Illinois Basketball: 3 Thoughts Before Ottawa

It’s that time again! In the first live rendition of the 2023-24 Illinois Men’s Basketball season the Illini will face off against Ottawa University in an exhibition game. Ottawa is an NAIA school, well below even the worst of the Illini’s regular season buy games. As such, mileage may vary on concrete takeaways. However, with Kansas looming in a little over a week, Illinois will need to start creating good habits.

1. Cruel Intent

For Illinois to be great this year, they have to dominate on the defensive side of the ball. At almost any time there will be four high quality defenders on the court. With all the questions about Illinois offensively, they can cheat the test by creating easy offense through their defense. Last year Illinois finished with the 26th ranked defense in the country per Kenpom. They return every piece that made that defense so good, but to compete for a Big Ten title it will need to be in the teens. For this team to make a run deep into March, it may need to be even higher.

With Coleman Hawkins at center, and Ty Rodgers at point guard, the Illini will likely look to switch heavily across their bevy of long, athletic defenders. Especially in an exhibition like this, we will get a good look at their base defensive principles. How sharp will they be switching? How do they handle switches onto bigger players? With Dain Dainja on the floor the Illini will play drop around him and will probably play drop with Hawkins as well at times. There’s a lot of benefits to switch and drop heavy coverages. They are very simple, risk averse defenses, that can be used for the meat and potatoes of a season. However, with more continuity, I’d like to see them mix in some more aggressive defenses to force some turnovers. Maybe against Kansas.

2. Offensive Identity

I went back and watched Illinois’ exhibition opener against Quincy last year. This was the first possession of the game:

As we know the Illini went on to be one of the worst shooting teams in the nation at a high volume. That was a basically completely new group playing new roles. Underwood has talked about them taking less three pointers this year, looking to go from 42% of all shots to around 30%. However, I think the above possession somewhat illustrated why they had to chuck so many. The lack of structure leads to some freestyling, and when Terrence Shannon Jr. couldn’t get by his man, they didn’t have many other creators. Hawkins slips two screens, and a three is taken decently contested with half the shot clock remaining.

With another offseason of reps for Shannon Jr. and Hawkins, hopefully their two-man game will improve to be the engine of Illinois’ halfcourt offense. The additions of old, ultra experienced veterans like Quincy Guerrier, Marcus Domask and Justin Harmon can also provide some steadiness and structure to the offense. They may have less overall talent, but the theory is they will play more together, and follow the gameplan.

3. Big and Small

The rotations will likely be wonky, as the result will never be in doubt and even if it was it wouldn’t matter. Both staffs will want to get a look at as many combinations as possible for their rotations. In this way it will be hard to get a great grip on exactly what minutes might look like when the games count. However, it will also help get a feel for what smaller lineup combinations might work. For instance, will the Coleman-Dain combo look any different than last year? It was dominant in the interior defensively but was clunky offensively.

Another combo I want to keep an eye on is how much Goode and Domask play together. For a team that should hang its hat on defense and transition, those two are likely the worst two athletes in the main rotation. However, they’re both also the Illini’s likely two best shooters, so you can maximize spacing with them able to play either forward spot.

Finally, I’m interested to see the minutes split between Harmon and Sencire Harris. To my eyes they are battling it out to be the other guard off the bench beside DGL. Harmon is a more experienced and steadier player. Underwood said the ball just finds him in their international trip. However, Harris is a special defender, and showed the ability to dominate games on that end, which is a rare quality for a guard.

After another long offseason, it will just be nice to have the ball bouncing again. Here’s to another season of Illinois hoops.

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