Brad Sturdy, IlliniGuys Insider

December 7, 2024

The Illini lost a disappointing game at Northwestern on Friday night when the Wildcats erased a 5 point lead in the final 2 minutes to force overtime and then scored 14 points in 8 possessions, scoring on 7 of 8 possessions to take a 70-66 win. Although Kasparas Jakucionis had 20 points on 6-10 shooting from 3, the rest of the Illini were just 3-24 from 3 as they scored only 10 points in the final 10 minutes making 1 of their final 8 shots.

These 3 Things

1. Matchups Matter - In the pregame we talked about the difficulty Illinois was gong to have defending Nick Martinelli at the PFspot and that came to fruition in the 2nd half and overtime as Martinelli scored 23 of his 27 points after the break. Chris Collins once again found the matchup he wanted and exploited the weakest Illinois defender through switches. It has been a theme in games at Northwestern for Illinois to be unable to get stops late. Brad Underwood rode his older guys, only playing Morez Johnson 11 minutes and Tre White 15 minutes. In a game this physical, you wonder if the two most physical players on the team shouldn’t be on the floor.

2. Shooting Blanks - The two European stars for Illinois were 8-15 from 3. The rest of the Illini from North America were 1-19. That is why this game was a possession game down the stretch. With the way that Northwestern plays and the way that Illinois plays, if the Illini shoot a respectable percentage from 3 they win handily and then there is no possession game and matchup issue down the stretch.

3. The Little Things - There were multiple situations where the Illini had opportunities to break the game open, but they were unable to get it done. Up by 10 with just under 10 minutes to play, Humrishous had a wide open 3, he had multiple wide open jumpers down the stretch, but missed. Illinois grabbed an offensive rebound and called a timeout with 2:05 to play and came out and Will Riley took a deep, wild, 3 pointer that drew backboard and led to a Northwestern runout and an Illinois foul, with 2 points and the lead was down to 3. Then, down by 1 point late Underwood chose to foul with 25 seconds to play. The Illini would have only had 8 seconds to play had they gotten the stop, so fouling wasn’t a terrible play there. But fouling the best FT shooter seems like a mistake. Illinois got a pull up 3 from KJ for the tie, in what was a pretty clean look, and using the fact that Illinois only got 1 stop out of 8 possessions in overtime, Underwood clearly did not have confidence in his defense.

4. Fatigue Issues - Brad Underwood continues to ride his players for huge minutes. Four players played 38 or more minutes, and only 5 played more than 15 minutes. I’m not against an 8 man rotation, but why not allow Gibbs-Lawhorn to play 15 minutes? Morez Johnson to play 15 minutes? Tre White to play 20 minutes? It worked out last year, with older, veteran players, but if you look back on the minutes distribution, you see that the players that played changed as the season progressed. Dainja played more, Harmon played less, Gibbs-Lawhorn grabbed a role, etc. But can these young guys hold up like Shannon and Domask did a year ago?

Notable

• Kasparas Jakucionis recorded the second double-double of his career, scoring 20 points to go along with 10 rebounds, seven assists, a block and a steal.
  • Third-straight 20-point performance.
    • Scored in double figures for the third-straight game and for the sixth time overall this season.
    • First Illini freshman with three-straight 20-point games since at least 2010-11.
    • Is the fifth freshman of the Brad Underwood era to record at least three 20-point games in his rookie season, joining Ayo Dosunmu (7 in 2018-19), Trent Frazier (5 in 2017-18), Giorgi Bezhanishvili (5 in 2018-19), and Kofi Cockburn (5 in 2019-20).
  • Knocked down a career-high six 3-pointers.
    • Has multiple makes from deep in three-straight games.
  • Sixth contest with at least six boards and fourth straight.
  • Fourth game of the season with at least six assists.
• Tomislav Ivisic posted his third-straight double-double, scoring 15 points with 12 rebounds, five assists and a block.
  • His five double-doubles this season move him into a tie for fourth-most in the nation.
  • Has scored in double figures in all eight games this season.
    • Only Illini to do so.
  • Has secured double-digit rebounds in three-straight contests and has five such games overall.
  • Went 2-for-5 from beyond the arc.
    • Fourth game this season with multiple makes from deep.
• Will Riley came off the bench to score 12 points while adding three rebounds and two assists.
  • Scored in double figures for the sixth time this season.
• Morez Johnson Jr. scored six points and grabbed five rebounds.
  • Fifth game this season with at least five boards.

Next Up

The Illini have a huge home game on Tuesday when they host Wisconsin. They do not want an 0-2 start to Big Ten play and with #1 Tennessee looming on Saturday you are looking a 3 game losing streak in the face.