Braggin' Rights Secured: Illinois Triumphs Over Missouri in Thriller

A Breakdown of Illinois’ Gritty 80-77 Win Over Missouri

At the start of the season, I questioned whether Illinois had enough players capable of consistently attacking the basket—players who could apply real pressure at the rim. Many of the team’s options seemed perimeter-oriented. Jakucionis has skill but lacks physicality. The frontcourt duo of Humrichous and Ivisic are more comfortable operating as perimeter bigs. Tre White adds value with off-ball cuts, but Kylan Boswell stood out as a question mark. The knock on Boswell was that he struggled as a two-point finisher, with his primary contributions expected to come from perimeter shooting and defense.

However, Kylan Boswell is emerging as a physical force for the Illinois offense. While he wasn’t overly efficient today, he delivered when it mattered most. Down the stretch, Boswell scored ten points in ten minutes, playing a pivotal role in Illinois’ 80-77 victory over Missouri in the Braggin’ Rights Game.

Illinois up 51-48 / 11:45 left

Kylan Boswell rejects the screen and attacks the 6’10” 220lb to draw a foul. Kylan Boswell is 6’2”, 205lb but uses his strength to get to the rim and draw a foul against a much taller defender.

Boswell sinks both free throws putting Illinois up five.

Illinois up 55-53 / 10:22 left

Kylan Boswell hets the 6’10” Trent Pierce on him again. Boswell repeatedly crossovers until he drives right. Pierce is there, but Boswell is able to use his strength to continue to get to the basket. He misses the first, but secures the offensive rebound and draws a foul on the put back.

Boswell sinks both free throws to put Illinois up four.

Illinois up 61-57 with 7:42 left

This play stood out to me. Kasparas Jakucionis has the ball and is setting up for his step back three attempt. Tony Perkins is ball watching and Boswell is able to cut by him, get into the paint, and soars up over three nearby opponents to secure the offense rebound and draw a foul.

Boswell sinks both free throws to put Illinois up six.

And I just had to screenshot the moment when he grabbed the offensive board.

Illinois up 65-57 with 6:33 left

With how tight this game is being called, Illinois is feeding Kylan Boswell. Missouri can’t guard him without fouling. Here Boswell rejects the screen and gets fouled by Tamar Bates.

Boswell sinks both free throws to put Illinois up ten.

Illinois up 70-68 with 3:24 left

It’s the strength he has to create space in traffic. Boswell shot fake, gets into the paint and throws up another shot fake. He then uses his body to move Tamar Bates back enough to create the room to get the shot off.

Boswell puts Illinois up four.

Tied 75-75 with 56 seconds left

In a pivotal possession for Illinois, they go to Kylan Boswell who gets the 6’8” Jacob Crews switched onto him. Boswell hits him with a between the legs crossover drive to his right and draws the foul.

Boswell sinks both free throws putting Illinois up two.

Kylan Boswell Rim Finishing

Again, the knock on Kylan Boswell coming into this season was his inability to finish around the rim. He converted 58.8% at the rim as a freshman, 50.8% as a sophomore, and this season he’s all the way up to 66.7% rim fg%.

Boswell attributes his growth to the spacing Illinois provides as a perimeter-oriented team. At Arizona, the offense revolved around a post-centric approach—feeding the ball to the bigs—which often left the lane clogged and limited driving opportunities. This season, Boswell has also transformed his physique, shedding weight to become more athletic while maintaining his strength.

Defensively, Boswell has been a standout, showcasing his ability to lock down opponents. He’s quickly developing into the ideal backcourt partner for Kasparas Jakucionis. If Boswell can continue defending and attacking the rim as he did today, and if his shot begins to fall with consistency, he’ll become even that much more of a threat for opposing teams.

The Ben Humrichous of it all

A recurring storyline this season has been the perception that Ben Humrichous is struggling, despite the coaching staff consistently grading him as Illinois’ best defender. However, this game made it clear that, physically, he’s a weak point on the defensive end.

Let’s look at how Illinois has deployed him. As a less capable individual defender, Humrichous is typically assigned to guard the opponent’s lowest-usage, poorest-shooting player—often a one-dimensional athletic rebounder. This allows Illinois to use Humrichous as a help defender. He frequently sags off the perimeter, positioning himself near the free-throw line to clog the lane and suppress drives and rim pressure. To his credit, Humrichous has a strong understanding of the game plan, defensive concepts, and his responsibilities. But his lack of athleticism limits his impact. He struggles to recover quickly when rotating, can be erratic on closeouts, and isn’t a shot-blocking presence to clean up plays when he helps in the lane. When players attack him physically or challenge him in drop coverage, he doesn’t provide enough resistance.

