Illinois dropped its Big Ten opener at Northwestern on Friday night in Evanston, falling to the Cats 70-66 in overtime. It was a disjointed effort by Illinois from the outset, with early turnovers, matchup problems, a cold shooting night, and a squandered 10-point lead.
Lets take a look at our three keys to the game from the game preview.
Stay hot from 3. Illinois went 9-for-34 from beyond the arc. KJ and Ivisic went a combined 8-for-15. The rest of the team was 1-for-19. Humrichous 1-for-9. Will Riley 0-for-6. I'm okay taking a lot of 3's if they are good 3's, but I thought many of them were rushed an untimely.
Will Riley's long 3 with time running down in regulation was a game-changer. It led to run-out for Northwestern and two free throws by Jalen Leach to cut the lead to 3. It totally changed the momentum. You can't have a situation in which you win games if the 3's drop, and lose games if they don't.
Dominate on the glass. Illinois only rebounded Northwestern 44-43. That's a poor effort against an average rebounding team. Illinois is 5th in the nation in total rebound percentage (58.2) while Northwestern is No. 132 (52.7) Some of it was about lineups. Morez Johnson played just 11 minutes but had by far the best rebounding rate (23.2). Tre White 15 minutes. He has been one of the best offensive rebounders. That's two of your best rebounders riding the pine.
They must get more from Ben Humrichous on the glass. When he's not making shots, he needs to find a way to do something positive. If you're taking 3's there's going to be long rebounds, but Illinois only rebounded 7 of their own 42 misses (17%) and had just 4 second chance points. Yikes. You can't win that way.
The big two. Chris Collins always seems to win the chess match against Illinois. We knew going in that Nick Martinelli (27 points) and Brooks Barnhizer (17 points) would be tough matchups and can carry this team if you let them. I thought Kylan Boswell did okey harassing Barnhizer at times. However, Martinelli vs. Humrichous was a mismatch.
When someone else was checking Martinelli, they simply set a big ball screen and Illinois switched, giving Collins the matchup that he wanted over and over. Underwood said in the post game that they weren't suppose to be switching, but they kept doing it. When Collins saw a defensive weakness, he went right at it.
A few other notes...
Illinois doesn't apply a lot of ball pressure and Northwestern only turned it over 4 times. I know the defense is designed to get stops, not necessarily steals, but you have to turn teams over more than that. Illinois had just 4 points off of turnovers, a bad stat for a team that wants to play fast. When you have a good rim protector that Ivisic you can probably apply a bit more pressure on the ball.
This was a 74 possession game, but that stat is very misleading. Northwestern completely controlled the tempo and made it a grind-it-out, halfcourt game. That's right in their wheelhouse. Illinois had 37 defensive rebounds but just 2 fast break points. That's an astonishing stat. Northwestern does play excellent transition defense, but the Illini didn't really try to push it up. They walked it up a lot, and a couple of times almost got 10-second calls with no one guarding them. Illinois has guys who can grab and go and are good in transition.
Illinois came up empty quite a bit coming out of timeouts. Rather dial up set plays, Underwood decided to put the ball in the hands of Jakucionis, who obviously had the hot hand, and let him go to work. Understandable, but maybe they went to the well a few too many times. I'd like to see a second option in those situations - i.e. post up Ivisic, who had a size and athleticism advantage.
Illinois trailed 33-34 at the 16:05 mark of the second half. Six minutes later, the Illini led by 10 points at 46-36 after a 3-pointer from Jakucionis. Morez Johnson had 6 points and 2 rebounds over that stretch. Despite playing just 11 minutes, Morez was a +5 in the plus / minus. Jake Davis was +2 in 2 minutes. Tre White broke even. Every other Illinois player was in the negative.
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