Illinois Basketball: 3 keys for Illini beating Duke in Big Ten/ACC Challenge
By Adam Childs
3. Guard the three
This again hinges on the Illini defense. Duke is shooting a lot of threes so far this year, but haven’t been especially accurate. But that doesn’t mean they can’t get hot as they have a bunch of good shooters.
Illinois has the size advantage down low so Duke will probably try and win this game from the outside and the Illini need to keep them from getting hot. Like we talked about earlier, defensive pressure is going to be a big key and that includes making sure they don’t get clean looks from the outside.
The Blue Devils can finish at the rim and are good in transition also, but that is also a strength of the Illini and Illinois might be better at it. So this game should come down to shots from deep and when Duke gets hot they are extremely tough to beat.
Illinois needs to trust their bigs to defend the inside and keep the Blue Devils from getting open looks. If they can do that they will make life miserable for their shooters.
This should be a fun game, but the Illini have looked like the better team this year. Their strengths counteract the Blue Devils’ strengths and that should be the difference.
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Illinois came up just short against Baylor but showed they could play with the best teams in the country. This game is close but Illinois just has too much for the Blue Devils