In basketball, there are two approaches to dealing with a weak defender. You can assign them to the opponent’s worst offensive player out of necessity, or you can place a skilled help defender on that player to exploit the mismatch defensively. The latter approach might be more effective for Illinois. Imagine Morez Johnson Jr. or Carey Booth, with their length, athleticism, and quickness, in Humrichous’ role. They could clog the paint, protect the rim, and recover more effectively, offering a greater overall defensive impact.

Look at the rim protection from Johnson Jr and Booth below.

Missouri exploited Humrichous repeatedly in this game, often attacking him to get easy looks at the rim. Surprisingly, they didn’t go to this strategy even more, despite finding consistent success against a low-resistance defender.

And I get it—Humrichous is a great shooter. The strategy of hiding him on defense to maximize his offensive contributions makes sense in theory. The problem lately is that he hasn’t been delivering offensively. Too often, he’s been inefficient, occasionally forcing shots. Over the past six games, he’s scored more than five points just once.

At 6’9”, he’s somehow an extremely poor rebounder, hasn’t shown much playmaking ability, and his lack of athleticism hampers him defensively. I think part of his rebounding woes may be from guarding the opponents worst offensive player usually means you are guarding the opponents best rebounder. With Humrichous helping off his assignment, he has to get back to boxout a crashing opponent which he struggles at.

That said, Illinois needs Ben Humrichous. The hope is that he’ll start getting better looks and regaining his shooting touch. But the bigger issue lies in his minutes. Coach Underwood played him 39 minutes in the loss to Northwestern and 30 minutes in the loss to Tennessee, seemingly hoping that the threes would start falling. In this game, however, we saw a shift—Humrichous played only 21 minutes. Until he starts shooting more effectively or finds additional ways to impact the game, keeping him in the 20-minute range feels like the right move.

Let’s take a look at a couple plays.

There was plenty of this throughout the game. Missouri’s first play was a drive directly at Humrichous, setting the tone for what became a recurring strategy. They attacked him repeatedly, to the point where it seemed Illinois would either need to take Humrichous off the floor or start bringing help defensively.

It wasn’t anything elaborate—just simple basketball. Missouri’s physical, athletic players drove at Humrichous, got to the rim, rose up over him, and scored. It was a straightforward yet highly effective approach, yielding efficient offense time and time again.

If I were an opponent, I would what pick and roll actions vs Humrichous. We see in the below play he’s playing drop coverage and doesn’t have the length or agility to do it effectively.

Now this was also a great play by Tamar Bates playing off two feet. Tomislav Ivisic provides some help, but Bates is able to jump stop, shot fake, then go under Ivisic, then around and up over Humrichous.

I haven’t seen Ben Humrichous play a lot of drop coverage, but based on what I’ve observed, it’s probably not the best defensive scheme for him. Just because a player isn’t mobile doesn’t mean drop coverage is the optimal choice. Take Nikola Vucevic of the Chicago Bulls as an example. While he lacks agility, he’s also one of the league’s weakest rim protectors. When Vucevic plays a deep drop, ball handlers can easily get into the paint and score over him. To mitigate this, the Bulls often play him further up the floor to limit driving lanes and suppress penetration.

I see a similar issue with Humrichous. He appears to be a weak rim protector, and opponents can exploit him in multiple ways. Players can post him up and overpower him to get to the basket, or use ball screens to put him in drop coverage, where he struggles as the last line of defense. Both scenarios create efficient scoring opportunities for opponents. This is something I’ll be watching closely to see how often teams target him as the defensive weak link and how Illinois adjusts.

Some Offensive Lulls

Missouri’s defensive strategy of trapping Jakucionis and throwing bodies at him definitely had an impact, especially early in the game. Mizzou frequently trapped him out of ball screens, and in those situations, the ball needs to move quickly. When you’re double-teamed, it creates a 4-on-3 advantage for your team—if you can make the right pass fast enough.

The key is speed, and early on, Jakucionis wasn’t moving himself or the ball quickly enough to exploit the trap. By the time he made the pass, his role as a scoring threat had already been neutralized, and Missouri’s defense recovered with ease.

Then there was a play like this where Jakucionis got to loose with the ball and didn't feel the trap.

I imagine Illinois will focus on playing out of the trap in practice and how to get the ball out quicker to Ivisic on the short roll.

Additionally, Illinois struggled against Missouri’s zone defense at times. Poor spacing often made matters worse, with too many players—sometimes as many as four—crowding the area above the free-throw line. This lack of spacing limited their ability to effectively attack the zone. Let’s break down one of those plays.

To score efficiently against this zone I would look to the lower players. Early on in this play we see Humrichous flash to the free throw line. When that happens we see the rim protector step up and the weakside defender has to slide down to cover Morez Johnson Jr.

