Want to purchase today’s print edition? Here’s a map of single-copy locations.
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:
Purdue coach Matt Painter did not anticipate his team would be the first to hold Illinois to fewer than 80 points for the first time since a 70-62 Illini victory against Indiana in late January. Marcus Domask did what he could to keep the Illinois offense firing, scoring a team-high 20 points on 8 of 16 shooting to go with four rebounds and four assists.
“Obviously, Marcus Domask is a fabulous player, but how he plays doing the dribble downs like (former Penn State guard Jalen Pickett) did last year really puts everybody in a bind,” Painter said. “You’ve got to put a lot of attention to Domask. … We liked Domask with the ball 5-15 feet with Zach (Edey) on him, but sometimes you can’t get to that point. We really worked on him staying down, staying disciplined and not letting (Domask) with all the shot fakes get him in foul trouble.”
Purdue was able to limit Illinois guard Terrence Shannon Jr. to 11 points on 3 of 13 shooting, which included the Illini scoring leader missing all four of his three-pointers. Some defensive success for the Boilermakers against a top five offense in the country.
“They play two separate groups,” Painter said. “At our place, the numbers would say when Dain Dainja and Ty (Rodgers) were in, we had more success. When they went smaller, it was harder for us. Now we’ve got to prepare — after an emotional win against Michigan State — for two different lineups. It’s really not that hard, but when fatigue sets in and competition hits and you have a crowd you’ve got to know what you’re doing versus their smaller or versus their bigger lineup. You can see sometimes we messed up a couple basic switches.”
