Where Illinois Basketball needs to improve prior to road trip

Illinois basketball took a tough loss at home vs the USC Trojans on Saturday morning. Though teams, specifically Brad Underwood teams, have their lumps at this time of the year, the loss to the Trojans could prove costly to the Illini. Despite impressive wins over Oregon and Wisconsin, the Illini have dropped two games that they probably should have won. If star freshman, Kasparas Jakucionis, continues to miss more time, the Illini have to take care of the ball and find a way to run efficient offense. Without Jakucionis, the Illini’s pace seems to slow down. This leads to a lot of settling for three-point shots and a lot of isolation ball.

Without Kasparas, Illinois basketball simply does not have the shot creators to play heavy half-court offense. Because of that, Illinois needs to tighten up its defense to create some easy fastbreak opportunities. Remember the last plays of the first half? Dravyn Gibbs-Lawhorn got his hands on a deflection which helped create an easy transition layup.

 Credit: Ron Johnson-Imagn Images.

Quote From Underwood

“Give SC a ton of credit, they came in here and whooped us,” said Underwood. “Disappointing from our side of things. A little out of character. I thought we did some things defensively, that we haven’t all year. Ultimately, that’s on me.”

The Illini coach further elaborates, “I think I got a little reactionary to certain things. We’ve always been pretty good at protecting the paint. And, probably a little over reactionary to a guy who’s made six threes in his career, in ( ) Agee making three.” Ultimately, Agee put on a clinic vs the Illini, totaling (stats) in the Trojan’s impressive road victory, including the three big ones from downtown Underwood mentioned.

Additionally, Brad states, “And then it’s obviously a little different when Bam (Kylan Boswell) gets in foul trouble… that impacted the game from that side of things, in terms of ball pressure. Too many turnovers.”

Underwood concluded, “We don’t get out rebounded very often. I told these guys, I put rebounding on the board four, five, six times before every game, so it’s one of the last things they see because that’s effort. When you’re a team that’s one of the top offensive rebounding teams in the country, and you have three at the half, against a team truly, that has some positional size, but no real size. So, that will show you where we’re at. Our missed opportunities in the paint were pretty high. ”

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