Brandon Paul and Mike Davis lead Illini past NIU, have I heard this before?

Yes the long awaited reaction to last nights intrastate match between the Illini and the Huskies of Northern Illinois has finally arrived. I feel that the win over the Huskies, while not as comfortable as the win over SIUE has taught us much mroe about how the Illini will perform this year as a team, and there is a lot more good than bad.

If nothing else the game showed us that Brandon Paul's earlier stellar debut against SIUE was no fluke, as he posted another 20 point game, this time doing all of his scoring in the first half. D.J. Richardson has not had the regular season scoring explosion to match Paul yet, but he is still contributing in no small amount putting in 31 minutes and getting steals and assists as the current second option for running the offense after Demetri. I have no doubt that the scoring torrents will come sooner or later though, just as we saw in the final exhibition game against Quincy.

Speaking of Demetri McCamey, I know its very early in the season, but it has become very apparent that DMAC is a completely different player than we have seen before, and in a very good way. DMAC had 10 points, 8 assists, 3 steals and a block. He even ended up being second in the rebound column with 5 (more on that later.) The only blemish on his stat sheet being his 4 turnovers. The stats however do not do justice to some of the coolest passes I have seen Demetri ever make, specifically finding Mike Davis for the easy points down low. I said before that when Demetri was out of the game, the offense does not move with the same rhythm or efficiency, and this was still true last night. But maybe it looks to our eyes even worse than it is because DMAC is getting it and running the offense that well. I know its premature to say so, but with stat lines and play like last night McCamey could very well be on his way to being a true replacement for Chester Frazier, but with the threat to still go off for 20 in a game, which is something different entirely.

My last next note on the game should be the so-so lackadaisical performance of Mike Davis. All he did was record 14 points, 17 boards, (4 offensive) and a couple blocks. Yawn. In all seriousness, this performance only seems to reinforce my belief that Davis will be First Team All Big Ten this year and that he is on his way to another big jump this year. This is Mike's second straight double-double, and doesn't look like he will be easily stopped from doing so against most teams. We already know he can score, but getting boards like he did last night, especially on the offensive end are hopefully a sign of things to come. 

Overall the rotation of the big men is going much deeper than last year, where there were really only 3 players that got all the minutes down low last year, this year Tyler Griffey and Bill Cole have been getting very good minutes to spell Tis Davis and Dominique Keller, who got 10 points and 2 blocks in his own right.

Of course the who night wasn't all roses and happiness, the team had trouble keeping NIU from creeping back into the game on multiple occasions and the virtual disappearance of Mike Tisdale in the first half are things that both need to be addressed. The team definitely ratcheted down the defense in the second half, but the team defense was not as consistent as it needs to be in order to fully control a game like Bruce wants to. In future against other Big Ten teams that will defend you brutally and leave you bruised, this team may not be able to count on explosive wide open shots for Brandon Paul like the ones that carried the team in the first half.

The next two games of course are very much still warm up games, but I will be there on Saturday night to cover the Illini game against the Presbyterian Blue Hose. Yeah, yeah we all know the jokes. Am I being irrationally exuberant about this basketball team? Maybe I am, but I am going to enjoy top 25 winning basketball until someone can convince me otherwise.