The first game of the season is now over after a thriller against Nicholls State. The Illini are now 1-0 on the year as they head out for a stint in the West Coast starting with Arizona on Friday night. The Illini held the lead by 8 or more throughout the game, and looked dominate other than the turnover bug. Most of the story starts in the second half. With about 8 minutes remaining in the game, the Illini let up a 14 point run. When Nicholls went on that run, they cut the lead down from 13 to a tie with under three minutes to play. Trent Frazier had the play of the game getting the steal, and forcing a travel in crunch time, following with sinking two free throws, the Illini tied the game and forced OT. Andres Feliz took over at this point and sealed the game with the Illini coming out on top 78-70.
The Illini might be 1-0 to start the year, but there was a lot of mistakes and miscues that came with it. Let's start off with scoring:
The Illini where 27-61 from the field as a whole in the win against Nicholls, who came to play. In my keys to the game I said one of the things that needed to happen was that Ayo Dosunmu needed to turn up the scoring from the exhibition played in Champaign last Friday, which he did. Ayo had 21 total points, went 8-11 from the field, 1-1 from deep, and racked up 7 rebounds. When it comes to the statistics, he looked like a top ten draft pick. Not only did Ayo have a great game, Kofi Cockburn tallied a double-double in his Illini debut going 4-6 from the field, with 10 points and 11 rebounds. We can’t forget about Andres Feliz. He was the most impactful throughout the night. Feliz had 23 on the night, went 7-14 from the field, 1-4 from deep, 8-10 from the line, and tallied 11 rebounds. But, the Illini missed a lot of open shots, and more often than not, passed on open looks. Offensive possessions are going to have to be cleaned up before Big Ten play opens up in January. One of the things that needs that “touch up paint” first is turnovers.
The Illini had 23 turnovers in the game. That is far to many. And it about came back to haunt them. The first half was filled with sloppy offensive possessions that resulted in turnovers. You can’t win games turning the ball over 23 times. I’m sure this won’t happen again, there wasn’t much offensive rhythm(first half) when most of them occurred.
My player of the game of course has to go to Andres Feliz(statline listed above) for taking over in OT and shutting the game down.
Like I stated the Illini have a real test this upcoming Friday when they travel out to Arizona to take on the Wildcats. I’m curious to see how they respond on Friday.
