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Not much can be learned from this game I would say, other than team defense will not be a concept that will be lost in the shuffle this year. There was no real stand out individual performance like Brandon Paul has had the two previous games, D.J. Richardson to his credit did score 15 to lead the Illini, but scoring was overall very balanced Saturday night. Mike Davis had another solid game but fell one rebound short of a double-double. Alex Legion came out with his first real scoring night of the year, scoring 11 points fueled by his 3-point shooting. But no single player really stood out to me as taking the game over.

The real story of this game was the way in which the team played defense. We already knew that D.J. wanted to become the defensive stopper to replace Chester this year, but  aside from stopping one single player in one on one, the overall team defense has not really been up to Bruce's expectations.

In the second half of Saturday night's game, I would have to say it was. The team jumped out onto a 25 to 4 run to start the second half and did not really look back. The run was marked by efficient and solid offense yes, but also by a team wide defense that suffocated the Blue Hose and never let them move the ball. The return of Jeff Jordan, who has long been known as a very tough defensive player surely did not hurt, and his increased minutes due to Demetri McCamey's early foul trouble allowed Bruce to really see how Jeff handled the duties of PG.

While the offense was not as dazzling as when Demetri McCamey was running the show, it did run well enough. Jordan looked especially good on defense once again and showed why there will always be minutes available for the walk-on. The guard rotation relied mostly on McCamey for ball handling duties, and by the looks of it, D.J. will have to wait a while to really take over as the primary backup again.

Bruce looked to be experimenting with all sorts of different line up in the second half, presumably to see how well the functioned as an offense. At one point we even saw  Jeff Jordan at 1, Bill Cole at 2, Dominique Keller at 3, Tyler Griffey at 4 and Richard Semrau at 5. In all of this we saw more of every primary back up than we have seen all season. Even Stan Simpson and Bubba Chisholm were able to get in on the action near the end. I know Bertrand is still out with injury, and he is expected to return sooner or later but I am wondering if Bruce is starting to contemplate a Red Shirt.

Back to the defense though, the Illini would ultimately hold the Blue Hose to only 20 second half points, and that may be the best news yet for an Illini fan this year. After the NIU victory where the team had neglected to really put the Huskies down for good, there were already rumblings about this team not being as defensively sound as last years and that it looked like we were going to have to rely on offense alone to really win games. (After two games, I know, but people read too much into everything these days) A no doubt about it defensive win should hopefully put these fears to rest for the time being at least. Once Big Ten teams like MSU and Purdue come to town of course, the Illini will need every bit of offense and defense they have to stay in the game.