Michigan State 63, Illinois 57

Unlike the last Illinois game, this one was carried on ESPN so I was able to watch. Unfortunately, the Illini could not hold on to a 7-point halftime lead and lost the game 63-57. It's true that Illinois got beat on the glass (39-26), especially with regards to offensive rebounds (16-9). But that was pretty much bound to happen given that Michigan State is 10th in the country in offensive rebound percentage. What Illinois needed to win was a hot-shooting performance and while they got that in the first half, they went cold in the second, allowing the Spartans to pull away late for the win. According to Ken Pomeroy's numbers, Illinois' effective field goal percentage has a .85 correlation with its offensive efficiency, meaning that they are dependent on good shooting to win. This intuitively makes sense, given that Bruce Weber's motion offense relies on setting up open jump shots rather than creating penetration opportunities. If the jumpers aren't falling, Illinois will struggle, and that was what we saw yesterday.

Player	P/M	Minutes
Demetri McCamey	-11	34
Trent Meacham	-2	25
Chester Frazier	+4	32
Mike Davis	-5	33
Mike Tisdale	-9	16
Calvin Brock	+4	22
Dominique Keller	-2	9
Jeff Jordan	-3	3
Alex Legion	-1	23
Richard Semrau	-5	3

Looking at the game's plus-minus chart, it is clear that Illinois was more effective with some players on the court than others. Frazier and Brock were the only players who saw Illinois outscore Michigan State while they were on the court. Frazier's back injury late in the second half was poor timing for the Illini, to say the least. The players who struggled the most were McCamey and Tisdale, not surprising given their box score statistics. McCamey was 0-9 from the floor and 0-7 from 3 continuing his puzzling streak of inconsistency. Tisdale had solid numbers in limited minutes but his 4 fouls suggest that he was struggling to keep up with Michigan State's frontcourt athleticism on the defensive end. What looked at first like a breakout game for Alex Legion wound up with him needing 13 shots to get 15 points and thus the team was not appreciably better with him on the court.

Overall, this was a game Illinois was expected to lose, and although they kept it respectable, they indeed lost the game. I'm not worried yet, but I do have some concerns going forward based on the overall season plus-minus numbers which I will discuss in a later post.