The biggest weakness right here is if Humrchous was able from the corner, to be able to get the ball on a baseline drive. (and if you don’t want Humrichous doing that, put someone in the corner who can do that)

Look at all that open space in the paint. If you can get Humrichous the ball in the corner on a drive, the rim protector has to step up to stop him, leaving the dump off pass to Morez Johnson Jr at the rim which if done quick enough, there is no way that #2 Tamar Bates is going to be able to get in position to stop it.

And then getting to the free throw line can also help accomplish this. Tre White fakes a pass below. He needs to send this into Humrichous.

Because the rim protector has to come up to tag Humrichous, which leaves the paint wide open for a quick pass from Humrichous to the Johnson Jr in the dunker spot.

So when Illinois goes up against this type of zone, they need to really focus on the corners getting players low, better spacing. And essentially whoever is in the dunker spot or corner is most likely to score to so focus on that instead of whatever you call this.

Even here is Kasparas Jakucionis drives left and Humrichous floats more to the corner, the corner defender is going to go to Jakucionis leaving Humrichous open. You have to get the ball in the corners, or figure out a way to draw the rim protector out and drop it off to the player in the dunkers spot.

Kasparas Jakucionis is a Dude

Jakucionis gets praised for his court vision, handles, and passing, but what’s impressed me most is how much he’s an elite shot maker.

Pullup three, no problem.

Receive the ball with a couple seconds on the shot clock from deep, piece of cake.

Set up a teammate in transition with a shot fake and pass. Simple.

Step back to his left three to take a 75-72 lead with two minutes left in the game. One of this go to moves.

And the game winner…

The Referees

For the second game in a row, we saw a physical contest escalate to the point where the referees stepped in, tightening their calls to regain control. But once again, they overcorrected, calling so many fouls that it no longer felt like we were watching basketball.

Now, let me be clear—it’s not an easy job. Officiating is thankless, and I wouldn’t want to do it myself. That said, referees need to avoid course correcting to such an extreme degree. It’s a slippery slope. When the game gets too physical, the sudden shift to calling everything disrupts the flow and creates inconsistencies. Plays that weren’t fouls a couple of minutes ago suddenly are. And if you called it on that end of the floor, you have to start calling contact on the other end of the floor.

Tre White fouled out during a rebound battle—a situation where two players were simply competing for the ball. In moments like this, you have to let the players decide the outcome. There was nothing egregious, nothing that significantly impacted the play. This call exemplified the overcorrection that disrupted the rhythm of the game.

It’s kind of like in football with the wide receiver and defensive back are both being a little too handsy, the ref will let them play. Here both of them were battling for a rebound. Based on how the ball hit the rim, Tre White had better positioning to get the rebound. Where’s the foul? Why the foul? This should have been Illinois ball, but instead Missouri got free throws.

Then Morez Johnson Jr. fouls out on a play where he has the spot and goes vertical. I don’t know what a defender is legally allowed to do if this is a foul.

If Johnson Jr’s arms come forward at all, it’s because of contact initiated by the driver. This is a good clean contest.

Will Riley

Will Riley has been struggling, and it feels like he’s leaning too heavily on hero ball. When tasked with isolating and taking his defender one-on-one, he doesn’t seem quite ready for that role yet.

Illinois needs to focus on getting Riley more involved in off-ball actions. Use sets that create open catch-and-shoot opportunities for him. When they want him to attack, it should be as a secondary option. For example, Kasparas Jakucionis can operate on the strong side while Riley comes off a pin-down on the weak side. This way, Riley can come off an action and receives the ball with an advantage already created, attacking downhill instead of shouldering the burden of generating the advantage himself off the dribble.

Earlier in the season, Illinois seemed to emphasize more ball and player movement. There was a lot of three-man action above the break involving Jakucionis, Riley, and a big, with two shooters stationed in the corners. In those situations, Riley wasn’t asked to be a primary creator but rather to move and shoot—areas where he excels.

One play stood out in this game. Quick ball and player movement forced a defensive miscommunication, leading to an open catch-and-shoot three for Riley. It was a perfect example of how Illinois can maximize his strengths of having him work with others instead of work by himself.

Tre White

I was pretty down on White to start the season. Not physical enough boxing out. Poor defense. Not providing much offensively. Mostly all coming down to a lack of physicality. That has changed recently. He’s an improved defender and rebounder. His timely cuts help add some rim pressure. And against Mizzou he had this strong take to the rim.

That’s all I got as I need to sign off. Let me know if you have any questions or share your thoughts on this game or on Illinois in general in the comments.

Illinois 80 Mizzou 77 Final