points.

Domask, Shannon, and Coleman Hawkins have a total of 14 years of college basketball playing experience. In the final 10 minutes of the game against Penn State, these three experienced players had a total of six turnovers. That is unacceptable.