I included the number of minutes played by each player, the points scored and allowed by Illinois while that player was on the court, and then translated those to per 40 'Off' and 'Def' numbers. As the careful observer will note, I only included the first 29.6 minutes of the game, at which point Illinois was ahead 77-41 and projected to win 104-55. The reason? This was the point where the game was determined to be 'statistically over' at statsheet.com. It's an approximation, but I don't want the data to be skewed by 'garbage time' statistics. I like the methodology Statsheet uses (based on a Bill James formula) because it is rather conservative for determining when a game is over (something like 99.99% win probability), and I wouldn't want too much of a game to be classified as garbage time.
Anyways, I don't think there's a whole lot to be gleaned from this plus-minus chart, since Illinois started the game on a 12-2 run and didn't let up until being ahead 77-41. Alex Legion had the highest rating on the team as he was +23 in just 14.5 minutes. The team gave up just 38.5 points per 40 minutes when D.J. Richardson was on the court. But really, Illinois was dominating no matter who was on the floor. I wrote in my season preview that the offense would have to get to the foul line and get more offensive rebounds to make up for an expected regression for the defense, and that is exactly what happened against SIU-Edwardsville. D.J. Richardson scored 14 points on just 5 field goal attempts by getting to the line 10 times, an encouraging sign for the future. Even though they slowed down a bit towards the end, the offense scored 96 points on just 73 possessions, which is hard to beat.
On the surface, the defensive performance was poor, as Illinois surrendered nearly a point per possession to a team which ranked 335th out of 344 teams in Division I last year. But that's why the garbage time adjustment is so relevant. Ken Pomeroy lists an offensive efficiency (points per 100 possessions) of 131.1 and a defensive efficiency of 94.3 for Illinois for the game. But when the game was already statistically over, Illinois' offensive efficiency (approximately) was an even more astronomical 142.2 and their defensive efficiency a stalwart 75.7. This fact is worth emphasizing in comparison with SIU-Edwardsville's subsequent 82-60 loss to Illinois State, which wasn't statistically over until there was 4:20 left in the game. The final score was similar but at the 10:22 mark ISU led 58-43 as compared to Illinois' 77-41 margin. Can you really blame Illinois for not defending with as much fervor when they had a 36 point lead? I don't think so and as such, I have nothing but good feelings about this game.
