Minnesota vs Illinois Basketball Recap

Minnesota 62, Illinois 60

The Minnesota Golden Gophers tried to give away another Big Ten basketball game. They really did.

The Illinois Fighting Illini couldn't quite take it, however, and now, the Big Ten bubble is a little more crowded.

It all could have been so simple: Coach Bruce Weber's Illinois squad, which had defeated Michigan State and Wisconsin a few weeks ago to make itself a virtual lock for the NCAA Tournament, merely needed to hold off a limited and snake-bitten Minnesota team in order to solidify its place in next month's Big Dance. The Illini, in one stroke, could have fully eliminated coach Tubby Smith's Golden Gophers from at-large NCAA contention while also eliminating any drama from their Selection Sunday viewing party.

Instead, the Orange Crush elected to sweat bullets in the coming week.

Illinois will likely need to split the next two games against Ohio State and Wisconsin if it wants to feel comfortable in the minutes before the NCAA Tournament Selection Show. That's because Minnesota walked away from Champaign, Ill., with a two-point win that barely - barely - keeps the Gophers on the NCAA radar screen.

The storyline of this ugly encounter at Assembly Hall wasn't very hard to figure out: Illinois laid a ton of bricks in one of the saddest and sorriest shooting displays of the entire college basketball season.

Let's understand something at the outset of this brief discussion: Shooting percentages aren't the be-all and end-all of offensive measurements in basketball. In some games, a lot of field goal attempts are taken, and in other games, comparatively few shots are released over the course of 40 minutes. Slow-paced games will witness 45 to 55 shots per team, while faster-paced games (or quick-strike offenses that don't wait for time to drip off the shot clock) will involve 65 or more shots from a given team. The general principle that should be followed, then, is that if the number of shots taken in a game is particularly large, the verdict on that team's shooting acumen becomes more telling and definitive.

If a pesky opponent plays a slowdown game and rebounds extremely well, a team's offensive opportunities can be limited. This kind of knowledge can itself become a source of pressure, forcing a team's shooting percentage to spiral downward with a minimal amount of shot attempts. When this scenario unfolds, one can place only so much blame on the team that misfires from the field. On the other hand, when a team repeatedly gets its hands on the ball and has extra chances to score, it's alarming and disappointing when a shooting percentage doesn't rise to at least a moderate level.

With that explanation serving as background, the plain truth about Saturday afternoon's game in Champaign is that Illinois really stunk up the joint. The Illini - who scored just 36 and 33 points in two Big Ten losses last season - did shoot the ball quite poorly. Weber's lineup chronically missed the target against Minnesota, hitting only 32 percent of its shots. However, as shown above, shooting percentage isn't the whole story. What mattered even more in this game is that Illinois had 72 shot attempts but made only 23 of them. The Illini missed 49 field goals. That's a lot of bricks.

Then compare that number to Minnesota's shooting totals. Tubby's team hardly lit up the scoreboard, converting just 42 percent of its shots, but the Gophers attempted only 48 shots for the whole game, meaning that the sum of Illinois's missed shots exceeded Minnesota's overall number of field goal tries. That's pretty astounding, to say the least.

If it's possible, the numbers get even worse the more one examines them. Illinois's best player, Demetri McCamey, was the man primarily responsible for the Illini's lack of offensive efficiency. Yes, the upperclassman dished out 10 assists, but he jacked up way too many threes, hitting only 1 of 12 3-pointers on the day. McCamey finished 4 of 18 from the field and simply lacked the discipline he normally displays. With teammates Mike Tisdale (3 of 10) and Brandon Paul (1 of 8) also going stone cold from the field, the Illini had far too many ineffective individuals on the floor.

The short story is a painful one for Illinois fans, but it's hard to deny right now: The ghosts of 2009's pitiful offensive performances have not been chased away. If Bruce Weber doesn't find answers at the offensive end of the floor, his team could have a far more stressful Selection Sunday than it ever could have imagined just two weeks ago.
 

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