Illinois Basketball has established their Big-3 heading into the home stretch

Illinois basketball has 6 games left in their 2024-2025 regular season schedule. Five out of six games are quadrant-one opportunities for the Illini who are hoping to recover from some missteps in late January. Despite a number of health issues still lingering for this talented team, the Illini are slowly becoming “whole” again. Heading into this season, many wondered how this team would gel with so many new pieces. Despite all the talent on paper, Illinois basketball had a young and inexperienced roster coming into this season.

All things considered, the Illini have gelled pretty well. In fact, heading into this home stretch, they have an established “big three” that they will heavily lean on for the rest of the season. Last year, Terrence Shannon Jr, Marcus Domask, and Coleman Hawkins made for quite the trio to lead the Illini through tough games. In the 2020-2021 season, Ayo Dosunmu, Kofi Cockburn, and Andre Curbelo established themselves as the guys who could change the outcome of games for the Illini.

This year, the big three is as talented a trio as we have had.

Will Riley

Stats: 11.9 ppg, 3.8 RPG, 2.0 apg on 41.6% field goal percentage and 33.3% from three.

Will Riley has found his stride in a major way. After struggling vs high-major opponents throughout most of December, Will Riley flipped a switch and has jumped back into the NBA draft conversation. The five-star prospect has provided reliable offense off the bench and has served as a secondary ball-handler to help relieve Kasparas Jakucionis. Looking at Riley’s last 8 games, he was sick for two of those games. Hence, through those six games, he averaged an impressive 19.0 ppg, 4.3 RPG, and 3.3 apg on 48.8 percent from the field and 44 percent from the three-point line.

His ability to work his way into the paint has proved to be very useful for an Illini offense that is hoping to stray away from chucking up three-pointers.

Kasparas Jakucionis

Stats: 16.0 ppg, 5.6 RPG, 5.2 apg on 47.5 field goal percentage and 35.0% from three.

After suffering a left forearm injury, Kasparas Jakucionis returned and struggled with turnovers and shooting. However, the past two games have shown that Jakucionis is starting to round back into the form that pushed him into the top 5 of many NBA Mock Drafts. Kasparas still struggles with some head-scratching turnovers, but his playmaking ability and shot creation is still second to none. Jakucionis has made a concerted effort to get into the paint early in games, and the return of Tomislav Ivisic has certainly helped.

Also, using Will Riley as a secondary ball-handler has helped lessen the burden on Jakucionis and allows the defense to hone in on different players.

Tomislav Ivisic

Stats: 13.1 ppg, 8.5 RPG, 2.0 apg, and 1.1 blocks per game on 51.9% field goal percentage and 37.1% 3pt from three.

Stephen Bardo and Sunny Verma of Illinicast have always said this. Tomislav Ivisic is the most important player on this Illinois basketball team. Though Jakucionis and Riley garner attention given their next-level skillsets, Ivisic does so much for Illinois basketball. His ability to pop from the three changes the entire trajectory of this team. On top of that, Ivisic is an incredible passer for his size. With the way he can score, he is as hard a player to guard as any on the team.

Ivisic hurt his ankle in the game vs. Rutgers, and his practice has been rather limited. Hopefully, this will not affect how much Tomislav Ivisic is on the court.

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