Setting The Stage For This Season:
The Illinois Fighting Illini have been nothing other than very exciting and at times stressful this season. The Fighting Illini currently hold a 15-7 record and rank 23rd in the nation. This has dropped them 5 spots from last week’s NCAA rankings where they were 18th. The Illini have had huge wins this season over massive SEC teams firstly coming with Arkansas on 11/28 where they won 90-77, and also The Missouri Tigers during the Bragging Rights game on 12/22, 80-77. They have also had some huge wins against their Big Ten opponents this season which has helped them to a current 7-5 record in the conference. Some of these wins for the Illini in the Big Ten Conference are the Illini over the currently 24th-ranked Oregon, where they went into Matthew Knight Arena and smoked the Ducks 109-77. They also beat the Penn State Nittany Lions 91-52 on January 8th. Some of their other nice Big Ten wins were against Indiana 94-69, Washington, and Ohio State. The Illini have a few more tough games scheduled and coming up for them this season with #9 ranked Michigan State on February 15th, #21 ranked Wisconsin on 2/18, #2 ranked Duke on 2/22, and then they finish up the season in early March with #24 and #7 ranked Michigan(#24) and Purdue(#7). The Fighting Illini have some very tough matchups coming to end the season which will make or break their seeding in both the Big Ten Tournament and also the NCAA basketball tournament in March.
The Fighting Illini have currently been led by Freshman sensation Kasparas Jakucionis and the 7’1″ Sophmore Tomislav Ivisic. They also have a ton of key pieces that have helped lead them to victory with players like 5-star recruit Will Riley, Kylan Boswell, Ben Humrichous, the big man in the paint Morez Johnson Jr., Dra Gibbs-Lawhorn, and Jake Davis off the bench.
