How Illinois can get back to being a Final Four threat
· Yahoo Sports
The past few weeks have been less than stellar for this Illini team.
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It was a rough month of February for the Illini after such a promising start to conference play. Just a few weeks ago, this team was sitting at the top of the Big Ten with an 11-1 conference record. That quickly changed when the Illini went 4-4 last month.
You could argue there were many different reasons the Illini slipped a bit in February. They dealt with injuries to multiple key players, they haven’t defended or rebounded the ball to their potential lately, and they faced much tougher opponents in February than they did the first 10 games or so of conference play. What do you think has held this team back the most recently?
You could point to recent slumps for many of the Illini’s key players. Keaton Wagler hasn’t been nearly as efficient the last few weeks as he was during the beginning of the season and conference play. Tomislav Ivisic is 5 for his last 26 from three-point land, while his brother Zvonimir Ivisic is 1 for his last 10. It feels like nobody on this team besides David Mirkovic — not including Jake Davis and Ben Humrichous who have been great in their small roles — has played consistently well since January.
With all of that being said, you would much rather see this team go through a slump in February compared to March. While it’s not a great sign for the near future, there is still plenty of time to get this team back on track with one final road game and hopefully multiple Big Ten Tournament games. The Oregon game on Tuesday night was a solid start in doing so.
At the end of the day, it’s going to be up to Brad Underwood and his staff to fix the issues hindering this team right now. This team has the size to be more than capable of defending and rebounding consistently at a high rate. If those recent weaknesses are able to be addressed and the Ivisic twins can break out of their slumps, especially Tomislav, there is no reason to not strongly believe that this team can be a legitimate contender to cut the nets down in April.