Illinois basketball had a golden opportunity to knock off the No. 1 team in the country but failed down the stretch.

The Illini had some good moments on Saturday evening. We had Tennessee on the ropes and could have finished them off. But Illinois failed to convert on some huge plays, and this ultimately doomed us.

With under 10 seconds to go in the game, Tennessee drove down the court and made a game-winning layup as time expired. Illinois had no answer for stopping the Vols’ player, and the wrong orange won the game, 66-64.

Losing to Tennessee is still fresh on my mind, so it hurts the soul a lot more as I type this article. But man, it seems that the Illini offense is broken.

Sure, Illinois can put up points. We just went toe-to-toe against the No. 1 team in the country. That doesn’t mean both things can’t be true. We can compete with the Vols, but we can also have an offense that isn’t running well.

There is little to no flow to the Illinois offense right now. It is essentially get Kasparas Jakucionis the ball and let him try to create offense. He then pounds the rock for 20 seconds of the shot clock.
Jakucionis probes to see which way he can drive. He then dishes the ball out with a low shot clock, and a bad shot is chucked up.

When the Illini are on the offensive side of the court, it feels like multiple players just stand around. When the ball is moving, they have a hard time understanding spacing. On multiple occasions against Tennessee, a member of the Illini would have the ball in the corner, and another Illinois player would come around him and make it easier for the Vols to double-team our player.

We are now 10 games into the 2024-25 season, and it feels like Illinois just started playing together. It feels like there is a regression in gelling. Getting players more touches, moving the ball around the court, and running some plays that get others open needs to start happening. The fact we were even within a brutal basket at the end seemed like somewhat of a miracle.