What a craptastic basketball game last night.  Neither team shot all that well.  Illinois had 12 more turnovers than Michigan.  Both teams combined to go 10-48 from three-point land.  But in the end, Illinois got a beautiful win.  Not beautiful because they beat a good team, but beautiful because it's a road win this late in the season.  Those always look good.  Now we’re two wins away from that magic number of twenty.  Let’s hope we can get two of our last three and get to it before the Big Ten Tournament comes around.  As of right now, it looks like we will finish either 4th or 5th, with means we will more than likely play Wisconsin in the first round, so I just assume win our 20th game before March 11th.

On another note, if I’m a Michigan fan (don’t confuse me with one), I would be wishing for the firing of coach John Beilein.  You can’t take a team and tell them to shoot three pointers left and right and expect them to finish much above .500.  He has some nice talent with Manny Harris and DeShawn Sims, but the other guys do nothing but chuck up those low percentage shots.  Instead of running an offense, they just look for threes.  As long as Beilein is there preaching the three, Michigan won’t be much better than a .500 team, regardless of who they got.

Let’s update the prediction standings.  Because of Michigan relying so much on that three, we ended up being torn on who we thought would win this game.  In the end, Illinois guarantees themselves a +.500 record in Big Ten play with a 51-44 win.  This means Illinois was +7 on the real score difference.  Now the standings…

(In my previous entry, I noticed I didn’t give myself a win for picking the ILL @ PUR game correctly.  I’m fixing that with this entry.  I figured I would let you know what was going on in case you were wondering why I gave myself two wins.)

NAME                                    W                    L                      RSDT*

Tom Young (ILL 69-64)         15                    4                        141

Reillini (ILL 78-74)                13                    6                        169

Jshaw (ILL 67-60)                  12                    6                        173

dave1956 (MICH 69-63)        11                    7                        173

jweeks (MICH 75-69)             9                      9                        194

PeterE (DNP)                          3                      2                        43

* - Real Score Difference Total

Looking ahead to Saturday’s game…

My Prediction

ILLINOIS 75       MINNESOTA 66

Here’s hoping Illinois rediscovers the shooting touch between now and then.  Illinois is 5-2 at home during conference play, with both losses coming to the two teams that look like the one and two seed in the upcoming Big Ten Tournament.  What’s impressive about their Big Ten record is how balance it is.  Not only are they 5-2 at home, but they're 5-3 on the road.  After the way the non-conference play looked, 5-3 on the road probably seemed unlikely.  Because of their road play, they are in the top half of the standings, and still have an outside shot at winning the conference (it won’t happen though). 

Even though last night’s game was sloppy, the Illini are starting to figure things out as a whole.  It looks like Weber’s plan on benching Davis for a while paid off the same way benching McCamey did.  Davis, along with Tisdale and McCamey, did an excellent job of placing themselves on rebounds, and that can be tough to do when you have to rebound three pointers all night long.  I don’t know if the rebounding will be in the Illini’s favor as much against Minnesota.  The Illini still have to box out better.

Michigan might be big on shooting a lot of three pointers, but Minnesota is big on making them.  On the year, the Gophers are just a hair under 40% from beyond the arch.  Keep your eyes on Blake Hoffarber.  At 49%, he is tied for tops in the NCAA.  When you make almost half of your threes, you can shoot it anywhere.  Illinois better keep a body on him.  Also, Lawerence Westbrook is shooting threes at 42.7%, so you can’t sleep on him either.  In the end, I expect Illinois to come out and play with a purpose and get win number 19.

What do you guys think?  Will Illinois make it two in a row, or will Minnesota put a damper on what Illinois does in the post-season?  Let me know what you think below. 

Talk to you guys again soon.

I-L-L…