Your Illinois Fighting Illini basketball team will be the #7 seed in the Big Ten Tournament, which begins on Wednesday night. They’ll take on the #10 seed Penn State Nittany Lions on Thursday night at 5:30pm.
There are two ways to look at this. First, you can believe the old cliche “it’s very hard to beat the same team thrice in the same season,” and remind yourself that, on paper at least, Illinois is a much better team.
Or you can look at it, the other, PSU whomped them, badly, in both their meetings this season.
Penn State blew out then #17 Illinois 74-59 in Champaign on Dec. 10 before whipping the Illini again 93-81 in Happy Valley on Valentine’s Day.
The Lions shot 46.2 percent (24-52) from three-point range in the two games combined, while Jalen Pickett averaged 30.5 ppg, 7.0 apg and 4.5 rpg.
So Illinois needs to think about trying to stop him some time.
Either way you look at it, the Illini will be playing in what is essentially their second home/home away from home in the United Center. They will, without a doubt, have the crowd on their side for this entire tournament.
Let’s take a look at where Illini basketball has been, in order to try and speculate where we’re going.
Illini Basketball NCAA Tournament Profile
20-11, 11-9 in the league, Net 34, SoS 39, Kenpom 32, Quad 1 record 2-9
Signature Wins UCLA (likely #1 seed, Kenpom #2) Texas (Likely #2 seed, #8 in Kenpom)
Projected Seed #7 to #9.
Polar Express
As you can see from that pair of signature wins, plus the fact that they were just a few points shy of beating #5 Purdue at their place today and grabbing the #2 seed in the Big Ten Tournament, this team can very good, sometimes.
Other times, they look just plain awful. Against Mizzou, and in the first loss to Penn State, they looked like they didn’t even care to be there.
To quote the title character on Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, as he described one of his many potential love interests: “you’re like a Dr. Jekyll and Patty Duke!”
This Illini basketball team can obviously swing to both polarities, quite often in the same game. We saw that today, and again in the home game against Northwestern.
But overall, you are your body of work, which is in the range of kinda solid, but also kind of meh. Just slightly better than mediocre, basically.
What’s the difference? The desire to defend.
As the blocked shots statistics will tell you, this team is elite defensively, when they want to be. Unfortunately, they aren’t always all that interested in defending (home game against Indiana, Braggin’ Rights are two perfect examples).
They should be very motivated on Thursday, because this Illini basketball team can put the NIT in Nittany Lions by beating them, and beating them badly.
Paul M. Banks is the owner/manager of The Sports Bank. He’s also the author of “Transatlantic Passage: How the English Premier League Redefined Soccer in America,” and “No, I Can’t Get You Free Tickets: Lessons Learned From a Life in the Sports Media Industry.”
He’s written for numerous publications, including the New York Daily News, Sports Illustrated and the Chicago Tribune. He regularly appears on NTD News and WGN News Now. Follow the website on Twitter and Instagram.