When you go on the road in the Big Ten and win by 25 points, you’ve clearly done your homework and executed a solid gameplan.
So what was Illinois’ approach to playing Indiana on Tuesday night that led to their historic win in Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall?
After watching Iowa scored 26 fast break points against IU, Illinois coach Brad Underwood said they came to Bloomington ready to push the pace on offense.
“That’s one area where we felt like we could hurt them,” Underwood said following the game.
While Illinois only scored six first half “fast break points” according to the live stats, the Illini scored three points a minute before the break, doing most of their damage in the first 15 seconds of the shot clock. By our quick count, at least 32 of Illinois’ first half points came in the first 15 seconds of their possessions.
Beyond quick scores, the other way Illinois dominated IU offensively in the first half was via second chances. IU had improved on the defensive glass, but there was early season film to suggest they were vulnerable. The Hoosiers allowed rebounds on opponents misses 36% of the team over four straight games that included all three games in The Bahamas.
The Illini had 10 first half offensive rebounds, and they scored 17 second chance points off of them. Rebounding is more cultural at Illinois rather than a specific part of the IU gameplan, but it was interesting to hear Underwood talk about how much emphasis he puts on rebounding.
“I’m going to write rebounding on the board 100 times before every game,” Underwood said after the IU game. “I’m going to talk about to talk about it every single day. I’m going to do 10 rebounding drills every single day. It just goes hand-in-hand with winning in my opinion.”
The early possession points plus second chance points accounted for 49 of Illinois’ 60 in the first half, and most of all that production could be attributed to effort. Underwood also highlighted how one of his players diving on the floor on the very first possession of the game set the tone for his team.
Underwood didn’t come out and say that he wanted to pull Oumar Ballo out to the perimeter on defense, but the way Illini center Tomislav Ivisic was utilized throughout the game suggests that was the plan. Underwood did say he wanted to feature and “play through” Ivisic, and the 7-footer was heavily utilized in pick-and-pop actions. He took six threes on the night and had four assists.
Indiana had missed at least 22 threes in a row against Illinois going back to last year’s 0-of-9 performance and this year’s 0-of-13 start beyond the arc.
Underwood said there were certain Indiana players he didn’t want to get shots, and certain players they were going to let shoot from long range.
“We took the threes away from the guys we wanted to take the threes away from,” Underwood said. “Mackenzie, Myles and Luke were the guys that we wanted to take three-point attempts away from. There’s guys who are high volume shooters who are makers. We knew we were going to give up some threes to the other guys, but we were going to let them shoot them.”
Indiana nearly took as many mid-range twos (31) as threes and shots at the rim combined (34).
For complete coverage of IU basketball, GO HERE.
The Daily Hoosier –“Where Indiana fans assemble when they’re not at Assembly”
- You can follow us on Twitter: @daily_hoosier
- Find us on Facebook and Instagram
- Seven ways to support completely free IU coverage at no cost to you.
