Nov. 21—CHAMPAIGN — Illinois men’s basketball coach Brad Underwood helped produce a video for Championship Productions about offensive basketball.
In this video, Underwood teaches coaches and teams how to utilize the spread offense and score in less than seven seconds.
That offensive philosophy was missing when the Fighting Illini lost the Marquette Golden Eagles 71-64 last Tuesday at the State Farm Center. Illinois managed only 0.941 points per possession.
Since that contest, Underwood has been stressing to his team the need for them to run as much as possible.
That offensive philosophy paid off this weekend when Illinois beat Valparaiso 87-64 on Friday night and Southern University 88-60 on Sunday evening.
“Coach Brad emphasized running,” said Illinois senior Terrence Shannon, who had 22 points against Valparaiso and 24 against Southern. “We didn’t really run against Marquette and he got on me really hard about it. We’ve tried to do our best to respond and fix what we needed to fix.”
In their wins over the weekend, the Illini (4-1) have averaged 1.101 points per possession against the Beacons and 1.158 against the Jaguars.
“That’s all about us. That’s all about trying to find easy baskets and trying to run,” he said. “Kind of common sense, the faster you get the ball up the court, you don’t have to shoot it, but it gives you more time to run offense and more time to execute.
“Even if we don’t have it right away, we want to sprint the ball up the court. We don’t want to let the defense get set and have to run an offensive set every trip…we want to play to that style and that’s our advantage. We have guys that can run and we have guys that can make shots.”
Shannon is a key piece in that puzzle for Underwood and the Illini.
He has the ability to play very fast and get downhill quickly for easy layups and dunks.
In Sunday’s win over Southern, Shannon scored 11 straight points in the first half as Illinois built a 40-24 lead.
“I don’t even remember 11 straight points,” Shannon…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/mens-college-basketball-illini-runs-201700191.html
Author : Commercial-News, Danville, Ill.
Publish date : 2023-11-21 20:17:00
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