6 days Ago
To subscribe, click here. Sign up for our daily basketball newsletter here Welcome to “Good Morning, Illini Nation,” your daily dose of college basketball news from Illini beat writer and AP Top 25 voter Scott Richey. He’ll offer up insights every morning on Brad Underwood’s team and college basketball at large: Illinois went 3-0 in the first two weeks of the 2024-25 college basketball season.
Two blowouts against in-state foes from the Ohio Valley Conference where made three-pointers were in abundance and one grinder against Oakland where they weren't. So what has Illini coach Brad Underwood learned about his team in the early days of the season? "I think we've grown a tremendous amount on the defensive side. I think we're starting to understand what winning looks like.
Winning's hard — it's not easy — and winning can come in a lot of different ways. I go back to the Ole Miss exhibition and a game we played a lot of people and didn't make any changes. We just tried to stick to a very basic script, yet it was the tenacity, it was the desire, it was the want to, it was all the little things we didn't do and now we're starting to do.
"Our guys have to understand the true saying, 'Every day guy,' it's who we have to be. I'm so ecstatic with our guys (from the Oakland win) because it wasn't pretty and you found a way to win ugly. We did that with gritty defense and very few mistakes on that end.
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