Illinois Basketball: Can Illini make a deep run in 2021 NCAA Tournament?
Refuting a Final Four appearance
Making it to the Elite Eight is a great accomplishment, yet there will be some that will be expecting the Fighting Illini to still be playing into the last weekend of the tournament, unfortunately, there is some pretty solid evidence to counter that argument.
The one thing Illinois’ ninth-ranked Strength of Schedule has answered is “what would happen if they played a potential No.1 seed”, in fact, two such instances have been provided. Illinois was on a three-game non-conference winning streak when they encountered Baylor on Dec.2, 2020. The end result was an 82-69 Baylor victory.
Illinois’ top two players did not play their best as Dosunmu had 18 points on 6-18 shooting and Cockburn managed seven points, but more importantly in just eighteen minutes as he was saddled with foul trouble. For the Illinois stars, it was more of that Baylor shut them down as opposed to them having a bad game.
More recently on Jan.16, 2021, the Fighting Illini lost to Ohio State by an 87-81 score. In both those losses, Illinois was the lesser of the two teams in terms of effective field goal percentage despite having an advantage at the center position, a reoccurring theme when their losses to Rutgers and Maryland are taken into consideration.
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It may be a good sign that other potential No. 1 seeds such as Michigan and Villanova have a center Cockburn can match up with, but with other potential teams like Houston, Tennessee, and Alabama vying for a No.1 seed, there are too many teams with a roster makeup similar to the ones they lost to for them to get to the Final Four.