Illinois Basketball: 3 keys for resurgence of Fighting Illini in 2019-20
By Ryan Kay
Illinois brought back a core group of young talent players for this season
The Fighting Illini did bring back a good, solid, and talented group of their core players from last season in Ayo Dosunmu, Trent Frazier, Giorgi Bezhanishvili, Andres Feliz, Alan Griffin, and Kipper Nichols. More specifically, Illinois brought back five of their top six scorers from last season and the Fighting Illini have had reliable scoring especially in Big Ten play.
Illinois has four durable top returning scorers returning from last season in Dosunmu, Frazier, Bezhanishvili, and Feliz. Illinois was young last season but talented and even though their record last season didn’t prove it, they showed progress near the end of the season and beat some quality teams which has helped them win tough close games in a very competitive Big Ten conference.
The Fighting Illini are not unique in the fact that they brought back a solid core of players back from the previous season. However, what Illinois did was use their players from last season who contributed to build a strong foundation to catapult themselves to the next level. Winning at Purdue is a perfect example of that in which they didn’t break down and or give up an early lead and they refused to squander away a victory.