1/24/2019 2 Comments Illini BasketballThe NCAA basketball season is about halfway over and the Illini Basketball team does not look like a Division 1 team. They are currently at 5-14 on the season and 1-7 in the Big Ten conference. This might be the worst I have ever seen the basketball team play. Right now they are on a 2 game losing streak after getting a win against Minnesota on January 16th. The score of the game was 95-68 which seems like a large margin of victory for a team looking for their first conference win. Freshman Ayo Dosunmo lead the team with 23 points, followed by Giorgi Bezhanishivili with 20 and Trent Frazier with 15. Ayo has been pretty hit or miss this season after being a 5 star recruit from Morgan Park High School in Chicago, however he seems to have found his rhythm, scoring over 15 points in 6 out of the last 7 games. In their most recent game against the Wisconsin Badgers, the Illini were able to keep the game within a couple of scores until the end of the second half where the Badgers broke away, the final score ended up being 60-72. Giorgi Bezhanishivili lead the team with 20 points. Giorgi is a freshman this year from the country of Georgia and has been a big contributor to the Illini offense as a Forward averaging 11.5 points per game. The Illini were also able to hold Wisconsin's star player Ethan Happ to only 9 points. This is the first game this season that Happ has scored under 10 points. Even though this season for is a bust for the Illini, there is some hope after the team received a commitment from another 5 star recruit named Kofi Cockburn out of Oak Hill Academy in Virginia. Cockburn is 6'11'' and 290 lb and is considered one of the top players in the 2019 class. Hopefully he will be able to help turn around the basketball program at Illinois. A few blogs ago I mentioned that the Women's Volleyball team was having a great season with hopes of going far in the National Championship. The team ended up winning the rest of their regular season games since that blog and made it to the semi finals of the Championship after a huge quarter final win at home against the sixth ranked Wisconsin Badgers. The semi final game was held at the Target Center in Minneapolis Minnesota vs the Nebraska Cornhuskers. The Illini started off the game with a close first set win with a score of 25-22. The Illini seemed unstoppable in the second set winning 25-16, this put the Illini up two sets to zero meaning they only needed to win one more to move on to the Championship game. The Cornhuskers were able to recover in the third set and win 25-23. The momentum started to shift towards Nebraska in the fourth set as they went on to beat the Illini 25-20 to force a fifth set tiebreaker. The Cornhuskers were able to end the season for the Illini with a 15-11 win. It was a disappointing way to finish out a great season for the Illini but there are hopes that they will be just as good next year.
2 Comments
Hannah Milam
1/29/2019 06:09:48 am
I don´t keep up with college sports hardly at all. This blog is a great combination of news stories with a narrative. You keep a reader like me engaged, even though this particular topic is not appealing to me. You can tell that this topic, Illini sports specifically is really important to you. The way it is written is more personal than just a news article. You obviously dedicated a lot of time to researching this topic because knowing information about several players involves lots of research. The volleyball section appealed to me because I used to play volleyball. Even though you don´t play, it is obvious that you are still very knowledgeable on a lot of sports.
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Zalan
1/31/2019 01:35:21 pm
I have read your blog before, and I could tell you were very disappointed in the Illini football team. It was actually very depressing to read, to be honest. And, I can see the basketball team followed the football’s team example. I would advise rooting for a different team. For example, Bradley University. #Braves
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