Illinois Women’s Basketball kicks off season with Exhibition vs Lewis

Illinois women’s basketball returns to the court this Friday with a home exhibition game against Lewis University. The game will start at 6 pm CST with free admission for kids wearing a Halloween Costume. The Division II university should be a nice warmup for the lady Illini as their schedule certainly picks up afterward.  In fact, the team will be playing three high-major teams coming off an NCAA Tournament appearance over the first five games. Luckily for the Illini, these five games are all home games.

A year three with expectations

Illinois Women’s basketball goes into this season returning a lot of production from a 19-15 (8-10) season. The program secured its first-ever postseason championship, winning the inaugural WBIT. The team also returns four starters, 81% of the team’s minutes, and 83% of the team’s scoring production. That returning production is certainly stout production as well.  Last season, they averaged 74.5 ppg which ranked 23rd of 360 D1 programs per Her Hoop Stats. 

And, similar to last season, the Illini go into this season with some national recognition and high expectations being ranked #25 in ESPN’s preseason rankings, receiving votes in the AP Poll and just four spots out of the preseason rankings, and returning preseason All-B1G and Naismith Women’s Player of the Year Watch List point guard Makira Cook.

But with largely the same narrative and returning production going into last season, the team faltered losing their first eight games against high-major teams en route to a disappointing 6-8 (0-4) start. A massive 121-60 preseason exhibition victory over D2 Truman State wasn’t the greatest indicator of things to come, but there are still some things to pay attention to in this year’s exhibition game, namely the increased depth and talent which should bolster this year’s team from a similar fate early in the season.

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